The Cheque's in the Mail

For almost 9 years I regularly parked right over the site where Enrico Fermi and his colleagues first split the atom. I walked from the car down the street and through the gothic doors of Swift Hall of the University of Chicago. One Easter, the bulletin board featured a wistful note from a local church looking for somebody to lead their Easter Services. It said, "Wanted, clergy who still believes in the resurrection of Jesus, to lead the Service on Easter Sunday at St. Somebody’s Church."

I still have a number of friends and acquaintances who don’t believe in God. Some of them are ministers. Our coffee conversations go something like this:"Tell me about the state of the church in Canada." I say something like, "Well, it depends. A lot of churches look down their noses at the authority of the Word of God and the centrality of the cross and resurrection of Jesus. They consider themselves much more sophisticated than all of that. They don't, therefore, have a whole lot to offer their people except assorted fantasies, shifting political fads and environmental enthusiasms. Those churches are in really quite serious decline. On the other hand, there are many churches in Canada who still affirm the authority of the Word of God as the guiding principle of life, practice, and eternity. Many of those churches seem to be doing quite well. In fact, some of them are thriving."

My theologically trendy friend thinks for a scholarly moment. "Well, I have problem with the word authority. The word bothers me. For me, my religion is more of a search than a certainty."
I think about that for a minute. I think how intriguing it would be if Christianity were only a search. Then my religion could be just a pale reflection of my own prejudices, or a projection of my own desires. But I’m convinced that I don’t want a Christianity like that. I feel like I need something that is sure and solid, in which I could place my confidence. Especially since the truthfulness of God my eternal destiny are at stake. Then I think about Hebrews 11:1, and I know that authentic Christianity is far more than a search. How about it? Do we want a Christianity that is a counterfeit and a fake? Or one that is grounded in a confidence and hope?
This eleventh chapter of Hebrews is a catalogue just riddled with names. They’re listed because God had done great things through them. These biographical sketches are always preceded by two words: "By faith. By faith. By faith. By faith." Any of us here longing that at some point in our lives God might do something great through us and with us? Well, we can’t ignore how all these great works were preceded by lives that were grounded with faith. Before he catalogues the great things that were done through these lives, he defines faith for us. Here it is: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for." Not a search. "The assurance of things hoped for."

Think about "things hoped for." Isn’t that really what Christianity is all about? Hope? Hope in the promises of God. Hope in the presence of Jesus in my life. Hope that He never leaves me nor forsakes me. Hope that heaven is real and that by His grace and finished work on the cross I'm headed there. Hope that God is moving all history toward a point where wrongs will be made right, and his good and life-giving rule will prevail.

We have to be careful, though, that we don't take the word hope in just the English sense of the word. We use the word "hope" in a far looser way than the Bible does.

For instance, what do we mean when we say, "We hope that the Leafs will win the Stanley Cup next year?" Sorry, Leaf fans, I don’t mean to rub it in, but don't count on that. In fact, would they be the Leafs if they did something like that? So we use "hope" in a very loose way. The Bible always uses hope in the sense of a future certainty. Hope isn’t just some random wish list of my heart. So the Bible is full of things for you and me to anchor our hope in. But how do I get there? How do you anchor yourself in those hopes? It takes faith. The text says that faith is "the assurance."
Here’s what’s behind that word. Did you ever jump off a dock into a rather unclear lake, not knowing where the bottom was? You dare not dive and risk breaking your neck. So you just jump. The word "assurance" is about the relief your get when your feet land on something with substance. I can stand. "Assurance" really the word for substance. Faith gives substance to all that I hope for. The writer says it’s "the conviction of things not seen." The Bible has a lot of "not seen" things for us that we consider to be pretty important.
Like heaven. Has anybody here seen heaven? Like God, heaven is not seen. Like the Holy Spirit, heaven is not seen. I mean, the unseen elements of our faith are huge and very strategic. Again, the Greeks would think of proof, of being convinced, even though we couldn’t see, smell, hear, touch or feel it. Faith gives me a sense of certainty. Faith proves something in my heart and my spirit about all that is unseen.

It's like this. Let's say that you got one of those spam e-mails from a long, funny- sounding name. I hate them. They take time to delete, they’re always phony, and may even pack a virus. But let’s say you get one of these e-mails from somebody who is the daughter of some dying King in Nigeria. According to the letter, the King just happens to be a Christian. The letter’s full of grammatical errors and tortured syntax. But it says, "Stan Fox, I'm Princess so-and-so in Jos Nigeria, and if you’ll just send us $5000 so that we can start the paper work going you’ve struck it rich. We need just $5000 from you to break the dam on this huge pile of cash." Delete!!
But suppose you get an e-mail without a request for cold cash up front. This time, there's just information that some long-lost relative has left you a million dollars. A friend comes by, and you say, "You're never going to guess the e-mail I just got. A long-lost relative died, and this guy e- mails me, and I've inherited a million dollars." Your friend says, "Hoo boy! I'll believe that when I see it! Give your head a shake!" You say, "Yeah, me too," because all you have is the information that may not be reliable.

Next you get a letter in the snail mail saying, "We want you next Friday at 1:00 in the lawyer's office in Hamilton where we'll read the will." So you steam on down the 403. You hope it's not a prank. You don’t want to tell anybody else, in case you're being duped. You go to the lawyer’s office. There are other people and relatives you haven't seen or don't know. The lawyer flops a file on the desk. He reads a will that says you have a million dollars. There's a seal at the bottom, so it looks like there might be something to this. You don't have a million dollars yet, but you have a whole new sense that this is real. Now you have something to put your faith in, even though you don't have the cheque yet.

Six months later you get the million dollar cheque. You quit work, and you go and live on Vancouver Island for the rest of your life, because it is real. Now it’s certain. Faith is like that for us. We start out with a lot of God information, don't we? We hear a lot of Bible talk, a lot of information. We don't know how to interact with it. We may even be suspicious and say, "Yeah! Right!" And then faith comes along, and faith says, "Let me give you some substance." Faith becomes the medium in which I choose to hope with confidence in God’s reliability.
And it's not just checking my brain at the door. As I look at the claims of Christianity and the support for those claims, there are eye witnesses, papers, documents, and stamps of authority. We really live in this middle season. You don't get the cheque until you get home to heaven, but in this middle season there is enough substance, there is enough proof, there is enough evidence, so you can say, "I will trust my life on that." The hope becomes substance and conviction. It becomes reliable in your life. Your feet have landed finally on something solid in your walk with God.

I'll tell you this: If God tells you the cheque's in the mail, it really is.

What we do at this Table we do with the confidence that it is "until He comes." Do this in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat this bread, and drink from this cup, you show forth the Lord’s death, until He comes." Because the God who cannot lie is speaking, you can take that to the bank.