Craig Smith - When Fear Says Stop
- Watch
- Donate
Hey, I want to talk to you today a little bit about something God’s been teaching me about why I don’t always see everything that God wants to show me. How many of us here would like God to show up a little bit more in our lives? I wonder how many of us here are waiting for God to do something, and we just haven’t seen it yet. Yeah, I want to talk to you about what he’s been teaching me about why that sometimes is. I do believe that God wants to show you a lot more than you’ve seen. He wants to show you more of himself. He wants to show you more of his will for your life. He wants to show you more of his love for you. He wants to show up.
And it’s not that God isn’t showing up. It’s not that he doesn’t want to show us what we long to see. It’s that sometimes there’s something getting in the way of that. And so I want to talk to you about why that is and try to help you figure out how to get past what is sometimes keeping us from seeing what God wants to show us. If you want to follow along, we’re going to be in John chapter 20 today. And actually, we’re going to be in John chapter 20 for the next several weeks. We’re starting a new series today called Getting Beyond the Fear of Faith. Because what I’m going to tell you-and I’ll go ahead and tip my hand-is that seeing everything God wants to show you requires taking steps of faith.
And faith is scary. By definition, faith means stepping into something that we don’t necessarily know what we’re stepping into. And so the fear of faith can be an obstacle to being able to see everything that God has for us. And so what we’re going to do for the next few weeks is we’re going to walk through John chapter 20, verse by verse. This is the stuff that took place right after the resurrection. In fact, what I’m going to talk to you about today could very easily have been the Easter Sunday message, but we decided to put it off for this weekend. But the reason I say that is because it actually begins on Easter Sunday.
Okay, and so here’s how John 20:1 starts off. It says, «Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.» So Jesus had been crucified, he had been buried, and now we’re on Sunday morning. She went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. And there are a couple of things that I want to make sure we don’t miss there. The first is when she went. It says that she went while it was still dark. She went while it was still dark.
Now, why would she go while it was still dark? Because in the first century, people typically didn’t do things when it was dark. There were no streetlights; there weren’t even street lamps at that point. And so being out in the dark was dangerous, especially for a woman. To be on the streets in the dark was a dangerous thing to do. So why would she go in the dark? Well, honestly, in the Bible, consistently, when anybody does anything in the dark, it’s because they don’t want anybody else to see them. They don’t want to be seen. They’re afraid of being seen.
It’s a fear thing, and specifically, it’s a fear of being seen. You see that consistently. I think of a man named Nicodemus. He was a Pharisee, so he was one of the religious leaders. We often think of the Pharisees as the enemies of Jesus, and there were a lot of them who were the enemies of Jesus, which, by the way, as a religious leader, is always very disturbing to me-like the people that Jesus had the hardest time getting along with were the religious leaders, right? But it wasn’t a uniform thing.
There were some of the Pharisees, and Nicodemus was one of them. He heard Jesus teach, and he thought, «I think this might be the guy that I’ve been teaching about.» As a religious leader, I find that very hopeful. I would like to think that I would recognize, you know, when God shows up and that I’ve been teaching people to recognize when He shows up. I would like to think that I would do it too. And Nicodemus did. So he started thinking, «I think this might be the guy.» However, he had some questions, and he would ask those questions. John actually tells us that he went to see Jesus to talk to Him, but he went in the dark. Why? Because he was afraid. He was afraid of other people saying, and he was afraid of his reputation. That’s why people typically do things in the dark in the first place — because they’re afraid of being seen.
So Mary Magdalene is going in the dark, I think, because she’s afraid of being seen. Now, we don’t know exactly what the fear was. It might have been a fear of self-preservation; she might have been worried about her life. I mean, one of the things that the Romans typically did when there was an uprising of some sort was they killed the leader and then went after the followers. After the leader was dead, the will of the followers typically was broken; they were easier to hunt down and stamp out. Jesus has been crucified, so the next logical step would be that the Romans would then go after His followers. If Mary comes along in the daylight, where people can see her, and she goes to the tomb, the Romans might have thought, «Let’s start with her. She’ll be the first one to go. She’s clearly one of His.» So it might have been a self-preservation thing.
It’s also possible- and I think this is interesting because she’s the only one named there-there were other women there. We know that from the other gospels. In fact, we actually know what she says a little bit later; we’re going to see Mary Magdalene say «we,» acknowledging that there were other people there. But John only mentions her. That’s kind of interesting. Why mention only her? I think it’s because she had an interesting reputation. Mary Magdalene, we really only know two things about her: we know where she was from, and we know what Jesus delivered her from. We know she was from-it’s in her name-Mary Magdalene. Magdalene, or technically Mary of Magdala, is the name of the village she came from. It’s a fishing village on the Sea of Galilee. It’s not her last name; it’s like we say Jesus of Nazareth. This is Mary of Magdala. We know where she was from. Beyond that, the only thing we know is what Jesus delivered her from. Luke tells us that Jesus cast seven demons out of her.
Now, the Bible doesn’t say why she was the subject of that kind of satanic attention. It doesn’t say she’d done anything to deserve it. The Bible doesn’t say that somehow she had sinned in such a horrific way that she opened herself up to these demonic influences. The Bible doesn’t say anything about it; it just says that she was delivered from it. But here’s the thing: I think most people assume that if she had that kind of demonic attention going on, then she had done something to deserve it, right? I mean, how about this: how many of us have heard of the name Mary Magdalene before? Okay, how many of us have heard that she was a prostitute? Yeah.
Now you know where that information comes from. No idea. I mean, it’s not in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t say anything about that. The reason it happened, actually, was about 300 years later when somebody preached a sermon where he said, «Yeah, she was a prostitute.» The reason he did that was because he actually took several different stories of different women in the Bible, some of whom were named Mary, by the way. There’s a bunch of Marys in the Bible; anybody notice that? Like, there’s Mary Magdalene, by the way. She’s different than Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is different than Mary of Bethany. Like, there’s just a bunch of different Marys. They’re like, «Why would you do that?» And the answer is because that was their name, right?
It’s history; it’s not fiction. Like, if you’re a fiction writer and you give all your characters the same name, you’re not good at your job. But in the real world, names become popular, and at certain seasons, they’re very popular. I have discovered recently, by the way, that if I meet somebody named Craig, they’re within 5 years of me, like almost exclusively. And the reason was there was a novel that was published about the time that I was born, and all those other Craigs were born, and the main character’s name was Craig. And so Craig became a popular name for just a little moment. That’s the way history works. And we know from tombstones and we know from other written documents of the first century that Mary was the number one most popular women’s name at that season.
Okay, but 300 years later, some dude forgot that, and so he took a bunch of different Marys and shoved them together with some other women. He’s like, «Well, that was probably Mary.» I mean, didn’t name her, but she’s probably that. And he preached a message: «So yeah, Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. That’s why the demons got into her.» And again, how many of us knew that she was a prostitute? I heard that right now! Come on, put your hands up. Again, 1700 years later, tell me you don’t feel a little bad for Mary. See, she might have been in the dark. She was afraid of people knowing who she was because she had a reputation, and she was ashamed of it. Maybe nobody thought she was a prostitute, but everybody was like, «Yeah, that’s the girl that Jesus cast seven demons out of.»
I wonder what she did to get them in there. I wonder what she did to open herself up to that attention. And so Mary was dealing with a very specialized kind of fear, and that was the fear we call shame. And shame is the fear that our past will be shown to the world, right? Shame is the fear that what has been true of us will always be true of us, and it’s what we’ll be known for. And it’s interesting; the thing about shame is it doesn’t matter if it’s what you’ve done or what’s been done to you. It has the same impact on us.
Some of us today are carrying around some shame because of what we’ve done. We know we’ve done bad things; we’ve sinned in significant ways. And we have a hard time recognizing that the grace of God covers that and that what God has called forgiven, he has also said, «You are free of.» And so we’re carrying around shame that God says, «I’ve already taken that from you. Why do you keep putting it back on?» But it’s shame that defines what we were and what we’ll always be.
And it’s interesting; some of us are here today, and it’s not shame from what we’ve done. It came from what was done to us. We were abused; we were assaulted. There are these things that are true of us from our childhood or at some point in our past. And we live in fear that our past will be shown to the world. We think that it identifies us. And so shame, it’s a specialized fear. And I don’t know if for Mary, it was the shame fear or fear for her life, but it did the same thing that fear always does to us, and that is that fear keeps us in the shadows. She went in the dark.
Fear keeps us in the shadows. But here’s the problem with walking in the shadows. Here’s the problem with letting fear keep us in the shadows: the shadows make it hard to see, don’t they? Living in the shadows means it’s hard for us to see what’s really going on. And by the way, John says she saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance, but he uses a very particular Greek word for seeing there. And we’re actually going to see three different Greek words in this passage for seeing, and they kind of run a progression from a very surface level to a little bit deeper to a profound understanding. Okay, and I wanted to clue you in on that so we can watch for them as we go.
And by the way, some of you love this, so I’m going to give you three Greek words, and some of you are going to be like, «It was such a great day at church! That’s great! I’m glad you like that.» Sometimes people go, «Why don’t you do more of that? Like, I know you studied all this; why don’t you do more Greek and more Hebrew?» And honestly, the answer is because I don’t ever want anybody to assume they have to be able to read Greek and Hebrew to get out of God’s word what He put there for them, because you don’t. You can read God’s word, and God’s spirit will speak to you whether you understand Greek or Hebrew or not. But every now and then, there is something that’s kind of useful, and I do think in this passage it’s useful to understand that there are these three different Greek words that don’t really come out in the translation.
The first word is «blepo», and it just means to notice. It’s the word that’s used here: she noticed the stone was rolled away from the tomb. And really, all she could do is have a surface-level observation because it was still dark. She couldn’t see very much. She could see just enough by the sun beginning to coat the horizon to the east that yes, the stone is not where I expected it to be. That’s all she sees; that’s all John says she was able to notice. Okay, that’s a very surface level. We’re going to see another word for seeing, though, and that’s «theoreo», which means to study. It means to look closely, to examine with the intent of trying to understand better. We’re going to see that one come up.
And then there’s another one; it’s «ginosko», and that means to understand. It means I didn’t just glance at something. I didn’t just look into it, but because I looked into it, I came to a place of understanding something I otherwise never would have. I was talking to a guy a couple of years ago, and just kind of off the cuff, he looks at me and says, " Hey, by the way, I saw you at a restaurant the other day. I noticed that you were there with a woman who wasn’t your wife.» And he had this kind of smile, which was very confusing. And I was like, «I don’t do that; that’s just one of my policies.» I don’t do that. And he goes, «Yeah, I noticed that. By the way, that’s 'bleppo'; I kind of observed it.»
He said it kind of threw me off, so I looked at her pretty closely. I studied her, and he said, «When I looked closely at her, I realized she looked a lot like your wife, but like younger.» And then he said, " Oh, it’s his daughter.» I was like, «Oh yeah, I had lunch with my daughter Relle this week.» That’s the three words: «blepo», I noticed, so then I looked into and I studied, and then I was like, «Oh, I see,» which is, «Oh, I get it; I understand it.»
We’re going to see all three of these words here. The first one, the very surface level, says Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and she saw; she noticed the stone rolled away from the tomb. And what’s interesting is she stops. She doesn’t go any further; she stops when she notices this. And this is part of the problem with walking in the dark, with letting fear keep you in the shadows, is that what we see, we don’t really understand. And so what happens is we end up having to fill in the narrative. We have to make some assumptions.
And I’m just wondering how many of us, when you’re not sure what’s going on, have kind of noticed something like you got a text from somebody and you’re like, «Well, I could take it this way or I could take it that way,» or you know, he or she, they did this thing, and like it could be good, it could be bad. I wonder how many of us automatically assume it’s the good thing. Not a lot of us. How many of us kind of automatically assume it’s probably the bad thing? Come on, let’s be real. And that’s the problem with walking in the shadows is that we make assumptions. We create narratives, and the narratives aren’t usually good. Check this out: and so she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and she said, «They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him.»
Do you see the assumption? The assumption is our enemies have done something terrible. Now, who are they? I don’t know. It might have been the Roman soldiers, it might have been the religious leaders, but the point is, it’s our enemies, right? And that’s so-it’s such a powerful thing to recognize because I see it in my own life that when we let fear keep us in the shadows, what begins to happen is we fill in the narrative in negative ways. We make assumptions that things are as bad as we think they could be, and maybe even worse, right? And I’ve seen this happen in my life. When we let fear keep us in the shadows, we can confuse the work of God for the work of our enemy. It’s like, if the enemies have done it, but the enemies haven’t done anything. God has done it, right?
I mean, think about this: there’s been a resurrection, and she thinks there’s been a robbery. Don’t we all tend to do that a little bit when we let fear keep us in the shadows? When we let fear keep us from taking that next step closer to figuring out what’s going on, it can get to the point that we actually look at the work of God in our lives and we go, «I think the enemy’s at work in my life.» I was walking the other day and I came across a building, and it was such a powerful image that I went ahead and snapped a picture. Can we throw that up here? That’s a mess. Like, that’s devastation, right? Like, was that a tornado? What was that? A hurricane? What was that? I mean, it’s devastation. But you know what? It’s not devastation; it’s actually preparation. This is just right over there.
If you’re at the Littleton campus, they’re building a Costco. They’re-yeah, okay. Now here’s the thing: dude, I don’t want to be starting a rumble here because I know we got Costco people and we got Sam’s Club people, and I think the divide between Costco people and Sam’s Club people is bigger than the divide between Republicans and Democrats, right? So here’s the thing: I’m a little agnostic about Costco versus Sam’s Club, but you know what I am excited about? I saw the site plan. In addition to a Costco, there’s going to be an In-N-Out Burger. Yeah! I did not used to be a big In-N-Out fan, but I have seen the light. I’m excited about that, right?
And so here’s the thing: the devastation isn’t a reason for despair; it’s actually a reason for excitement. But here’s the thing: if you assume, because you’re living in shadows, what you assume is rarely good. And I think God does this in our lives sometimes. Can I just be honest? Sometimes God needs to remove some things from your life to get you ready for what He wants to do in your life.
Sometimes He needs to remove a relationship because He’s got a better relationship, or sometimes He needs to remove something that you’re clinging to because He wants to move you forward into something that He has prepared for you. And when we’re living in fear and it’s keeping us in the shadows, we can look at that work and go, «It’s devastation,» and God goes, «No, it’s preparation.» And it’s not the work of your enemy; it’s the work of a God who loves you more than you can even begin to understand. Sometimes we deal with hard things, and our temptation is to go, «Man, the devil’s really after me today,» right?
And sometimes it’s stupid stuff, honestly. We’re like, «Yeah, I was late because I hit every stoplight. The devil was really after me.» No, he wasn’t. But sometimes it’s pretty profound stuff where, like, I don’t know, my relationships have gotten incredibly difficult, and at work it’s hard. And it just feels like there is something, and it may very well be. It feels like the enemy is coming at you. And my temptation when that happens is to go, «Where are you, God? I need to see you protect me, God. I need to see you prevent this from happening. God, I need to see you send them packing.» I need it, and God goes, «No, you don’t need that as much as you need what I’m allowing you to go through right now' cause I’m building you up. I’m creating strength that you don’t have for what I’m preparing you for that you’re not ready for.» Right?
I’m putting you in the gym. And here’s the problem with working out: you always walk away feeling weaker for a while, but then you get a little bit stronger, right? And every time I walk out of the gym and I feel weak, I have to remember, «But actually, this is a long-term good in my life.» And sometimes when I’m struggling, all I see is the work of the enemy. It’s because I’m letting fear keep me in those shadows, and I’m confusing the work of the enemy for the work of my God. I don’t know who that’s for, but God has not abandoned you. He’s building you. He’s doing something powerful in your life.
And so Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Let’s talk about this other disciple for a second. In the previous verse, John describes him as the disciple Jesus loved. And now he’s just the other disciple, which feels like a significant fallback, right? Who is this guy? Who’s this mystery disciple? There are two major theories among scholars. The first one, a lot of you have probably heard. If you grew up in church, you probably heard this at some point, and that is the theory that this is actually the Apostle John, the guy who wrote the Gospel of John. He is the disciple Jesus loved.
Maybe here’s my struggle with that: it’s a weird way to describe yourself as a Christian. Like, «I’m the one Jesus loves.» I mean, he likes Peter, but he loves me, right? That’s a kind of a weird thing to do. And by the way, in just a second, we’re going to see John make it very clear to us that when these two started running, this other disciple got to the tomb before Peter. So he’s kind of like, «I’m loved more, and I’m faster, and I just want everybody to know it.» It’s kind of an odd thing to do, right?
And here’s the other problem, maybe a little bit more technical. That is that we don’t see this disciple Jesus loved in the first half of the Gospel. We see that language five times in the Bible, but it doesn’t show up in the first half of John’s Gospel. It only appears from Chapter 13 on. But John was there at the beginning of the Gospel. So he was there in all the events that he’s describing in the beginning, but he only talks about the disciple that Jesus loved in the second half. That has led a number of scholars-and I include myself among them-to think, «I’m not sure this is the Apostle John.» And the other major candidate is actually Lazarus, the man that Jesus called back to life and walked out of the tomb.
Part of the reason we think that is because in John Chapter 11, when we have the description of Lazarus being called out of the tomb, the sisters of Lazarus send word to Jesus to say, «Hey, you need to come and do something.» And what they say is, «Lord, the one you love,» and it’s almost exactly the same phrase in Greek, «is sick.» Then it’s only after that resurrection that we see the disciple Jesus loved-that language shows up multiple times. Now, does it matter? Probably not. But I share it because it might explain something of what happens next. It says both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there, but he did not go in.
I’m going to underline those words. He did not go in. He got there first, but then he stopped. And by the way, it says he looked. That’s that same word «bleo» that we got for Mary. It was a surface observation because it couldn’t have been anything else, right? I mean, maybe the sun’s a little farther up, but there’s still a lot of shadows going on. And so he really couldn’t see much. He could notice maybe a couple of things, but not a lot. And the reason he couldn’t see everything was that he stopped. And why did he stop? Fear. He stopped because of fear.
And maybe, maybe it was just superstition, right? I mean, in those days, kind of like today, when somebody dares you to go to the graveyard at night, it doesn’t matter how brave you are; there’s a little tiny child in you that’s like, «not a good idea,» right? Tombs are like that, right? I mean, they certainly had those superstitions. So maybe it was just fear of what everybody’s kind of afraid of: dead bodies, cemeteries, and graves. Or maybe, honestly, maybe he was afraid. Maybe he was afraid Mary was right, and the body of Jesus was gone. Maybe she was right, and they had done this final, even worse, desecration of the man they had loved and looked to for all their hope. Or maybe, maybe he’s afraid she was wrong. Maybe he was afraid she went to the wrong tomb because, you know, women aren’t good with directions, right?
I’m kidding; I’m so kidding. That’s all you’re going to remember now, though, right? But they thought that back then. In fact, it was actually one of the rumors that circulated after the resurrection that the disciples went to the wrong tomb, starting with Mary. Maybe he was afraid that Mary was wrong, and now that they were at the right tomb, he was still in there, and all their hope really was done. Or maybe, maybe if it was Lazarus, the thought of going back into a grave that Jesus had walked him out of was unbearable. Maybe some of you know what that’s like. You put your faith in Jesus. At some point, he walked you out of a grave you didn’t think you were ever getting out of.
And there’s that fear that keeps kind of circulating in your mind. But what if Jesus gives up on me? What if I end up going back into the very thing that I was delivered from? Maybe he just couldn’t bear the thought of going back in there. It didn’t matter what it was. This is what fear does. Fear tells us to stop before we can see. Like if you know the story, by the way, I’m not giving anything away when I tell you what happened here: a resurrection, right? But they couldn’t see it yet. He couldn’t see it yet. He didn’t have enough detail. He didn’t really understand what was going on.
There were all kinds of possibilities for what was happening. I mean, he could see some linens lying there, but they might just be linens lying there because grave robbers had come in and torn the linens off, looking for things of value that had been wrapped in with the body. He could see them lying there, but he didn’t know why. And that’s what fear does. It tells you to stop before you can see.
Fear tells you, «Don’t ask that girl out; she’s just going to say no.» Fear says, «Don’t try out for that team; they’re just going to cut you.» Fear says, «Don’t study for that exam; you’re just going to fail.» Fear says, «Don’t apply to that program; you’re not going to make it in.» Fear says, «Don’t ask if you can have that job because they’re going to give it to somebody else.» Fear says, «Don’t go to that marriage counselor because the marriage can’t be saved.» Fear says, «Don’t go to that addiction group because you are an addict, and nothing’s ever going to change.» So fear says stop before you see. And maybe you know this, but there are 365 places in the Bible where you have the command: do not be afraid. Some version of it: fear not. Do not be afraid.
There’s one for every day of the year. Why? Partly, it’s because living with fear is not living, and partly it’s because God wants to show you something that fear wants to keep you from seeing. Fear wants to stop you before you get to see everything that God wants to show you. He didn’t go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him, and he went straight into the tomb. That is so Peter. He went straight into the tomb, and he saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. By the way, I said Simon Peter went straight in, and that’s so Peter. But honestly, it’s easy to get the impression from this that Peter doesn’t know anything about wrestling with fear, isn’t it?
Like he wasn’t worried about the tomb; he wasn’t worried about what he was going to see. He was like, «I’m getting in there.» But we know that’s not true. We know that Peter understands what it’s like to fight fear. If you know anything of Peter’s story, you know just a few days before this, Jesus told his disciples, «Every one of you is going to fall away. Every one of you is going to run away.» And Peter was like, «I don’t know about the rest of these losers, but I ain’t going anywhere.»
Then, three times after he was arrested, he denied even knowing who Jesus was. It’s so interesting; the reason he had to deny that he knew who Jesus was was because he kept trying to get close, kept trying to stick with Jesus. Then when somebody would ask, he’d be like, «Ah!» Fear would take over, right? So you see in Peter this fight between faith and fear. It’s not like they came for Jesus, he ran and hid, and somebody came and knocked on the door and said, «Did you know him?» and he said, «No, no, no.»
Peter was right there; he was trying to get close. He was trying to be faithful; he was trying to be there. And it was because he was trying to be there that he had to fight fear. It’s funny; I think sometimes people assume that you can’t have faith and have fear. It’s like they’re opposites of each other, right? Like when your faith gets on the teeter-totter, it launches fear away. Has anybody experienced that? Anybody here have a little bit of faith? Come on! Anybody here got at least a little bit of fear? Yeah. There’s a word for you: normal. You’re normal. Because fear and faith, they’re not opposites, okay? But they are opponents, and they’re fighting it out in our lives.
It’s interesting; I think what Peter does here isn’t evidence that he has no fear -we’ve just seen that. But I do think it is evidence that he is learning how to deal with fear. And this is something we say here at Mission Hills a lot: The way we deal with fear is this. We say to fear, «I hear your voice, but you don’t get the final vote. I hear your voice, but you don’t get the final vote in what I’m going to do. I know where you’re calling me to stop, but I’m going to take another step because I don’t want to look back and say that I stopped where God said I should have stepped.» So we say, «Yeah, I hear your voice, but you just don’t get the final vote.»
Here’s the thing: Listen, I’ve been following Jesus for 42 years. I would love to tell you that I am done with fear. I’m not. I still deal with it on a regular basis. I have to fight fear when God tells me to say or do something that a lot of other people aren’t doing. I’m like, «But how are they going to react? And who’s going to be disappointed? And how’s that going to go?» When God says, «Don’t do something that a lot of other people are doing,» I’m like, «Well, how’s that going to go? And what’s the reaction going to be?» And there’s that fear of people being upset with me.
Then there’s just the, «But God, if you really want me to do that, could you show me how it’s going to turn out? Because that’s kind of a scary thing. And what if I do that? What’s it going to look like?» And God’s like, «Just step.» I know what that’s like: 42 years following Jesus. I haven’t even figured out where the volume knob on that thing is, let alone how to change the channel. But I have been learning, and I have learned to a certain extent that I can hear the voice of fear and go, «I hear you; I’m just not going to listen to you. I’m not going to let you determine whether or not I step when you say stop.» That’s what you see in Peter.
And here’s the thing: because he stepped forward when fear said he should have stopped, he saw something that nobody else had seen. In fact, this is the second word for fear; it says he saw. And it’s that theoro word. It means he was able to study something, and it tells us that he was able to study it. He kind of studied, and he saw that the strips of linen were lying there. «Lying» is a good translation, but the original Greek word typically was used for things that were lying somewhere because they had been placed there deliberately. They had different words for when things were scattered on the ground; they were technically lying there, but they didn’t use this word when bodies had fallen. They had a different word that they would use, even though they were lying on the ground, but they used a different word. This word typically meant that something had been placed there deliberately.
So the point is he looked and he saw; he studied, and he realized these are not the linens of a leftover grave robbery. They' re not linens that had been ripped off while people were trying to find things of value before they got found out; they had been kind of carefully placed. And he also saw that the linen cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head was still lying in its place. And that, actually, I don’t like that translation because that’s a different word. It literally says it was rolled up in its place.
And the implication seems to be that when they buried someone, they wrapped a series of linens around their head, and it’s almost like it’s still in that roll. It’s still kind of rolled; it’s still wrapped. It’s like he just slipped out of it, like he came up through it, and they just settled to the ground. It’s weird. It doesn’t make any sense, but he’s only able to see it because he took a step where the other one didn’t. And finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went inside.
Now, I love that. I can tell you something: as a pastor, I have seen people who have walked with Jesus for a long time not go as far in their faith as people who came to Jesus late in life. Because we have this tendency to think that whoever got there first is going to go the farthest, but it’s not true. Sometimes people got there late, and then they went farther, like Peter. But here’s the great news: it doesn’t matter if you’ve been walking with Jesus for a long time or you’re brand new to it. There’s always an opportunity; there’s always a chance with Jesus to take another step.
And you might have been stuck in your faith for a while, and you’re watching people go right past you and see things that you long to see but haven’t seen. But you can be just like this other disciple. He stopped, but then he took a little while, and he saw and believed. They still did not understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. There’s our third word for seeing: harahu. He understood; he saw everything that Peter had seen. He studied it all. And it says he believed, and we’re not exactly sure what he believed.
Some people go, «Well, he believed that the resurrection had happened.» And I kind of doubt that, simply because that last verse says they still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. I don’t think they believed that is what had happened. But they believed something was happening, something strange, something unexpected, maybe even something wonderful. But maybe they were still afraid to believe. Maybe they had a fear of having faith in what Jesus had said about him coming back.
But the point is, because they took that step in and they were able to study it, they believed something that set the stage for something incredible that we’re going to talk about next week. You’ve got to come back next week for that one. For now, what I want you to understand is just this: where we stop determines what we see. That’s for you. That’s God’s word for you today: where you stop determines what you will see. And some of you are not seeing what you long to see, and you are, in fact, not seeing what God longs for you to see because you have stopped when you should have kept going. Where you stop determines what you see.
I think of the Israelites, the first generation who saw the miracles of God that set them free from Egypt. And they got up to the Promised Land, and they stopped. And so they didn’t see a whole lot of things. They didn’t see when the next generation took another step. They didn’t get to see the waters of the Jordan part. Just like the Red Sea had parted, the waters of the Jordan parted as they took their steps into the Promised Land. That generation that stopped didn’t get to see Jericho fall, right?
By the way, Jericho, right? God said, «Hey, walk around it.» And they walked around it. And you know what they saw at the end of that first trip around? They just saw the city. They saw how big the city was, how powerful the opposition was. They didn’t see dust starting to fall. They didn’t see bricks tumble off. They just saw how big. That’s all they saw on that first walk around. And then they had to walk around it again. And you know what they saw the second time? The same city. And they walked around it a third time, a fourth time, a fifth time, and a sixth time.
By the time they got to the seventh time, don’t you think they were like, «What’s the point? Why do we have to take another step?» God, at that next step, right? They saw the walls fall. What if they had stopped? Or the Israelites who lined up, they went up to the battle line with the Philistines gathered on the other side of the field, and then Goliath came out and he challenged them to battle, and they stopped. Actually, they did step. It was just in the other direction.
And then David showed up, and he went to that battle line with him that day and stopped with him that day. Goliath came out, and David was like, «Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.» He took another step in the other direction, stepped toward him, and found a stone. He put it in a sling and saw a giant come down. Where you stop determines what you see. I want to ask you this question today: Where has fear been telling you to stop? Where has fear got you stopped? Some of you know God is speaking to you in this moment. You have no question but the answer to that question. Some of you are not sure.
So let me give you another follow-up question: Where have you not seen what you’re longing to see? I can tell you from my own personal experience that a lot of times, when I don’t see what I have been longing to see-not all the time, but sometimes-it’s because I stopped when I should have stepped. And by the way, I told you I’d share how to handle this; I’d help you figure out how to deal with it. Here’s how you deal with it: When fear says stop, pretend you misunderstood. Pretend you thought it said stop. When the devil says stop, you’re like, «Okay, oh, that’s not what you meant.» He’s like, «No, I said stop.»
Oh, another one, another step. Just pretend you misunderstood. When fear, the enemy, tells you to stop, go! I thought you said step, and I did it. Or is God calling you to take a step so that you can see? He wants to show you more, and it may just be waiting one step past where you have stopped. God, I want to pray for my friends today. We all long to see more of you in our lives; we long to see you do things in our lives and in the world through us. So we ask for your Holy Spirit to move in us and show us where we had stopped when we should have stepped. Speak to each of my friends through your Spirit and give them clarity about that next step.
Lord, I know there are people gathered here today whose next step is the first step into a relationship with you. Maybe they’ve been coming to church or watching online or something like that, and they’ve heard, and maybe they’ve come to understand, maybe even to believe that you were risen and that you love them, but they’re still stopped before the actual relationship, before the experience of all that, before moving it from the head into the experience of the heart.
If there are people here today who have not said yes to faith in Jesus, would you just pray this with me? Just in your heart, have this conversation with God. Say, «God, I carry some shame; I’m weighed down by it. Some of it’s because of what I’ve done; I’ve sinned. But here in the shadows, I look out and see that you love me enough to send Jesus to rescue me. Jesus, thank you for rescuing me. I believe you rose from the dead. Now I see; I understand that I can trust you. So Jesus, I’m going to follow you from here on out. I’m yours. Amen.»