Was Jesus a Nice Guy?

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. This is your daily opportunity to study the Bible right with your morning coffee. Again, I want to thank you for watching.

We're going to be in Luke chapter 11. If you want to open up your Bible, turn to Luke chapter 11, you can go ahead and find your way to verse 37. Now, while you're doing that, I want to explain something about this week particularly.

This is camp week for me. I'm going to be leading a group of young people in a camp at our church. We do a day camp one time during the summer, and this is going to be a busy week. So I'm going to try to limit the time that I spend doing Coffee with a Calvinist every day.

I'm going to try to limit these videos to five or six minutes. They normally, they've been going kind of long, 11, 12 minutes. I'm going to try to limit these a little shorter just to cut down on preparation time, but hopefully they'll still be useful to you.

Also, because it's camp week, I'm going to be working with kids in our karate club. It's a karate camp. I'm wearing my favorite superhero t-shirt, and I have a sort of a cartoonish background for us.

So this is just a reminder of what's going on this week. So in Luke chapter 11, verse 37, we answer a very important question. This question is something that I think is important to ask, and people sometimes will answer it differently.

Was Jesus a Nice Guy?

I hope you don't get offended by it, but this is the question. Was Jesus a nice guy? And I only ask that because not too long ago, I had someone sort of try to call me out, and they were saying, well, you're not being nice, and Jesus was nice.

Your words are too rough. They're too harsh, and your language is not the type of loving language and nice and kind language that Jesus would have used. And they went as far as to say Jesus never addressed anyone without doing so in a loving way.

And while I do agree to an extent, I think we have to define what we mean by kindness and love, because when you look at verse 37, this is what it says. It says, while Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him.

So he went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him, now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.

You fools, did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But you give alms as those that are... I think this is wrong, but give as alms those things that are within and behold everything is clean for you.

Sorry, my screen messed up and it was hard for me to see. Verse 42, but woe to you Pharisees for you tithe mint and rue and every herb and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.

Woe to you Pharisees for you love the best seats in the synagogue and greetings in the marketplaces. Woe to you for you are like unmarked graves. People walk over them without knowing them. And one of the lawyers answered him and said, teacher, in saying these things, you insult us also.

And he said, woe to you lawyers also for you load people with burdens hard to bear and you yourselves do not touch those burdens with one of your fingers. So what am I getting out here? What am I looking at with this passage?

Judgment, Church Discipline, and the Need to Rebuke

Well, the thing I want to focus on is one, Jesus was not unwilling to declare a judgment where a judgment was needed. And someone might say, well, you're not Jesus. You shouldn't be judging. Jesus says, judge not lest ye be judged.

And that passage, which is Matthew 7, 1 is often misused because Jesus does go on to explain how judgment is supposed to happen. We're not supposed to judge hypocritically, but we are to make judgments.

Romans chapter, or rather 1 Corinthians chapter 5, very clear, especially within the church, judgment calls must be made, especially in regard to those who are living in sin, who are living in outright rebellion against God.

The church has to be able to come together and exercise some form of discipline in that situation. And if judgment was never allowed, if judgment was always wrong, then we couldn't ever have anything like church discipline, or we would never be able to rebuke anyone.

The Bible says the very purpose of preaching is to correct, and to rebuke, and to train in righteousness. That's why we preach the Bible. 2 Timothy 3, 16 tells us the Bible was written for that purpose, to rebuke, and correct, and all those things.

And the very purpose of preaching is to do that. And so the idea that we're never ever to use any language that would be conceived or perceived as harsh, I think misunderstands Jesus, and misunderstands our calling as believers.

Now we are not to be jerks. We are not to be always harsh. We are not to be people who are mean for the sake of meanness. We are to be gracious and loving, and we are to pepper our words with grace, and love, and encouragement.

But there are times where we have to speak the truth in love, and sometimes the truth is what someone does not want to hear. False teachers don't want to hear that they're false teachers. Just recently there was a video of Todd White, a very well-known false teacher, whose friend tried to encourage him to watch the movie American Gospel, which talks about him as a false teacher.

And Todd White says, oh this man, he was coming at me, and I just thanked him for increasing my faith because he's persecuting me. No, he's not persecuting you. He's loving you. He's not persecuting you, Todd White.

He's loving you because you are a false teacher. And when this man brought you that video, he was trying to say you need to see yourself the way that real Christians see you. Because those people who are following you, who are clapping, who are laughing, who are engaging in your nonsense, they are twice as deceived as you are.

But you are deceived, and you're a deceiver. You're a dangerous man, Todd White. And I don't feel one iota of guilt or badness in saying that because it's true. Now, should we speak the truth in love?

Yes. Todd, you'll never watch this. But if you do watch this, I pray that you would repent because I would love to see you as a brother in Christ. But right now you are a son of the devil, and you're preaching devilish false doctrine.

You're performing magic tricks. I'm a person who did magic as a profession in my younger life. I actually worked as a street magician. And I know what you're doing when you go out and make people's legs grow.

That is false teaching. That is absolutely ungodly. And I would say, woe to you, Todd White, false teacher, for you are fooling people into believing that you have a power from God that you don't have.

You understand? And somebody said, well, Keith, you're so unkind. All I did was the same thing Jesus did. Jesus saw the false teachers, the legalists, the lawyers, the Pharisees, and he said, woe to you.

Now again, I have to be very careful because I know I'm not Jesus. And I have to remember that before I try to remove a speck from my brother's eye, I have to make sure I've taken the log out of my own eye when it comes to whatever the issue is.

But that doesn't mean I can't speak out. That doesn't mean I shouldn't speak out. I should speak out. And we should remember this. Jesus was nice. He was kind. He was loving. But kindness is not what the modern understanding of kindness is.

And the modern understanding of kindness is that you never, ever tell someone they're wrong. And that's wrong. Because if we never correct, if we never use the Word of God as the tool to correct, then we're not doing what we're supposed to do.

Repentance, Truth in Love, and the Real Kindness of Jesus

We should call centers to repentance. Somebody says, oh, that's desperately, desperately harsh. No, that's the gospel. Call centers to repentance. Repentance towards God and faith in Jesus Christ. That's our job.

Was Jesus kind and loving? Yes. What was his first words when he went to preach? Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. I hope this has been helpful. Don't ever think that this is a license to be a jerk.

It's not. I'm not trying to give you a license to be a jerk. But what I am saying is we have to be able to speak the truth and love. Our society has become so sensitive and so willing to write people off because they're willing to speak the truth.

Bless those who come and speak the truth to you. Don't curse them. Don't be angry with them. Be thankful that someone loves you enough to tell you the truth. Again, I appreciate you for watching today.

I hope that you have enjoyed this episode of Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. I would invite you and encourage you to please like, comment, share, and subscribe to our videos, and you'll receive a new one every weekday at 6 30 a .m.

I didn't meet my time of five minutes. I apologize for going over, but I got a little excited. So I hope you enjoyed the episode, and I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. May God bless you.