Why One Way, Session 1

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Well, it does seem just a little bit strange that Doug would talk about how much he likes me and stuff, given that over the past 30 hours or so, he has attempted to kill me so many times.
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Some of you know, or have been able to tell just sort of by looking, that Doug and I share a common passion for peddling around in cotton spandex shorts.
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I think he demonstrates a true belief in the sovereignty of God in riding on the streets around here.
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If you can call them streets. We just did, just a few hours ago, a 75 mile bike ride out through Hicksville, Massapequa, down to Jones Beach and back again.
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And I'm going to tell you, some of those roads we were on do not deserve the title road by any stretch of the imagination.
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But over the past 30 hours, we've covered 126 miles and climbed 7 ,000 feet together.
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So if I all of a sudden go, ah, and fall down, you'll know exactly what's going on up here.
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Anyways, it is good to be back. I don't know how many times I've been here to New High Park.
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I just remember that a number of years ago, after a debate we had,
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I think, in Queens, on a Wednesday night, we did a presentation here. And we had a little booth right back there in the foyer, actually.
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Oh, hello. I hate these Britney Spears microphones in this one. But that night, a whole group of Ahmadi Muslims showed up.
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They canceled their mosque service to come here and to listen to the presentation on New Testament Reliability.
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I forget what year that was. I think it was about 2007 -ish, somewhere around there.
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I guess you might remember where Chris is hiding. That's about right, yeah. So it's been a little while, and what's really strange is
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I come here this evening, and Harold Camping is still here. That's the amazing thing. It is just shocking to me.
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I had heard, but obviously misheard, that Harold had gone on to his reward.
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And yet, here he is. It's an amazing thing. Keep an eye on that guy.
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If he starts talking about numbers and stuff in scripture, you know. Turn with me, please, to the
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Gospel of Luke, Chapter 13. Please don't be throwing my books down there.
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I appreciate that. That hurts me. I work so hard on those. Luke, Chapter 13.
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I was telling Doug and Brian on our ride today that I was going to be speaking from this text.
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And I knew they would never guess, given our topic, that this is where I would be starting at.
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But hopefully, by the end of the evening, I will have tied it all together so you can see why it is relevant.
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If there is anyone here this evening who does not know the Gospel of Jesus Christ, has not bowed the knee in repentance and faith to Christ, you can sort of ask yourself the question,
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Do I live my life in such a way that I seek to do so for the honor and glory of Christ?
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Do I trust in Him alone for my salvation? Is He my all in all? And if your answer to those questions is no,
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I pretty much just live for myself, then that would mean that you have not yet bowed the knee in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ.
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If you maybe were raised as a slightly religious person, you go to church once in a blue moon, maybe twice a year, something along those lines, that is not biblical
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Christianity. There is nothing in the Bible about people who are Christians, who are so only a couple of hours a year.
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Christianity is an entire commitment of oneself. It is a dying to this world and a living to Christ.
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And so, obviously, much of what calls itself Christianity in this world, that is focused primarily upon external things, and does not make an impact on a daily basis in people's lives, that is not really
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Christianity. There is a lot of that out there, and if that is what you have seen and maybe have been offended by, well,
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I would invite you to listen to what we have to say this evening. And if you are not familiar with the
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Bible and why we might even start there on a subject like this, fundamentally we believe that the
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Bible was revealed by God, that it has been preserved down through the ages for us, and that, in fact, it is
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God breathed, it is the very breath of God, God speaking. There are many people who call themselves
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Christians and don't hold that view. There are many destructive critics out there. There have always been destructive critics of the
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Bible, and yet the Bible continues to be believed by millions, not out of ignorance, but out of knowledge, not of faith.
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And when we look to the words of Jesus, we believe that Jesus Christ was not simply a moral teacher.
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We do not view him as being on par with a Muhammad or a Buddha or any of the great philosophers of ages past.
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While he said many things that other people had said, when Jesus talked about the golden rule, for example, he was not the first one to come up with that.
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There is no question about that, but from our perspective, the reason for that is that God has made us in such a way that we have, we ourselves have been made in the very image of God.
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He has impressed his image upon us so we have a conscience, we have an understanding of morality.
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In fact, a fascinating study was done just recently that demonstrated that even one -year -old little children, just the age of 12 months, long before they can really communicate and really show any kind of meaningful understanding of complex subjects or anything like that at all, have an innate, inborn sense of justice.
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It's interesting, it's the atheists and the evolutionists that saw this and are trying to come up with explanations for it, and we
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Christians go, nothing surprising there at all. Not only do we see the image of God in that, but also we discover that you never have to teach that little child to say no to mommy and daddy.
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They will do that on their own, given the very short period of time, and we see that as the fallen nature of man.
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And so, when we look to Jesus, we see not just a moral teacher, but according to the
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Bible, he is actually God in human flesh. He has eternally existed as the second person of the Trinity. He entered into human flesh.
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He came to give his life a ransom for many. He said it was necessary to go to Jerusalem and die upon Calvary's tree, that he rise again the third day, and having prophesied all that, he then did all that.
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And when you think about it, of all the moral teachers in the world, the only one who said,
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I'm going to go do this, I'm going to die, and I'm going to rise again, was Jesus Christ. And I think that gives him a leg up on everybody else, as far as the authority of what it is he has to say.
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And so, when you really ask the question, why is it that Christians believe what they believe, and can make such an, in our society today, audacious claim as to say that the teachings of Jesus Christ, the teachings of the
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Christian faith, the biblical faith, are the one truth that is binding upon all people at all times.
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That's an audacious claim today. We live in a society where all religious claims are considered to be equal.
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Everyone's thoughts on religion are considered to be equal to everyone else's thoughts on religion. Now it's funny, we don't think that way about anything else.
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We don't think that way about anything else. If you really think that that's how it always should be, then
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I would like to suggest that if you ever need to have heart surgery done, why don't you just go knock on your neighbor's door and ask him, because his view of heart surgery and things like that is just as valid as anybody else's.
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Now, your next door neighbor might be a plumber, but if you're really committed to this idea of everyone's views are equal to everybody else's views, then that should be okay for you to do.
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But I doubt you're going to do that, and we all know why. We do know that in certain areas, certain people's opinions and thoughts are significantly more relevant and weighty than other people's thoughts.
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But the one great dogma, well there's a number of great dogmas, but our society is creating dogma all the time.
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Absolutely unquestionable things. They're normally taught not in the form of a creed, but through media, through the educational system.
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And one of those dogmas is that when it comes to religion, everyone's opinion is equal because there is no absolute truth.
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There is no objective truth. There is no right and wrong when it comes to the area of religion. That's what's being said.
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They don't like to say it that boldly because then you can challenge that statement. So what you do is you communicate that in another way, and that is that everybody is equal in their opinion on that subject.
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Well, think about it. If nobody knew anything about heart surgery, then everyone else's opinions would be equal because we're all equally ignorant because there is no truth to know.
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And so when the world tells us, well everyone's opinions in religion are equal, what they're saying is no one really knows anything about the field of religion.
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Everything is equal. And so that's what our society tells us. Well obviously from our perspective, if Jesus was who he claimed to be, if there was an empty tomb, if there was the resurrection, if you do have all the fulfilled prophecies in the person of Jesus Christ, prophecies that we can demonstrate were made hundreds of years before Jesus Christ was born, then we must give to him a significant authority when it comes to teaching us what is true and false, especially from God's perspective.
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And so I want you to listen with me to some words that Jesus uttered.
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These words are recorded for us in Luke chapter 13. These words have been preserved for us.
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We can go back and show you manuscripts of the New Testament that go far closer to the original writings than any other work of antiquity.
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And so if you question the preservation of these words, you would have to question the preservation of everything in history, if you're going to be consistent, very few people are.
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But at the beginning of the chapter we read these words. Now on the same occasion there was some present who reported to him about the
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Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed for their sacrifices. And Jesus said to them, do you suppose that these
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Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
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Or do you suppose that those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed, killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem?
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I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
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Now you may again be asking, I don't see the relevance to the question about Jesus being the only way to what
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Jesus says here. But let's think a little bit about what he does say. Here the gospel message is rooted firmly in history.
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We know that there was a man named Pilate. We know that Pilate was not a nice man.
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We know that Pilate was actually a rather evil man and that he ruled with an iron fist.
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And evidently there was an occasion, and it is recorded by others as well, that Pilate, the
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Romans were well known for suppressing rebellion with a vicious hand. That's what crucifixion was all about.
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Crucifixion was a horrible way to die. No Roman citizen could be crucified.
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That was beneath the dignity of any Roman citizen. And so Pilate had mingled their blood with their sacrifices and had profaned the sacrifices in the process.
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And some people were talking to Jesus about this. And evidently they sort of had a theological question.
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Does that mean those people were worse than other people? And Jesus said to them, do you suppose that these
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Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate?
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And so he understood that these people had the idea that if you had a particularly gruesome death or something like that happened to you, that would demonstrate that you were more of a sinner than someone else.
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And Jesus' response to these people was very straightforward. And may I suggest to you that from our perspective today, it was very politically incorrect.
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It was in fact what we would call harsh. Very often truthfulness is harsh from our perspective today.
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He says, I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
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And so he's teaching us that we needn't worry about judging other individuals and trying to discern why it was that they died in the way that they died or received judgment in the way that they received judgment.
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And notice, Jesus is not in any way denying the truth that death is a judgment from God.
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Or that God could have been bringing judgment upon these particular individuals for their sin.
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That's what death is. Death is the punishment of sin. And in fact, it's a necessary punishment.
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Not only is it necessary because God had said long ago that a person who sins shall die.
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But likewise, if you think about it, it would be horrible if sinners didn't die.
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Why? If sinners didn't die, they just keep keeping up to themselves judgment, do they not?
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Is it not actually a mercy from God that we don't live for a thousand years?
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If we're going to stand before the judgment seat, we're going to be judged for what we did in the flesh. Is it better to be judged for 60 or 70 years or for 6 or 700 years?
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When you think about it, the answer is fairly obvious. Jesus does not deny that sin is a judgment from God.
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But what he does deny is that we can look at how someone dies and go, aha, they must have been more of a sinner than someone else.
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But what I want you to focus on is the fact that he says to the people in front of him, and it would have been a mixed group, it wouldn't have been all people from just one group.
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He says, no, I tell you, but unless you repent, you change your attitude, you change your direction, you do an about face and move toward God rather than away from God, you will all likewise perish.
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Evidently, somewhere in these people's minds was an idea of self -righteousness. The idea that since they had not received this kind of punishment, since they were living a good life before God, or at least they thought they were, that they would have life, that they would not perish.
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And then Jesus brings up another incident. And this is an incident not where you had an evil Roman ruler who does something terrible, but instead, or do you suppose that those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem?
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So there was a historical reality that at that time in history, there had been a tower in Siloam that was being built.
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And obviously, building technology was not quite the same then as it is today.
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But then again, it's pretty common each year. You see something about a building that was being built, partially collapsing or completely collapsing, and things like that does in fact happen.
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And a tower in Siloam fell and killed 18 people. And so he asks them, do you think that because this, what looks like to us natural type of error takes place, there's this tragedy, and it just so happens that there were these 18 people that happened to be there.
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Maybe they were some of the workers, maybe it was people passing by, whatever it might be. Do you think that means that they were worse than all the men who live in Jerusalem?
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I tell you, no. And immediately Jesus turns it to them, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
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Now there is obviously a very strong message of repentance in the scripture for every single one of us. And I think all of us need to hear that.
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The Christian life is a life of repentance. Often Christians think of the fact, well I repented of my sins, but we need to recognize that repentance and confession, the very
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Greek term confession means to say the same thing. We live a life of confession. We are agreeing with God constantly about our own sin and agreeing with God constantly about His holiness.
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That marks our lives each and every day when we seek to live in holiness before God.
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That's something that, if you don't understand why Christians do that, the reason is that we believe that God has taken out our old heart and given us a new heart, not the physical blood -pumping organ, but the very center of our being and our person, which was dead set against Him, now has been supernaturally changed to where it now loves
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Him and desires His will and His way in our life. And that's why we respond to things differently.
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We have different sets of desires than those who fulfill their own desires in their lives.
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And so when we have that kind of a change in our life, then confession and repentance is something that we experience each and every day as we recognize areas in our life where we are not walking in such a way that is pleasing to God.
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We're not trying to earn our way to salvation. That's taken care of in Christ alone. But a new creature in Christ does not want to live in such a way as to bring disgrace to the one who has given
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His life for us. And so that's why we want to do this. And so this idea of repentance and confession is very important to us.
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But notice that the message is for everyone. The message is for everyone.
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And that's where I want to bring us to our topic this evening. Jesus sent
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His disciples out to preach the message to all the world, to all of the nations.
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In fact, if you'll turn to the end of the Gospel of Luke, if you're already looking at the
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Gospel of Luke, and if you'll look at the stories at the very end of the chapter, beginning at verse 44 of Luke 24.
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Now He said to them, These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the
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Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then He opened their minds to understand the
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Scriptures. And He said to them, Thus it is written, that Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sin would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem.
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All the nations. Here, Jesus is meeting with His disciples for the very first time after His resurrection.
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He is opening their minds to understand the Scriptures. And what's one of the very first things
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He communicates to them? Not only have the Scriptures testified of Him from the Law of Moses onward.
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They all pointed to Him. He was the fulfillment of these things. But because they now understand this, that repentance for forgiveness of sin to be proclaimed in His name to all the nations.
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Now here's the question. Why? If Christianity is just one of many answers that are acceptable to God, why would
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Jesus say this? Why would the proclamation have to be made to all nations?
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There are certain nations on this planet that have official religions.
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And from the perspective of our world today, we are told that those religions should be honored as being equal to all other religions.
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And that as long as you're just sincere in whatever it is you believe, that that's good enough for God.
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I mean, the whole idea is that God's biggest concern is not
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His glory, it's not His law, it's not His holiness. You never get to talk about things like that in our society any longer.
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Instead it seems that God's biggest thing is, are you just sincere in what you believe?
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Now let me just ask you a question. There is not even a single
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Christian in this room that will claim that even in this day, you have loved
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God perfectly with everything you've said, done, and thought. But if you were really sincere, you would have, right?
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Can any of us claim to be completely, 100 % sincere? Because honestly, if we're sincere, then we're going to make perfect application, right?
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And yet we all fail. And so the world has snuck in and basically said, well the standard is sincerity.
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If you sincerely believe it to be true, then in the field of religion, that's good enough for God.
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Now I simply want to ask a question. Who told us this? What's the epistemological foundation, to use a nice $10
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Latin philosophical term? When did God reveal to us, and to whom did
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He reveal it, that the standard is not what you believe? It's not about what
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God has done, it's all about your level of sincerity. Where'd that come from?
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Again, it's one of those many things that have been communicated to us, and to those to whom we as Christians are speaking, in a subtle way.
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Through the media, through education, through philosophy, through all the things that we expose ourselves to, that is another dogma that has been communicated to us, and we cannot question it, but we need to recognize that it's functioning in the minds of everyone that we as Christians are talking to, and if you're not a
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Christian this evening, it's functioning in your mind as well, and you may actually like that idea. That yes, I just think it's a matter of sincerity,
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I just think it's a matter of if you just believe hard enough. So for a Christian, it's okay if you really believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal
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Son of God, who entered into flesh, and lived a perfect life, and gave His life upon Calvary's tree as a sacrifice for sins, so that anyone who believes in Him might be saved, and He rose again the third day, and He's going to come to judge the living and the dead, but it's okay if you believe that, as long as there's nothing in there that says, and that's the only way to have peace with God, but the problem is that that's what
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Jesus said. And when you think about it, the whole idea that, well, that's good enough for you, but you know, actually the way of contemplation,
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Hindu contemplation and reincarnation, or Buddhist contemplation and emptying of oneself, or maybe the way of going on Hajj and saying the
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Shahada, and living in such a way as to earn God's favor in Islam, or whatever else, but that's good enough for other people.
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Think about it for just a moment. If those other ways are as equally valid in God's sight as the cross, then wasn't
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God incredibly foolish to have Jesus die in such a fashion?
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Think about it for just a moment. Crucifixion was so ignoble, so repulsive, that there were certain writers of that period that would not even use the word, it was almost a dirty word.
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It was so repulsive to see a body that had been whipped with a cat of nine tails, often so badly that bones and innards would be exposed by the whipping, nailed to a cross.
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Now, Jesus experienced a full crucifixion, including what's called the death blow, where the spear is placed into the side and piercing the heart, causing death, the reason being because of the date of the crucifixion.
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He didn't want to risk rebellion amongst the Jews because of the
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Passover, and so he wanted to hasten death, but normally they would be allowed to be up there for a lengthy period of time, so much so that they would become prey to the birds of prey, and it was very common to hear of birds coming and picking at the flesh of living people on those crosses.
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It was such a horrible way of death, and you didn't bleed to death. You would eventually suffocate, because you would become so dehydrated and so exhausted that you could not push yourself up to get breath because you're hanging on your arms, and so you would eventually suffocate, and that's why they broke the legs of the two thieves on the crosses next to Jesus, so they could no longer push themselves up, and hence that would hasten death by suffocation.
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It was a horrible way to die. When you think about when people say that the Apostle Paul made up Christianity, yeah, that makes brilliant sense.
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He wanted to come up with a religion that the world really liked, and so he based it upon a Jewish messiah that the
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Romans killed by crucifixion. Yeah, that's really, really attractive to a lot of people in the ancient world. Not really. Not really.
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But when you think about what crucifixion was, and you think about the fact that Jesus himself was sinless, he fulfilled
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God's law perfectly, he lived the exact life that Adam didn't live, and yet we did that to him.
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We, the human race, could not have such purity, could not have such holiness in our midst, and for all sorts of different reasons.
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You think of the people that were involved. Pilate, political expediency. Herod, he was just nuts. The Jewish leaders, they hated the fact that Jesus exposed their hypocrisy.
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The Roman soldiers, it's killed people right and left anyway. All sorts of different motivations, all illustrating the breadth of human depravity and sin, and yet the whole message of scripture is that was
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God's will, that was God's purpose that was fulfilled upon the cross of Calvary. Now, if that was just to provide one amongst a number of different ways, do you realize what you're saying?
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That the beloved son of God did not have to die on the cross of Calvary.
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There were other ways. You could have just been a sincere follower of line them up, all the religions of man.
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The only way to truthfully and meaningfully make the argument that our society is making today is to say that the cross of Calvary was an insane mistake.
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An insane mistake. Now, I realize that the vast majority of people you're talking to have never thought this.
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They had a philosophy teacher in college or whatever, freshman year, that threw out a few silly arguments and go, oh, okay, that sounds good, and they just thought the whole all roads lead to heaven routine.
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They've never really seriously thought through that to really believe that is actually to show disrespect, not only horrifically toward the cross, when you think about it, pretty much toward all religious belief in total.
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Because I know, Doug mentioned, I've had the opportunity recently, Doug was with me in London.
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One week to the day after the Benghazi consulate attack, Doug and I, we got on the tube in London.
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We got on in London, and we got off in Pakistan. Now, he didn't think the tube went that far.
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The tube, by the way, is an underground in London. But we got on in London, and when we got off, we walked down the station, and it's like, everything's in Arabic, everyone's wearing
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Arabic clothing. We were now in East London, and it was amazing.
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And we had a debate that evening. The debate was on whether Muhammad is prophesied in the Bible. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube if you would like.
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And we had the opportunity of speaking with young Muslims there afterwards, and, oh, it was a tremendous, tremendous evening.
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In reality, when you think about it, what our society is saying about all religions being equal is not only deeply disrespectful toward Christianity, but it's even deeply disrespectful toward the
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Muslims. Because the Muslims don't even believe Jesus died on a cross. The Quran, Surah 4, verse 27, specifically says that he did not.
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Well, if all things are equal, then they're not really right. And the Christians are like, no one's really wrong, because nothing's really right.
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It is a deeply disrespectful attitude. And I suggest to those of you who are looking for some ways of breaking our conversations out of the ruts that very frequently the secularization of our society gets us into, and that's exactly what's happening.
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Europe's ahead of us. We're catching up fast.
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But we are really living now in the first generation of 20 -some -odd -year -olds now who have been raised by thorough secularists themselves.
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And that's why we're seeing the massive shift in ethics and morals in our society. And it's only going to accelerate.
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It's only going to accelerate. And so very often we feel constrained and shoved into this narrow field of conversation because we don't know how to change the conversation and start it in such a way as to get the thought process going in the mind of the person we're talking to.
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But I'm trying to give you some practical hints as to how you might do that, and one way you might do that is by pointing out that the attitude that someone has when they, in essence, say all religions are equal, all roads lead to heaven, so on and so forth, is a fundamentally, deeply disrespectful attitude toward every religious belief that says otherwise.
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Now, sure, there are some religious beliefs that are so squishy and so nebulous and fuzzy and cloudy, or whatever other terms you might want to use, that that's basically what they say.
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That, yeah, sure, whatever anybody believes is fine, but there really aren't all that many people that seriously believe that.
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I mean, those universalist Unitarian churches, you ever gone and visited them? You know, there's four people in the congregation, median age 72.
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You know, they're just not really making a big impact in the world, shall we say. And so, when someone in a conversation with me starts off with that perspective,
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I want to try to communicate to them in such a way as to immediately get them to begin to examine the foundations of what they are assuming is true.
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All of us need to start thinking this way. We need to look at the presuppositions, the beginning assumptions that we have and that the person we're speaking to has.
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If we don't think this way, we're never really going to be able to get past square one. We're never really going to be able to get to getting them to think through what it is they're saying, because the error in what they're saying is in their assumptions.
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And very rarely, certainly not in our society and education today. In much of education today, we are teaching people not how to think, but what to think.
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There's a vast difference between the two. And we, as believers, need to be able to break through that by causing people to think about why they're assuming the things that they're assuming.
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And that requires us to do a lot of thinking before the conversation begins. We need to be doing some preparation.
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We need to know why we believe what we believe and how the Christian faith as a whole fits together.
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And this is something I know I've spoken on before, maybe not here, but certainly on Long Island over the years.
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We, as believers, every single one of us is called to be an apologist today.
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We are each called to give an answer for the hope that lies within us. Given the opposition of the society to what we believe, we don't have any choice about this anymore.
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We can't just rely upon quote -unquote apologists, who knows how long some of us will even have access to a larger audience and have the freedom to say the things that we say now.
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We see those freedoms under attack in our culture at an alarming speed this is taking place.
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And so you, as an individual, need to recognize the danger of holding a theology where you have your doctrine of God here, your doctrine of Jesus here, your doctrine of the
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Bible, church, end times, salvation, et cetera, et cetera, and they're all in little chicken coops.
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They're all separated from one another and they never get close enough for you to find out how they're all related. The beauty of the
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Christian faith is its harmony and its unity. And if you can get a hold of that, if you can see how, for example, the gospel is
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Trinitarian, the gospel is rooted in the decree of the
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Father, the accomplishment of the Son, the application of the Spirit, that it's a Trinitarian gospel.
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When you can see how all of this is related together, that the gospel gives rise to the church, all of this is related to the coming of Christ, all of this is related to the holiness of the individual, it all is a beautiful tapestry of divine truth.
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Once you see how it all hangs together, then when you're talking with somebody else and you hear them and you hear their thought process, you can start to realize, oh,
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I see, they have assumed this, I need to bring that out. And it's not just you come out and go, you've assumed this, bam, hit it with a hammer.
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Instead, you realize, okay, they've assumed this, how can I get them to see that they've assumed this and that they need to question this?
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So, that brings us back to, well, if you say all these religious faiths are the same, then do you realize that you are, in essence, saying that everyone who has held to Islam, everyone who has held to Buddhism and Hinduism, all the various thousands of forms of Hinduism, and to obviously all the
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Christians down through the ages who have proclaimed Jesus Christ as the only savior of the sinners, that these individuals were not only wrong, but they were promoting something directly opposite to what
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God would have us to believe, that, in essence, what you're saying is all these religions at their heart should not have our respect.
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A lot of people today sort of back off at that point and go, well, I didn't mean to put it that way,
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I didn't mean to offend. But what you've done is you've got them to start thinking, why are you assuming certain things?
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Which brings us back to what Jesus was saying. It used to be quoting Jesus for almost anybody in our society would bring a fair amount of respect.
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And even today, though the number of people willing to do this is growing larger and larger, but even today, most people are loathe to say something directly nasty about Jesus Christ.
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It's becoming more common, but still. What did
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Jesus teach? Did Jesus teach that he was one way amongst many ways? Now, I know most of you have probably heard
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John 14, verse 6. I haven't quoted it yet this evening. One of the main reasons is it's because it's the first verse that almost anybody does quote.
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And hence, a lot of people have heard it many times and sort of have an emotional reaction to it.
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They may have heard certain skeptics and unbelievers say that, well, we don't know what
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Jesus said in John is accurate and so on and so forth. I haven't gone to John 14, verse 6. I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the
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Father but by me. But that is part of what Jesus taught. But the fact is, that's simply consistent with everything else
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Jesus taught. And here's an example of it. Here in the Gospel of Luke, unless you repent, you all likewise will perish.
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Who does he say that to? Is that limited? Is that just to Jews? Where are the texts that say, no,
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I only mean this for Jews. I don't mean this for Buddhists. I don't mean this for pagans.
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I don't mean this for Muslims, though there weren't any at that time. He does not limit anything.
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The only limitation is that those words are addressed to everyone who has need to do what? Repent. The reality is, if every one of us looks in our own heart, in our own mind, we know that every one of us has need to repent.
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And so it's a universal message. And if it wasn't clear from Luke chapter 13, you go to Luke chapter 24, and you are to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name to all the nations.
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Don't you think Jesus knew that that meant that you were going to be proclaiming the need for repentance and forgiveness in his name, in the name of Jesus, in nations that are filled with other religions?
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So if I go and fulfill Jesus' command in Indonesia today, the largest
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Muslim nation on the planet, is that not a fulfillment of Jesus' command?
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What if I go to Japan? What if I go to certain areas in India?
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And I fulfill this commandment that Jesus gives to his apostles, and it's one of the very first things he says to them after his resurrection from the dead.
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He has conquered death itself. He is going to very soon be exalted to the right hand of the
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Father in heaven. And one of the first things he proclaims is that the scriptures have testified of me and in light of that, this is what the gospel is and is to be proclaimed in all the world.
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What that means, obviously, is that this one who defeated death did not believe there were many ways to heaven.
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He believed that in his defeat of death, God, the triune
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God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit had acted absolutely decisively in history in a way that no one else ever did and no one else ever would.
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So think with me for just a moment. If the tomb was empty, if the tomb was empty, could anyone ever seriously argue that there must be other ways of peace with God?
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Think that through. Well, why would that mean that there would be only one way?
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Because God has acted decisively in this one way, in this one radical way.
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I mean, you need to understand. We Christians understand. If you're here, you're not a believer.
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We understand that what we're saying is amazing. We are saying that the one who created all things entered into his own creation as a man who lived about 2 ,000 years ago, not in the center of Roman civilization or Greek culture, but in Israel.
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And he didn't gather an army around himself. He gathered 12 disciples, one of whom was the son of perdition who betrayed him.
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And what did he do? Well, he taught, and he illustrated God's love, and he healed, and then he started telling his disciples,
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I must go to Jerusalem, and I must die, and I must be buried, and I must rise again the third day.
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Yes, we are saying the creator of heaven and earth voluntarily gave himself as a sacrifice.
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If that is true, how could there be any other way to have peace with God?
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If God has provided the perfect way, if eternal life is found only in being in Christ Jesus, if Jesus' message was believe in me, believe in me, he who believes in me has eternal life, if that was his message, there is no place of neutrality for other religions to try to sneak in.
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Because think about it, Jesus does not leave you the option of neutrality. You might be sitting here today, what do you mean?
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I don't have to make a decision about it. Yes you do. You have to do that tonight.
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You didn't realize that when you walked in here, did you? Sorry. We should have put some notes up, some signs up or something.
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But you have to make a decision about Christ. Say, why? Why me? Because what we are saying is, this
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Jesus made you. Talk about your creator. I remember, and Doug saw this, did a debate back
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I think in 2008 in London, at a Baptist church just a couple stops down the tube from where one of the 7 -7 bombings had taken place.
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Doug will remember that the audience naturally divided between the
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Christians and the Muslims. The Muslims sat over on this side, from my perspective, and the Christians sat over on this side.
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And I was debating a fairly aggressive Muslim that I've actually got to know better in the years since then by Adnan Rashid.
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And Adnan had come out with a swingin', shall we say, in his opening statement.
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And now it was my turn. There were people sitting over here and all you could see was this. All you could see of them was this.
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This full hijab, all you could see were their eyes. And I got up, and basically
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I didn't even look at the Christians. Sorry about that, I hope you were never offended by that Doug. I don't feel like anyone over there minded what
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I did. I just turned to the Muslims. And I started preaching to them. And I basically said to them, look, if what the
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New Testament says about Jesus is true, you cannot view Jesus as a mere basul, as a mere prophet.
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The scripture says he created all things in heaven and earth, visible, invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, authorities, all things created by him, for him, invisible, for all things in him, all things hold together.
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That means every breath of your mouth, every beat of your heart comes from his hand. You cannot be neutral about him.
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You cannot dismiss him as a mere prophet. You must deal with him because he holds your life in his hand.
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They hadn't heard that kind of message before. And that's a shame. That's a shame,
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I'll be honest with you. The Muslims actually respect a clear, powerful presentation of who
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Jesus really is. That Jesus with the lamb in his arms, outside the novelist's door, helplessly knocking, is not really what they need to hear about.
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The Jesus who rules the nations with a rod of iron, they need to hear about that because that gives them the proper background to understand the great condescension and love that he showed on Calvary's cross.
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But when you just jump to that and skip the other part, only give a partial view of who Jesus is, it doesn't work. Doesn't work.
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And just as I told them that they could not be neutral, I say to you this evening, you cannot be neutral. Jesus Christ is
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Lord of all. If he made all things, he is your
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Lord. Either you are in rebellion against his Lordship, or you're in submission to his
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Lordship, there is no neutral ground between those two places. There isn't.
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You must deal with it. You must deal with an empty tomb. You must deal with fulfilled prophecy.
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You must deal with preserved scripture. Because he calls you to.
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He puts you in that position out of love. He puts you in that position not to torture you, but to bring honor and glory to himself, and to do what's best for you.
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You need to answer the question. If you have embraced the idea that, well, it's just all a matter of personal opinion, how does that really work?
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Do you really think God created you to be a communicating, thinking individual, and yet he left you with no guidance, and no direction other than your feelings?
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Do you really think that a guide, and that your set of feelings, which can be deeply impacted by a pepperoni pizza, is what
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God has given you to know about eternity? No. He has revealed his truth.
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He has given us clear direction and understanding. And he has revealed that he has acted decisively in the person of Jesus Christ, and that as he was exalted to the right hand of the
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Father in heaven, he now calls upon every human being around this world.
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And you do realize that we are sitting in a building, in a land far away.
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I'm preaching a language that did not exist in the days of Jesus. Jesus promised,
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I will build my church. You are sitting in fulfilled prophecy.
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So here we are, and God has brought you to this place to make you deal with him, and to recognize who you are, and what he has done.
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Now, to the Christians in the audience, you as an individual must learn to love the gospel so much that you know it intimately.
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And so when you hear any expression of unbelief, or any even of the underlying principles of that gospel, you'll recognize it, and that will give you the guidance by the
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Holy Spirit to know how to expose that error in the thinking of the person you're speaking to.
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Yes, what I'm saying to you is that each one of you, housewives, grandmothers, grandfathers, businessmen,
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I don't care what it is you do, God's calling on us. He's put us in a society filled with unbelief.
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We are called to be salt and light. The question is, will we obey? Will we put aside all the worldly pursuits that eat up every moment of our time and honor him?
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I know it was easier for my grandparents. My grandparents didn't have the challenges we have today.
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When they quoted the Bible, people said, oh, I didn't know that. That's not how it works, that you quote the
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Bible, they go, really? So that means we do need to do more work.
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We do need to be better prepared. But we do so for his honor and glory, we do it out of love.
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Out of love for him, first and foremost. Out of love for his truth, his gospel, his church.
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Out of love for people. The world needs
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Christians who are confident of their faith and understand that this message of the gospel, it meets the needs of every man, woman, and child this entire time.
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Tomorrow, Lord willing, Sunday school hour, we are going to remind ourselves of what the scripture teaches about this incredible authority of Jesus, who he really is.
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In the Sunday morning service, we're going to be looking at one of those amazing texts in scripture that will help us to understand the universal need of man and the many manifestations of the rebellion that man experiences and engages in.
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In the evening, we'll have the opportunity of dialoguing and talking about specific of the challenges we face today.
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And so I hope the Lord will bless our time together. But this evening, this evening
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I want to especially make sure, if there's anyone here this evening, that is uncertain, does not know that you understand that tonight,
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Lord Jesus places before you by the authority of his word, his choice, remain in your rebellion because you're in rebellion right now.
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Or bow the knee in repentance and faith to the one who has always proven himself to be a perfect savior of every single individual who has ever turned to him and said,
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Lord, save me. Lord, I cannot save myself.
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You cannot ignore, you cannot put off the choices before you.
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Jesus Christ is Lord. All of us here this evening who have bowed the knee before him testify to you that it's true.
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Each one of us could give testimony to you of what he has meant to us and what he has done in our lives. But the ultimate authority is the fact that his word reveals who he is.
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His word has been presented to you this evening. I pray that by God's grace, you this evening will have dealings with him.
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I'm sure that if you would like to talk with somebody about that, Pastor Doug and the other folks at the church, be down the front here,
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I'd be happy to talk with you. I want to make sure that everyone hears Jesus Christ is
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Lord. He was crucified, buried, and rose again so that anyone who recognizes and confesses that he is
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Lord and that by that sacrificial act he has borne in his body the penalty due to my sin so that I might have the perfect righteousness that was his.
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The gospel of Jesus Christ, the very power of God, the salvation. If you recognize your needs, the spirit of God is working with you.
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I hope and pray that you will make confession even this evening because the spirit of God is calling you to do that.
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Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that we have the freedom in this land yet to speak as we have spoken this evening.
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We pray that you would continue that freedom. We know that we do not deserve it and even if you were to withdraw it, we are to be faithful.
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We are called to be salt and light in this world. But Lord, as we have opportunity of being used by you as salt and light in this world, we would ask that you would help us.
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That you would give us wisdom. You would give us insight. That we would be instruments in your hand.
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That we would know your word and that we would be sensitive to your spirit so that we might speak with those around us and be lights to them.
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That we would not be stumbling blocks. That we would be used of you to present your truth and to see the power of the gospel go through.
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Lord, we pray for the opportunities in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our places of work, education, whatever it might be.
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That you would use us. You would find us to be faithful. Give us these opportunities. Once again we thank you for the gospel.
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Lord, we confess there are many times things get in the way of our passion for that gospel. We would ask forgiveness for that.
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We would ask that we would each and every day find our true joy of the light. Recognizing that we have peace with you because of what someone else has done in our behalf.
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May we value that about anything else this world has done. May we rejoice that there is one who is before the very throne of God.
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Who stands as a lamb slain. And yet stands as the conquering king.
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And that we live in him. We thank you for that. We love you. We pray in Christ's name.