Jesus had a simple message.

Jesus had a pretty simple message.

"There is only One God."

"He made you, loves you, has a purpose for you which involves worshipping Him and glorifying Him in what you were made to do."

"You can't experience any of that because of the sin problem in your being."

"Only I can free you from that sin problem.  I am that One true God."

"You need to make a personal response to this offer that involves repentance."

Last week we looked at Mark 1:16 - 2:12 and noticed that while Jesus is out proclaiming His Word, there are at least three hurdles that always seem to come against His simple message.

The first is the Enemie's attempts to distract and control the conversation.  We see that a lot these days.  Opponents or resistors of the Gospel want to distract from the simple message by changing the focus with distracting and misleading questions.  It happened to Jesus too.  The solution:  Steal back the focus by directing with the right questions and keep control of the conversation.  You can always do this with respect and recognition of the other issues brought up, to be addressed later.

The second is the immaturity of believers who want to focus on the works over the message.  There will always be those who get excited about how God does what He does and will try to highlight the work over the message.  This often leads to some type of standard or subjective process that is presented as a mandatory experience.  It happened to Jesus too.  The Solution:  Let the Bible interpret experience and point back to the message.  Experiences are real, obviously!  But sometimes, we can interpret those experiences the wrong way - which leads to a distortion or manipulation of the Masters original message.  Keep it simple.  Stick with what He said.

The third hurdle is simply the work of "elite" christians who attempt to make grace and forgiveness something that is dispensed through their methods or their disciplined traditions.  Jesus encountered this almost every step of His journey.  His solution was His message.  His mode of delivery was one of unprecedented authority wrapped in a package of unprecedented humility.

It is amazing to note that when we look for spiritual leaders in this day and age, we are always looking for those who look like the worlds best business leaders.  I truly wonder if most churches would hire Jesus today.  I wonder what kind of hurdles He would experience if He came into my local Church fellowship?   I wonder what hurdles He would experience if He came to yours.

Jesus had a pretty simple message.  Question is, do we simply want Jesus and His message?

With you for His glory,

Why is Jesus the Only Way?

Why is Jesus the Only Way?

Christianity is unique from every other attempted solution in history for the problem of sin.  No matter what religious system you choose in the world, religion simply provides a standardized system of efforts one must accomplish in order to achieve goodness.  The appeal in such philosophies is the perception that growing in self-control, self-discipline, and personal sacrifice will make someone a better person.  

Anyone who has tried knows it isn't permanent, it isn't satisfying, and it doesn't solve the greatest problem, which is restoring our relationship with God despite our eventual inability to be perfect all the time.

Why Jesus?

God is perfect and He is not going to lower His standards for himself or anything He originally created perfect simply because we choose to rebel against such an idea.

In order to make things right between us and God, we needed a sacrifice that would cover our sinful, broken rebellion against God's soveriegnty in our lives.

That's not a new concept!  Every religion in the world incorporates some kind of sacrifice, whether it's animals, personal defamation and denial, or even bodily harm.  What makes God's requirement different is that it had to fulfill two requirements.  Of all the attempted solutions the world has ever offered, this is the only one that even makes sense.  Those two requirements were this. 

1.  It had to be a sacrifice that appropriately represented human beings (So it had to be human.  Sacrificing a cow isn't an acceptable substitute for the crowning jewel of God's creative work - mankind).

2.  It had to be a sacrifice that was powerful enough to pay the debt of, not just one human, but all humans who would ever be (There's only one thing in all of the Universe that is powerful enough for that - God Himself).

So God's solution to the problem involved the necesitty of a Human and Himself somehow combined into one thing, so that it could be sacrificed.  Enter Jesus, the God-Man.  Jesus has always been a part of the Trinity, so He is God - and powerful enough to be a sacrifice for every created thing.  But, he took on human flesh and became an acceptable sacrifice for us when he chose to enter the Human race via the womb of a Human mother.  There is no other sacrifice that can satisfy those two requirements.  Jesus is the only way to get right with God.

Why His Life, Death, and Resurrection?

Jesus lived a perfect life.  Would a non-perfect life be an acceptable sacrifice to God?  Only Jesus was able to accomplish such a feat.  No one else can... and in our hearts, even the most avid opponent to that claim knows it is true.  Just ask them if they have ever made a mistake or thought something evil.  

Jesus died the perfect Sacrifice.  Even if someone could have lived a perfect life, their sacrifice would only be good enough for one other person, becuase their value, their life was only that of a created being. Jesus was not created.  He is the Creator!  He is eternal.  His death was the perfect sacrifice in type, value and power.

Jesus came back to life.  It is historically verified.  His death alone would have paid our sin debt, but it is His resurection that secures for us all the blessings which the Bible tells us are ours.  We can have peace with God.  He promises us adoption as Children of God our Father.  He will NEVER go back on any promise.  We can have new life, with renewed minds, and new hearts.  We can experience joy no matter what our circumstances.  We will live forever in a new, perfect world with Him in a very literal and specific Kingdom!  and more...

It boils down to this:

1.  God loves you and has a purpose for your life.

2.  You are broken in your sin and cannot experience His love or realize the purpose you were created for.

3.  Jesus overcame that problem through His death and resurection as the only way to be reconciled to God.

4.  But it requires a personal response.  

It doesn't matter if you have gone to church your whole life, or if your grand-dad build the Church building.  It doesn't matter how much scripture you can quote from memory.  If you havn't repented of your rebellious heart and surrendered your life to Him, you are not yet reconciled to God.  

Know He loves you and offers you the very best life you can have.  He has a purpose for you no matter where you have been or how long you have been there.

It is NEVER TOO LATE.

With you for His glory,

 

Sharing the Gospel!

I realized over the last couple of weeks, while attempting my part in defending the Gospel message from passive aggressive attacks on it's non-universality, that I wasn't actively sharing my faith in any productive way.  I began to pray about this and asked for God to show me something that would  get away from needless argument and fruitless discussions, and get me back to the fruitful work of sharing and discipleship.

In God's providence, a friend shared a pamphlet with me and I really enjoyed it.

Several years ago, RBC published a pamphlet titled How Can I Share My Faith Without An Argument?  It is a very good piece of literature written by a man named Bill Fay, who shares an incredible testimony at the beginning of the piece.  One of the main reasons it really resonated with me is that Bill begins with the premise that we don't "win" souls for Christ.  We are commanded to share, and the Holy Spirit is responsible for all of the work.  That means I don't have to convince, or push, or engage unwilling participants (the very premise that recent opponents of the traditional gospel build their case on).  Amen.

Secondly, Bill delivers an approach using questions and a very simple technique which are all non-threatening and reliant on Scripture speaking to the individual rather than you convincing the individual of anything.

That being said, I still feel uncomfortable using language like "invite Jesus into your heart", and "all you have to do is accept" (John 6:44 and 6:63,65).  In order to satisfy my own conscience therefore, I found I could slightly tweak some wording and substitute the last verse, and come to the same conclusion.

I have provided the link to the original PDF of RBC's literature below, as well as my proposed amended material immediately following.  You may be an excellent evangelist and this resource may not be useful to you, but I have found that the recent Rob Bell and N.T. Wright discussions have been a catalyst to get rid of any negative, selfish aspect of my own approach to sharing the Gospel.  If you find yourself in a similar boat, please give these materials a good look and hopefully they may encourage you and equip you with another tool to prepare for "the good works the Lord has prepared for you in advance" (Ephesians 2:10).  God Bless.

Bill Fay's How Can I Share My Faith Without An Argument?
 http://web001.rbc.org/pdf/discovery-series/how-can-i-share-my-faith-without-an-argument.pdf


Tony's Amendment:

I cannot win anyone to Christ.  I can only share.

Do you have any spiritual beliefs?

What do you believe about Jesus?

Do you believe in Heaven and Hell?

If you were to die right now, where would you go?

If anything you believed was wrong, would you want to know?

Romans 3:23

What does it say to you?

Is there anyone excluded?

Romans 6:23

What does it say to you?

"Notice I circled the word "sin".  It reminds me that it doesn't need to be a plurality of sins.  For one single sin, God will justly sentence me to Hell.

Notice I also underlined the Word "in".  That reminds me that salvation isn't in a religion of any type but only in the person of Jesus, meaning I have to somehow have something to do with Him personally, not philosophically."

John 3:3

"The smartest teacher in Israel came up to Jesus in this story and basically asked Jesus to lay it all out on the line, 'What was He ultimately all about?'  Jesus says it comes down to being "born again".  This man, Nicodemus, is completely unprepared for this.  He sarcastically asks Jesus, "How can I go back inside my mothers womb?"  Jesus says He is talking about a spiritual rebirth.  He then goes on to tell the man that spiritual rebirth can only come to a man one way.  (He says He has to wash the person in the Word and baptize with the Spirit; then shows how the Old Testament pointed to this truth all along, but let's skip all the dialogue and see where He sums it up in a single sentence.)

John 14:6

What does it say to you?

Is there any other way?

Romans 10:9-11

What does it say?

"Does it include murderers, child abusers, prostitutes, etc.?

Now look at this check. (I use a real personal check here, already inserted into this page of my Bible and made out for a million dollars) You just finished reading Romans 6:23 a few verses back where it said that the payment for sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal Life in Jesus."

"If I tell you that this is a free gift for you, what are you going to do?"  (take it)  (Focus on the simplicity of the act, not the resistable or irresistable nature of "accepting" it) "It's that simple."

1 John 1:9

What does it say?

Is there any exception to the promise?

Are you a sinner?

Is there forgiveness available for your sins?

Are you willing to surrender your life to Christ?

Are you ready to respond to God's call?

Success is acting out my faith, sharing the gospel, and trusting God for the results.

With you for His glory