“Connecting Through Apologetics” – 1 Peter 3:15

Ladies, gentlemen, all gathered here and all watching by video, I want to encourage you today. How many of us need encouragement in these crazy days? I want to encourage you that are trying to keep from catching a virus, don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be fine.

For those of you that might already have the virus, I want you to know it’s going to be okay. Don’t worry. It’s all going to be fine.

For those of you facing job loss, don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be fine.

For those of you worried about your stock market portfolio, don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be fine.

For those of you with cancer today, don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be fine.

For those that are in prison, don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be fine.

For those that are facing divorce, don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be fine.

Lastly, if you have lived a sinful life and have no relationship with God, don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be fine.

So, there. Don’t you feel better now? Surely you do because I just told you it was all going to be okay, right? Why should you worry? Todd just reassured you. Or does it feel hollow and useless, like empty words said just to make you feel better but not based on truth?

Have you ever been watching a movie and some guy gets shot really bad? He falls over, blood and guts are everywhere and one of his buddies runs over and looks at his wounds and knowing full well that this guy is circling the drain and about to die, he says, “Don’t worry, Bill. You’re gonna be just fine. It’s okay.” Why do they say that? Because they want to make them feel better, if only for a moment. That’s admirable. I appreciate that.

Years ago, I worked for an auto parts store and a dolly full of car batteries fell on my finger and it smashed my finger so bad, it split it open on the side. It was, as you can imagine, horribly painful. Well, my co-worker threw me a rag and immediately took me to the ER which I appreciated. But the whole way there he kept telling me how he saw the whole thing and how gross it was to him.

“Dude! I saw it! Your finger just busted open like a plum! It didn’t cut your finger. It busted it open. Blood went everywhere. Did you see it? Wow! It busted it wide open…” And he just kept on and on until I was about to throw up just listening to him. He wasn’t helping anything. It wasn’t until I got to the hospital and the doctor said, “Okay, that’s bad but here’s what I’m going to do to make it better. Here’s the plan.” That’s what I needed to hear. I didn’t want him to tell me it was going to be okay and not do anything to help it but I also didn’t want him to just stare at it and tell me how bad it was.

In this life, the whole world is in trouble, one way or the other. Job said in Job 14:1, “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.” Isn’t that the truth? We are all hurting. We are all dying. We are all despairing and the church – you – have a choice. You can sit back and watch and tell people how bad they are. You can give them empty platitudes and hollow encouragement with nothing to back it up. Or you can tell them the Good News that Jesus died on the cross and rose again to pay for our sins and now we can have a relationship with God through Jesus and all we have to do is believe it and allow it to change our lives.

You may have heard it said, “Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.” I like that. That is true. You can’t expect people to listen to you if your life doesn’t reflect what you are saying. But I always say, at some point, you have to use words. You have to open your mouth and tell people why you say what you do and why you act like you do and why you believe the way you do.

I say that because scripture says it. Turn to 1 Peter chapter 3, please, and let’s dive a little deeper into our sermon series on apologetics. A series on apologetics or knowing what you believe and why you believe it, would not be complete without a look at this verse. We get the word “apologetics” from this verse as I’ll show you in a minute. It may be the most direct instruction, the most obvious command and the most needed encouragement in all of scripture for personal evangelism.

The days that we live in are difficult times. The world seems to be in chaos. People are hurting and dying and struggling to make sense of what is going on and Peter was writing in a time at least as chaotic, difficult, and confusing. He lived and wrote this in a time where if you lived in the massive Roman Empire and called yourself a Christian, you could and probably would be killed for it.

The government would have you arrested and sent to trial and at this trial they would simply ask you if you were a Christian. If you said yes, you were killed. If you denied it and renounced Jesus and said a few adoring words to the emperor, you went home free. It was that simple. It was in this setting that Peter encouraged his readers 50-60 years after Jesus went back to Heaven, all the way to today. And it was in this setting that Peter himself was arrested, tried and was killed for doing exactly what he was encouraging us to do here.

Let’s read 1 Peter 3:15. “But in your hearts revere Christ as LORD. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. Hope. What is hope and why is it important? When do you need it? How do we get it and how do we keep it? And why should we tell others our secret about it?

Let me give you a scenario that will help us answer some of those questions but before I tell you the details, just know that if I’m making up a story to use as an illustration, you don’t have to nit pick the plausibility of it all, okay? Just roll with it and humor me if it’s a little far-fetched.

Let’s say you take a vacation as a chef on board a luxury cruise liner and you go deep sea fishing with some friends. (See, it could happen.) You go out to deep water and everybody is having a great time but y’all realize pretty soon that the boat has a hole in it and is sinking fast. You throw on a life jacket and everybody swims to shore on a nearby island in the middle of nowhere as the boat completely sinks.

Everybody is panicking. There’s no food, no water, no communication. What are we going to do? We’re all going to die! But you aren’t the least bit worried. You are calm and cool and sitting under a palm tree working on your savage tan. You aren’t worried because you know that your cruise ship stops at this little island every other day to let the people off to swim and relax on the beach.

You know that maybe later today or tomorrow or the next day that ship is going to pick you up and pretty soon you are going to be eating shrimp and steak surrounded by all your friends listening to you tell your story of how your fishing boat sank. You know that everything is going to be okay. It may take a couple of days. Things may get uncomfortable for a while. This is not where you are supposed to be so it’s not supposed to be comfortable but you don’t panic. You have peace and even joy when everybody else is freaking out.

Do you know what you call that? You call that hope. It is not an abstract hope that has no basis in reality. It is a confidant hope that something is going to happen soon. You just don’t know exactly when. And pretty soon, the others are going to start to notice how peaceful you are. They should notice. It should be obvious. There should be a stark difference in you and the rest of those around you because you know something they don’t and so your life is different than theirs right now.

So, that illustration may be a little far-fetched, but it speaks to exactly what is going on in our world today. The ones that don’t know the answer don’t have hope and they probably should be panicking. This could turn out to be pretty bad. But for followers of Jesus, we have our hope based on Him and so we don’t panic. We can have peace and joy in this life even though it may not be very nice at times. It may be worse than uncomfortable but we have hope that there is more to this life than what we can see and feel here.

Go back to the island. Let’s say somebody sees you sitting all calm and collected underneath that tree and so they come over and ask you why you are so peaceful when everybody else is going crazy. What are you going to say to help them? Are you just going to sit there and hope your inner peace influences them so much that they somehow figure it out? Are you just going to tell them that you have a good feeling about this? Are you going to say that your mother raised you not to worry?

No! You are going to speak truth to them by saying the name of the ship that is going to come. You are going to tell them what you know and how you know it and about your relationship to that vessel. Then they can decide if they want to come with you.

1 Peter 3:15 says to always be prepared to do this. Sounds like the Boy Scouts or something but we need to be ready because we never know when somebody is going to ask or even demand an answer. It says to be prepared to give an answer. Maybe your version says, “give a defense.” That Greek word for give a defense is “apologia” which is where we get “apologetics.”

Always be ready to give a defense for the hope you have. Hope is defined as a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. In these difficult and chaotic times that we are living in, people have options but they want the truth. Their options include freaking out and self-medicating, being ignorant of what is going on or maybe getting mad at God for allowing such a thing to happen to them.

As always, God is controversial. His works are controversial. His motivation is controversial. His very existence is controversial but people want the truth and it is your one job to tell people the truth. But when you get your chance, if all you say is, “Well, the preacher says…” or “I think God is…” or, worse, you say nothing at all then you are not giving a defense for your hope and you are being disobedient to what God has told you plainly to do. You have to know what you believe and why you believe it and then you have to tell others.

A few months ago a woman in our community asked if she could store some of her stuff here at the church. She had made a series of bad choices in her life and they were catching up to her and she was getting kicked out of her house and had no place to keep her stuff. Then not long after that some guy called me and said he had the rest of her stuff and wanted to bring it up here because the lady had gone to jail and wasn’t living with them anymore.

When she finally got out of jail she came with several friends to pick up what she had here and broke down crying because she realized how much she had lost. Her friends had obviously made their share of bad choices as well but one of them put her arms around the lady and awkwardly said, “Don’t cry. It’s going to be okay.” I appreciated the effort by the friend but you could tell even she didn’t really believe it.

There was no real hope there. There was no real expectation of something better. It was empty words and the only hope any of us have is found in the grace of God who sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross to pay for our sins. In Him there is hope. In Him there is grace. In Him there is no more shame or guilt or trying to be better or crying because of our bad choices.

We don’t have to live that way anymore and we just want others to come out of that lifestyle as well and so we tell them about our hope – not blind hope just like it’s not blind faith – but hope that we know Jesus is going to come back and take us to be with Him in Heaven and this world is not all there is to this life. There is more. There is better. We don’t know when it is going to happen but His name is Jesus and He is coming soon.

I know it’s true because the Bible says so and the Bible has proven itself to be true from the Old Testament prophecies that came true in the New Testament and the New Testament prophecies that have come true in my life. I know it’s true because of what Jesus has done for me. I know that it is only by the grace and mercy of God that I can be forgiven of all my sins and mistakes and I can now have peace and joy in this life even in the midst of a pandemic AND…and…and I have the blessed assurance of eternity with Jesus in Heaven when this life is over.

How about you? Do you have hope? Do you have peace right now right where you are sitting there in jail or watching on Facebook wherever you are? You can. Have you been forgiven? You can be right now. What more proof are you waiting for? You don’t have to be good enough. You don’t have to try harder. You just have to go to God in prayerful conversation and ask for His forgiveness. 1 John 1:9 says God is faithful and just and will forgive you of your sin and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. Cry out to Him right now as the music plays.

“Is Jesus the Only Way?” – John 14:6

Alright, I’m glad there are a few people in the auditorium this morning because I have some questions for you. Feel free to holler out if you know the answer. We have some fine prizes for the winner. Very exciting. Okay, first question is, what is 364 divided by 19? Anybody? No cheating. The answer is one billion. One billion. That was a tricky one, I know. Okay, next question. What do you get when you mix the color green with the color red? Anyone? You get Christmas, obviously. The right answer is Christmas. Next question: what is the difference between a fiddle and a violin? The right answer is a violin has twelve strings and the fiddle only has six. 12 and 6 is the correct answer. Just a couple more. Here we go. What was John Wayne’s horse’s name? For some of you that may be before your time. His horse’s name was Fluffy. I know, surprised me too. One more for the big prize. Last question. How many ways are there to Heaven? Be careful now. Don’t cheat. The correct answer is 14.25. Yes, 14.25 is the answer I was looking for. I’m sorry. No one wins the grand prize. Too bad. Maybe next time. Thanks for playing.

How did you like that game? Was it fun? Want to play again? No? Why not? Surely you didn’t have a problem with me just making up my answers, did you?  I know some of you John Wayne fans out there are about to lose your voice screaming at your computer. But, yes, I made all those answers up. No truth to any of it. But how do you know? How do you know what is truth in this day when someone can say they self-identify as a woman even though God clearly made them a man? How do you know what is truth when there are so many religions out there and some of them sound a lot better or easier than Christianity? How do you know what is truth? Is there any truth that is constant anymore? Is there such a thing as absolute truth; truth that is true for you and for me for all time? Is there any real difference in all these religions? Is Oprah correct when she confidently claims that we are all on our journey to Heaven and there are many ways to get there? How about these questions? Is something true just because somebody says it’s true? And does believing that something is true because it’s easier to believe it’s true make it true? Does that make sense? If x is hard to believe, but y is easier to believe, does that make y truth? I sure hope not.

We are neck deep in our sermon series on apologetics which is just the study of what we believe and why we believe it. So far, we have looked at what we believe about creation and about what made and makes Jesus so controversial. Today we want to look at the claim of Jesus to be the only way to Heaven. If being controversial means that people disagree with you then this is probably the most controversial thing Jesus ever said. It is also the most important question people have to ask themselves. Is belief in Jesus the only way to Heaven?

Well let’s look at what Jesus said and we will study that question more in depth. Let’s turn to a short but powerful passage in the Gospel of John where Jesus makes a bold statement. In John 14:6 we see a hinge; a hinge on which turns the eternity of every human being and the most important decision of your life depends on the truth of it. At this point in the Gospel, it is a bad time for the disciples. Jesus has just announced that one of them will betray Him, then told Peter, their leader, that Peter will deny Him three times. That would all be shocking to hear but then Jesus said that He was going to leave them and they didn’t understand what was going on. Everything was about to be very different and they weren’t ready for it and they were scared. Maybe you can relate to that kind of anxiety lately.

As usual, Jesus said enough in a few sentences to keep preachers busy for thousands of years. You know, if this passage was the sum total of scripture, it would be enough and more than enough for us to study and ponder for the rest of our lives. Let’s read John 14:1-6 to keep it in context but we are going to focus on just verse 6. Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4You know the way to the place where I am going." 5Thomas said to him, "LORD, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" 6Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

That’s big talk, isn’t it?  Have you ever heard somebody talk big and not be able to back it up? How do you feel about them? As a kid, I remember watching the boxer Muhammed Ali fight. Well, actually, what I remember most was watching Muhammed Ali brag about fighting before AND after he fought. He was so fun to watch. He would say he was the greatest and he would back it up every time…until one day he didn’t. I don’t remember who he was fighting but I remember watching him lose and it was like watching the Harlem Globetrotters lose or something. I was crushed. I felt like I had been lied to. So, you can imagine when I hear Jesus say He is THE Way, THE Truth and THE Life, I’m skeptical. We should be. Lots of folks down through the years have said there are any number of ways to get to Heaven and I’ll be honest, this is hard to believe. It’s hard to believe because, as we all know, there’s no free lunch, right? You have to work to have anything nice. If you are good then good things come to you. It just makes sense. You have to be good enough to get to Heaven.

But Jesus says nothing here about being good enough. He doesn’t say anything about working hard or being good or selling enough magazines or making sure your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds or walking little old ladies across the street. None of that. Other scriptures say we are saved by grace and through faith. Nowhere does the Bible say you have to be good enough or you have to earn it.  And that’s a problem. That’s a problem because being good enough, while being difficult, makes sense to me. I think it does for everybody. So, why should I believe something so hard to believe; something that goes against the very grain of who we are and what we have all been taught all our lives?

Well, there are any number of arguments for and against Jesus being the only way to Heaven, but I will start with what I believe to be the most persuasive, that is, His resurrection. I have not studied Muhammed like I have Jesus but do you know what happened after Muhammed died? Nothing. Nothing ever happened with him again. He’s dead and always will be. Same for Allah, Buddha, Brahma, Vishnu, Charlie Manson and everybody else that has ever been worshipped. If they ever lived then they died and stayed dead. Jesus died on the cross and rose again in three days and lives today so we can have a relationship with God, the Father through Jesus, God the Son.

Oh, I hear ya! Prove it, right? Well how is anything like that proven? How do we know that George Washington really lived? We didn’t see him with our own eyes and Troy’s not here to ask so we read about it in reliable historical sources. Well, I’m here to tell you that the four Gospels all say that Jesus was resurrected and they are, in fact, historical documents but there are other, non-biblical sources as well. The historian Josephus was well-respected in his day and still is as a historian and he wrote, “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, (9) those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; (10) as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

Josephus was convinced and he was a Pharisee. So, since Jesus is the only man to have ever raised Himself from the dead, it seems to me He has to be God and if He says He is the way to the Father, I believe Him. But like I said, in this day of people saying they self-identify as members of the opposite sex or I’ve seen people claim to identify as another species even, how do we know what is truth?

I’m reminded of Jesus standing before Pilate at His mock trial just before His execution and Pilate asked Jesus if He was a king and Jesus said it was truth and Pilate retorted, “What is truth?” He was standing there face to face with the very embodiment of truth and couldn’t figure it out. Now, I’ll give this to Pilate, sometimes the truth is hard to find. I get it. I understand. What makes it hard to find truth is that truth is not proven by how we feel and yet, we want to prove things that way. We want truth to be defined by what we think and how we feel but just because you believe it and that thought brings you comfort doesn’t make something truth.

Chuck Colson wrote about a woman he knew named Sheila. She said, “I believe in God.  I can't remember the last time I went to church. But my faith has carried me a long way. It's 'Sheila-ism.' Just my own little voice and that brings me great peace.” St. Augustine said, “When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful.” I’m doubtful of “Sheila-ism” even though it brings Sheila comfort. I’m doubtful because I am quite sure that even Sheila would agree that Sheila has made mistakes. Sheila can’t say she never sinned. Sheila doesn’t claim to be God. She doesn’t claim to be perfect. She doesn’t claim to be the way to God and she never rose from the dead or did any miracles on her own! But Jesus did all those things and my faith IN HIM brings me peace because He has proven Himself to me. I’m glad that “Todd-ism” is not the way to God because I have proven that I will mess it up. How about you? How is life working out for you following “you-ism”? I bet if you are honest you would say it’s not worked out too well.

So, why doesn’t everybody believe in Jesus? Well, there are several answers. We talked last week about how faith in Jesus is going to mean you have to change your life and start to look and act more like Jesus and lots of people don’t want to do that. I get it. The Christian life is not easy. I will tell you this though: when I was a young Christian, Christianity seemed to me to be a long list of “Don’t do this” and “Don’t do that” and all I saw was the rules. I saw everybody else having fun and living how they wanted to live and I was jealous.

As I have gotten older, though, I realize that most of those people are really NOT happy. There is no peace, no lasting joy and what do you do when a crisis hits? Where do you turn? Again, how’s that working out for ya so far? Since I have allowed God to be in total control of my life, I have never had such freedom. I’ve never had such peace and joy even in the difficult times. I have never had such wisdom or feelings of forgiveness. So, while truth is not proven by feelings, it is corroborated by those feelings. Those feelings come when you find truth.

The problem with truth is that it will always be controversial. People will always disagree with you. It may hurt some feelings. It may make people mad or upset. They will ask you how you can be so narrow-minded. They will call you a bigot or unfair or any number of things.

I want you to picture this. You are sailing along on the big and beautiful ocean liner, the Titanic. The band is playing. The food is great. The weather is a little chilly but nice and everybody is dressed to the nines having such a good time when all of the sudden the ship jolts and you hear a loud noise. The band keeps playing but you are concerned so you go to the captain. The captain knows the ship just hit an iceberg but he doesn’t want to be controversial. He doesn’t want to scare people. Everybody is having such a good time and so he tells you not to worry about it. Go back to doing what you were doing. Everything will be okay. Go play some shuffleboard and relax. And the next thing you know…glug, glug, glug. What do you think about that captain?

Or picture this maybe, if you can. The whole world is being threatened by an unseen virus that is spreading like wildfire through countries all over the world and people are panicking. They are scared. They don’t have the answers they want and everybody blames everybody else and the world just seems to be in chaos. Stores are shutting down. People are losing their jobs and their minds and they just need something or someone to help them.

But you don’t want to be controversial. You don’t want to scare people with the truth. You don’t want people to have to change their lifestyles and besides that, what in the world would you tell them?

Let me read truth to you one more time. It’s written in red in my Bible so I can find it easy. Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. That’s what you tell them. Tell them the truth that Jesus told His disciples when their world was in chaos. Tell them the truth that God loves them and is in control; even in control of some unseen virus and if God is in control and He loves us, what in this world do we have to worry about?

What in this world do we have to worry about and how do we get to the next world? Jesus said all we have to do is believe. You don’t have to be good enough. You don’t have to feel peace about making the decision to follow Jesus. Believe that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life and the feelings will follow and your morals will improve later. Believe that nobody gets to Heaven except through Jesus and be assured of your place in Heaven as co-heirs with Jesus to all the good things God has to offer. But don’t just take my word for it. Believe the One that John said is the Word and the Word is God. (John 1:1)

Let me close with something Abraham Lincoln once said. Once, when a stubborn disputer seemed unconvinced, Lincoln said, "Well, let's see, how many legs has a cow?" "Four, of course," came the reply disgustedly. "That's right," agreed Lincoln. "Now suppose you call the cow's tail a leg; how many legs would the cow have?"  "Why, five, of course," was the confident reply.  "Now, that's where you're wrong," said Lincoln. "Calling a cow's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."  (Bits and Pieces, July, 1991)

Just saying something is true doesn’t make it true. Just because something feels right doesn’t make it right. And just because something is hard to believe doesn’t make it wrong.  But ultimately we have a relationship with God through His Son Jesus by God’s grace and our faith in Him, not on our good works or anything else. We can’t prove much of any of it when it comes to spiritual things but we come to God through faith. It’s not a blind faith. I can tell you my story of how God has made Himself known to me since I was a kid. But I’m just grateful that, as Ephesians 2 says, “We are saved by grace and through faith.” Thank you, Lord.

Today, if you don’t have that relationship with Jesus that I have been talking about, now is the time. What are you waiting for? We aren’t guaranteed another breath. Ask God to forgive you of your sins. Confess those sins and repent of them. Turn away from that lifestyle and allow God’s Spirit to come into your life and start to change you. All you have to do is believe. Do it right now as the music plays.

For those of you watching via Facebook or some other way, please let me know if you have questions or if there is something I or our church can do for you, whether that need is mental, physical or spiritual. I love you all! See you next week.

This Sunday...

What do people do that don’t have a relationship with Jesus at times like this? I see friends on Facebook freaking smooth out and if they aren’t real believers, then I don’t blame them. They have no security in this life or the next. But as Christians, these ought to be some exciting times. What’s going to happen next? Dunno. How long is it gonna last? Dunno. What caused it? Where did it come from? How do I keep from getting it? I don’t know any of that but what I do know is that God is in control and He loves me so what IN THIS WORLD do I have to worry about?

I honestly thought we were going to get away with not having to cancel our church services at Christ Fellowship but after a long discussion and lots of prayer plus watching the news and trying to be mindful of our high-risk members, we decided to just livestream our services as usual on my Facebook page but have no in-person worship. We will not have anything going this Sunday night but you can expect some new and different experiences for the coming Thursday and Sunday evening Bible studies.

So, I hope you can join us in worship from your home this Sunday at 10 am. It’s going to be strange not having anybody in the seats. We may invite a few at a time. Who knows? But this just means things are different. It doesn’t mean they will stay this way. And we plan to have some fun with it like we always do on Sunday morning. So, if you know of somebody that needs to know this, don’t assume they will see this post or email or whatever. Please let them know and I will “see” you Sunday! I love you all! Todd

In an abundance of caution...

"In an abundance of caution..." Aren't you tired of hearing that phrase? Aren't you tired of getting emails from every company that has ever had your email telling you their response to the coronavirus? Yes, thank you, Quilting Barn in Manchester, Kentucky. I don't know how you got my email but I'm glad you have a plan. Well, in an abundance of caution, Christ Fellowship will meet as usual for Bible study tonight (Thursday at 7 pm) but we are going to work out a God-inspired, church-led, biblical and loving (not fear-driven) plan for how we go forward as a church. 

If you would like to be part of that conversation, I hope you can be here and participate. Here are the caveats. We have quite a few older members of our church and others that might be at high risk for contracting and spreading a virus with terrible consequences. What ever we decide to do, please be mindful that many people right now are leery of the usual hugging and handshaking that goes on when our family meets together. It's not that we don't love each other as much as we used to. It just means we are using wise caution when we just smile and wave at each other and respect each other's personal space from now on.

Also, if you consider yourself to be high-risk, it may be wise not to participate in person. That is up to you. But going forward, we will use social media more and more, videoing our Sunday morning service as always and keeping in touch via Facebook, Twitter, email and text. If you know somebody in our church that doesn't do any of these things, please let me know so I can make other arrangements to keep them informed.

Lastly, I want to say again that now is the time to not just talk about having faith but to actually live it. The church is not at 1301 N Main St. You are the church and the world is watching to see how you respond to this crisis. Habakkuk chapter three is a powerful passage you probably haven't read in a while but is very timely. But there are a couple of verses towards the end that say, "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, ¹⁸yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior." Rejoice, church! God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving and He is in control of this and He loves you! What do you have to worry about? Todd

Link to video of Sunday's service posted on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/todd.blair.98/videos/3245478725471942/

The Jesus Controversy – Matthew 16:13-16

I have a list of people and I want you to think about what these people have in common. President Obama and President Trump, Madonna, the Pope, Bart Simpson, Napoléon, Hulk Hogan, Jesus and probably you. The thing that all of these have in common is that they are controversial.

What does it mean to be controversial? It means to be someone with whom people disagree. When you see Madonna you probably think she shouldn’t dress that way. She shouldn’t talk that way. She shouldn’t act that way. There are a lot of things that Madonna does or says that I disagree with. I’m sure she is real concerned about what I think. Almost everybody is a little controversial sometimes but some people are more controversial than others. I bet there were people in Calcutta, India saying, “That Mother Theresa doesn’t know what she’s doing. I wouldn’t treat the sick and the poor like she is. That’s just ridiculous.” Everybody is controversial at times. If you are never controversial, you probably either need to stand for something or you are just boring.

In my research this week (yes, I googled it) I found out something interesting. I googled “controversial people” and the first thing that popped up was the question, “Who is the most controversial person to have ever lived?” And Google answered that question with “Jesus.” Now, what surprised me was not that Jesus was the most controversial but that Google believed Jesus was the most controversial. Obviously, even the world can see and understand just how controversial He is. It is easy to see that a lot of people disagree with the teachings of Jesus.

So, what does that mean for us as followers of Jesus? Maybe we should water down the message of Jesus a little bit to make it a bit more palatable for people. You know what I mean. Maybe we need to be a little more inclusive and say that Jesus is just one of the ways to Heaven or that if you are a good person, at least better than your neighbor, that God knows your heart and will show you grace even if you don’t become a Christian. What do you think? I think we could get more people to come to our church that way. I think we would be more popular at work if we did that. But there’s a small problem. Jesus said in Matthew 28 we are called to be disciples. And disciples are only disciples if they make other disciples. Also, Jesus said in Matthew 12 that whoever is not for Him is against Him and the only way to be for Him is 100%. Jesus said in John 14 that He was the way, the truth and the life and that NOBODY gets to the Father but through Him. Jesus didn’t care what Oprah thinks. Jesus didn’t care that atheists don’t think. Jesus came to bring truth and the truth is controversial to those who don’t believe.

Benjamin Rush said, “Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error.” We advocate for the truth and so we believe and advocate for Jesus and will never water down His message just to be popular. Jesus never encouraged us to be rude but He also never said our goal was to make friends. Our goal is to make other disciples. And to do that, we have to know what Jesus said and we have to know why we believe it. We are in the second week of our sermon series on apologetics which is simply knowing what we believe and why we believe it. We talk a lot around here about spinal beliefs and rib beliefs, meaning some things that we believe are absolute truth spinal issues and some things, like what color the carpet should be are rib issues. Today, we are going to look at the very marrow of the spine issue of who Jesus is. It is a supremely important issue to work through and the very spinal column of the church itself.

Turn to Matthew 16. We will see that the question of who Jesus is has always been controversial ever since, well, Jesus. We are told that the location for this event was Caesarea Philippi and I was fascinated to learn in Ben’s Bible study last Thursday night that this is the area in which John the Baptist started his ministry in the wilderness.  It’s interesting because this is a fairly remote area far north of all the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem. It was close to the Jordan River and is still today a beautiful and wild countryside that, if you put in the effort to get there is well worth it if you enjoy nature. It was an area, though, that had a lot of idol worship. Where Jesus has taken His disciples here wasn’t really a town but was still considered a hotbed of religiosity. There were temples to pagan idols all through the area and so it is interesting that this would be the place that Jesus would ask this most important question.

Let’s read it in Matthew 16:13-16. When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" 14They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets." 15"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" 16Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."

Jesus hauls His disciples to the very northernmost part of Israel out to the middle of nowhere and surrounded by idolatry and takes the pulse of the people He was ministering to. He asks His disciples who people say He is. He used His favorite title for Himself, the Son of Man. It is used by Jesus some eighty times in the New Testament and was an humble title. Why do you think He used that name for Himself so often? He could have used “King of kings” or “Lord of all creation.” Why do you think He chose “Son of Man” so often? All through His ministry Jesus tells people not to tell anybody else He is the Messiah. He would heal people and they would realize who He really was but Jesus would tell them that it wasn’t time to let folks know that yet. He tells His disciples that very thing later in this passage in verse 20. But using the term “Son of Man” also has its roots in Daniel chapter 7 where Daniel describes somebody that looks like a man but was actually, I believe, a Christophany or a description of Jesus Himself. So, Jesus was being kind of sly, again not revealing His true identity except to those that were open to it and could appreciate it.

Now, my next question is, why would Jesus ask this question to begin with? I thought Jesus knew everything. What would the reasoning be to ask the disciples who other people said He was? It had to be for the sake of the disciples. Jesus knew what people thought but He wanted the disciples to work through and think of all the options and then come to their own conclusion. Because then He asked the group who they thought He was.

Again, an interesting point to clarify here is that Jesus asked the whole group. The original wording Jesus used was the Greek word that we Texans would translate as “y’all.” Who do y’all say I am? And then Peter answered and don’t you know that when Peter started to open his mouth to answer this most vital question that the rest of the group cringed for just a second? Oh, Peter, be careful. This could go bad quick. And he is speaking for the whole group so if he says Jesus is a real swell guy, they are all going to look bad.

But Peter nailed it. "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Whew! Good job, Pete! Good answer. That’s right. I think all of us sitting here would agree with what Peter said. We believe that Jesus is God and as the second part of the divine trinity that He came to earth as predicted in Old Testament scriptures to live and then die on the cross to pay for our sins but rise again so we can have a relationship with Him today. I think we would all agree on that spinal issue. If you have a problem with that, please come see me after the service and we’ll talk.

So, along with Peter, that’s what we believe, now let’s dig down to see why we believe it. If you are witnessing to someone and they have never heard any of this stuff, you can expect them to have some doubts and some questions. That’s fair and understandable. So, how are you going to respond? Are you just going to say that the Bible says it and you have to have faith or is there any proof?

Okay, I have a joke for you. I know. I know. But this is funny. Do you know why Hillary Clinton doesn’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses? Hillary Clinton doesn’t like any witnesses! Bada bing! Well, Hillary might not like witnesses but they help to prove our point about Jesus being the Messiah. In John chapter 5, Jesus is debating His divinity with some Jews who didn’t believe Him and the first witness Jesus calls in this debate is none other than Himself. Now, I have heard some people say that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah but those people that say that evidently don’t have much biblical knowledge because in John 5, Jesus says it outright.

In John 5:24-27, Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. ²⁵Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. ²⁶For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. ²⁷And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.”

Jesus gives a powerful witness of Himself in these verses. And as C.S. Lewis said, you now have to decide for yourself if Jesus is a liar, a lunatic or Lord. But if Jesus is a lunatic or a liar, I’ll give it to you that He would say these things about Himself. So, do we have any other witnesses? Well, Jesus understands this as well and so He tells about another witness to His divinity. In John 5:33-35, Jesus said, “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid. ³²There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is valid. ³³"You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth.”

So, Jesus says, not only will He witness for Himself but John will witness for Him. Now, think about all the others as well. The thief on the cross (Luke 23:33–43) realized it just before it was too late. Even the centurion at the foot of the cross (Mark 15:39) testified, “Surely this man was the Son of God!" After Jesus died, the apostles gave the ultimate witness by giving their lives based on their belief about Jesus. The early church fathers and the church councils all testified for Jesus as does this church. And we do it just because we want other people to have what we have.

Now, factor in the witness of the work of Jesus. The things He did are recorded not just in the Bible. People like FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, PLINIUS SECUNDUS, CORNELIUS TACITUS and even the Hebrew Talmud record His deeds. They might not have liked Him or even believed in His divinity but they recorded His works and His works testify to His divinity. In John 5:36, Jesus said, “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish-the very works that I am doing-testify that the Father has sent me.”

To be able to heal the blind and sick and cure a leper’s spots and even bring a man back to life at least prove that this person is from God if not God Himself as we know Jesus to be. And Jesus healed people all over Israel. There were lots of people that could vouch for that back in the day. So, Jesus said it. John backed Him as did all the apostles, and people all around Jesus during and after His time on earth. It is recorded in secular writing, not to mention all the prophecies in scripture and the teachings of scripture and some of those include the witness of God the Father that Jesus was His Son from Heaven. (John 3)

So, there is no lack of witnesses from the time of Jesus until today that will verify that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One of God to leave Heaven and come to earth to be our salvation. But for Peter, it was a personal choice. Yes, he spoke for all the apostles that day but it was a personal decision. He had everything to lose and very little to gain on this earth by witnessing for Jesus, especially after the death of Jesus. But from the time Jesus revealed Himself to the disciples after His resurrection until Peter’s death, Peter never shut up about Jesus. Thirty to thirty-five years after the crucifixion, Peter started writing his books that would go in the Bible and in 1 Peter 1, he starts off by saying, “Praise be to the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” I think Peter was convinced. Don’t you?

Years ago, I worked with a lady that claimed to be either atheist or agnostic. She wasn’t sure what she believed and what she didn’t except she knew Jesus wasn’t anything to believe in. She seemed like a good person. She seemed to have pretty good morals. She had been married for years and as far as I knew she had no real scandals in her life. But she never seemed happy to me either. One day I had a good chance to tell her my beliefs. I told her some of the things we have looked at today. I told her of all the ways I knew Jesus was the Savior and how because of all that, we could have a relationship with God through His Son Jesus. You know what she said? She shot it all down with four words. “I don’t believe that.”

Okay, plan B. I went on to tell her about my testimony. I told her how I knew at a young age that I was a sinner and I knew that Jesus was the only way to be forgiven. I told her how I fell away and then how God drew me back and how, since then, I have had peace and joy even in the difficult times and I am assured of my eternity in Heaven. After a few minutes of listening politely, you know what she said? She said basically the same four words. She said, “I’m glad for you. I’m glad you have that. But I don’t believe that.” I never got another chance to talk to her but I think if I had, it would have been the same.

Some people will never believe or at least they will never allow themselves to believe, not because it is too far-fetched or that it is unbelievable but because if it is true, it’s going to mean they have to surrender control of their lives to God. They are going to have to change their ways and change their habits and change where they go and who they hang out with. And that is absolutely true.  You will lose friends and maybe even family members. You may lose your job or realize you need to quit your job. A relationship with Jesus means almost everything is going to change. You will not be the same and you won’t act the same. You won’t be comfortable hanging out with the old crowd. You won’t have peace doing what you used to do and if you do have peace doing that old stuff and you don’t really change, I can tell you that you aren’t really saved!

2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!” Don’t tell me about being a Christian if you do the same things and go to the same places and have the same bad habits as you used to. A true Christian is not slightly remodeled. They are brand new. Not everybody is going to believe no matter how much apologetics you know. You can explain and prove and witness and testify all day long and some folks are going to refuse to believe the truth. You tell them what you know and why you believe it and prayerfully do all you can and if they reject it, they are not rejecting you. They are rejecting Jesus and there will literally be hell to pay for them and that’s not your fault.

That’s a harsh teaching. I know. It hurts to say it. If I made the rules, they might be different but the Creator of the universe made the rules and, yes, He is controversial.  A lot of people think they know better but Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” We ought to love people too much to allow them to go through their lives and never hear of the peace and joy in this life and the promise of eternal life in Heaven as co-heirs with Jesus to all the good things Heaven has to offer.

If you have never asked God for forgiveness and then repented or turned away from that old lifestyle, do that right now. Ask God to come into your life and change you and make you more like Jesus. You will never regret it if you do and you will always regret it if you don’t. Do it right now as the music plays.

“Creation or Accident” – Genesis 1:1

There are eight major planets and three minor planets in our solar system, ranging from Mercury, who is the closest at a mere 57 million miles away from the sun to Neptune, the farthest away, at 2.8 billion miles from the sun. We only have one sun and earth only has one moon but there are quite a few other moons in outer space, plus an unknown number of comets and asteroids all over the place, not to mention the stars.

Each one is completely different and each one rotates differently and orbits differently. Some are hot and some are cold. Some orbit clockwise and some counterclockwise. Some move fast and some move slow. Some have rings around them and some spin on their sides. And there are at least 2500 other solar systems that astronomers have found with many more probable. That’s what the guys at NASA tell us. (I thought about becoming a NASA scientist but I decided to do this instead.)   :)

But each one of those planets, moons, stars and comets is set precisely in place. If one of those planets was to vary just a little bit and orbit just a little too much this way or that way or if the earth got just a degree closer to or farther away from the sun, life on this planet would die. If there was just a hair more or less oxygen or if one of those other planets hit another planet, it could cause all life on this planet to die. If the gravitational pull versus the spin of the earth were changed just a little bit, all life would die. It is a great and intricate balance and if things got off just a little bit, it would be unimaginable. That is our known universe and its creation was amazing.

But that’s what happens when two protons accidentally collide, right? Oh, now, don’t ask how the protons got created. That’s not what we are talking about. We are talking about the Big Bang Theory or how the universe was created. That’s pretty amazing, right? It’s amazing that from utter chaos came exact and precise orbits and gravity and friction and all the elements needed to create and sustain life. Man, that’s pretty hard to believe, isn’t it? In fact, I think it’s impossible to believe that two elements collided and then billions of years later, here we are today. And people say it takes a lot of faith to believe in God! I don’t believe I have the faith to believe the Big Bang.

Maybe you have a more plausible explanation for it. Maybe there is somebody here today that is a scientist or an astronomer that can give us a better story than two pieces of galactic dust collided and *poof* all creation was made. Anybody? What is your theory? How about the “theory” that God, who was and is and is to come spoke the universe into existence? Now, I understand that’s hard to comprehend because where did God come from? How do we know? Can the source of that information be trusted? Well let’s talk about that today.

We just got through with a long sermon series on the end times, concluding with several sermons on Heaven and I am pretty sure most of us want to be there and we want the people we love to be there. We talked not too long ago about the different ways to tell other people the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, and now here we are as a church with no greater desire than for others to have the peace and joy that we have in this life but also the assurance of Heaven in the next life.

We know that we are all sinners. Romans 3:23 tells us that. We know that what we deserve for that sin is eternal death in Hell. Romans 6:23 tells us that. That’s bad news. But the Good News is that, as it says in John 3:16, God loves us so much that He sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for us and all we have to do is believe and we will go to Heaven. That’s the Gospel. It’s simple but not always easy and it’s sometimes not easy to tell people because *gasp* they have questions.

We talked last week about how people should have questions and we went over a few of them but when you start to share your faith, sometimes people ask questions that you might not know or have even thought about before. So we are going to spend a few weeks talking about some of those questions and answering them the best that we can. It’s a series of sermons on “apologetics” which is, contrary to what some think, not apologizing for what you believe but simply knowing what it is that you believe and why you believe it.

Let’s start with where the Bible starts. Last week we read the last chapter of the last book of the Bible. This week let’s go all the way to the front of the Bible and read the very first verse. Genesis 1:1 is short and concise but it is a small piece of dynamite. It is controversial. It is simple and yet mysterious. It answers a lot of questions and raises a lot more. There have been many whole books written on just these few words and we will, of course, not do it justice today but for our study of apologetics, it is a great place to start.

Genesis 1:1 simply says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Now, as usual, I did some research. I googled it. I googled “Genesis 1:1 jokes” and I only found one but I’ll spare you. It wasn’t funny. In fact, it was the oldest joke in the book. Bada Bing! Oh! I’m sorry. Randy, that was for you.

What I actually did find in my study of Genesis were some real problems. Yes, the book is controversial but that is not the problem. The problem is that it doesn’t answer all my questions. As a typical American in 2020, I want to know who, what, where, when and why about all the details and the main question that Genesis answers, especially in this first sentence in only “Who?” And the “Who” is God.

The word translated “God” here is “Elohim” and the basic meaning behind the name Elohim is one of strength or power of effect. Elohim is the infinite, all-powerful God who shows by His works that He is the creator, sustainer, and supreme judge of the world. “Bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure—you, the righteous [Elohim] who probes minds and hearts” (Psalm 7:9). (gotquestions.org)

Interestingly, the word Elohim is grammatically plural rather than singular. You might say it means “gods” but it actually is just emphasizing the power and magnificence that is Holy God. Some people might read the Trinity into that and they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong but Moses, the author of Genesis, would have had no idea of the Trinity. That was revealed later.

See what I mean about not getting your questions answered? We are literally four words in and came to a controversy. So, without going any further into that, let’s ask the questions that a non-believer might ask of you if you were trying to witness to them. If you were trying to share the Gospel with a friend and told them that scripture says that God loved them, what questions might they ask?

I sometimes hear, “The Bible was written by a bunch of different people over a bunch of years. How can you believe it’s true? How can you believe it when Moses wrote Genesis 1:1? He wasn’t even there!” That’s a good question. Well, how do you know that anything is true? The best way is to verify with your own eyes, right?

If you see a painting, it’s pretty easy to assume there is or was a painter. If you see a house, you know there had to have been a house builder. If you go to a museum and see a beautiful sculpture, how do you think it came into existence? Do you have any reason to believe that sculpture was an accident? Does it make any sense to believe that there was a hammer and chisel just laying around for a long time and over the years people kept accidentally bumping into it and after a while a beautiful sculpture just appeared out of a chunk of rock?

Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” When you see creation, there has to be a creator, especially when the creation is so complex, so intricate and so incredible, like the universe in which we live or the bodies that we inhabit.

In Genesis 1:1 it says that God “created.” The Hebrew word for “created” is ba-ra and it is only used of God. Only God can ba-ra. We can make things or fix things and we say we create things but what we mean is we take several different items that exist and make something else. We can’t create or ba-ra anything out of nothing. Only God can do that. So, when you see a tree or a flower or a sunset over Lake Bridgeport, you know it was created by God.

Years ago, I went to Yellowstone National Park and for part of the trip I camped in a big meadow next to an elderly man. We got to talking and he told me he had been a professor at MIT and he was a cellular biologist. Now, normally a cellular biologist and I wouldn’t have much in common. This guy was crazy smart and I’m…well…I’m nice. Anyway, we talked for hours because we both had a great appreciation for nature.

We were sitting there admiring the mountains and the wildlife and I reached down and picked a tiny little flower from the grass. This meadow was covered in all kinds of beautiful little flowers. The man got all excited when I showed an interest in it because he knew all about them. He knew the difference between a stamen and a carpel and was anxious to show me. (I had to look those up for this illustration.)

But then I threw him a curve ball. I said something about how creative God was to make so many different kinds of flowers. He looked at me and got real serious. He said, “All my life I have only believed things that I can see or prove or replicate under a microscope. God I can’t prove. BUT, I’m smart enough to know that I don’t know everything and not everything can be proven.” To me, that is a truly smart man.

Scripture says that we come to God through faith (Eph. 3:12) and that without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6). It boils down to faith but it is not a blind faith. We can see creation and by all accounts it sure appears to be orderly. The appearance of design in the universe is undeniable. If an atheist is going to be intellectually honest, they have to believe that the universe, this earth, and even our bodies are accidents and are an undesigned design. That doesn’t make any sense.

Have you ever seen an undesigned house? Have you ever seen an undesigned painting? I guess there is random, modern art but it is classified as such and you never see random paintings that look like anything. Have you ever seen an undesigned sculpture? You call that a rock, not a sculpture. The presence of design means there is a designer and that designer can only be Elohim, God.

A little four-year-old girl went to her mother and said, “Mommy, where did I come from?” Her mother was a little concerned about what to say. She wasn’t ready to give a birds-and-bees talk yet and so she carefully explained a few things in a way that hopefully would satisfy her curiosity for a while. After the mom’s difficult monologue, the little girl shrugged and turned on her heels and said, “Huh, Jimmy said he comes from Indiana.”

We all have the desire to understand how we got here and how the universe was created and exactly who, what, where and when but I think, if you take the Bible as a whole, what God really wants us to understand is the “why.” Why did God create the universe? Why did God create mankind?

There are probably a hundred different answers but I’ll give two. First, God created the universe and all of mankind because He is creative. And what better way to manifest your creativity than with creation? His creativity is unlimited so why stop with just earth? Why not create a whole solar system? Why not two solar systems or 2000? He created each star and planet and asteroid differently. He created each person to be different. Each different person has different fingerprints. And yet every person is created in His image to be creative and to love like He does, which leads me to the second reason God created the universe.

He created the universe and He created you because He is love! He is love. 1 John 4:8 says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” And because God is love, what better way to manifest that love than to create you? But He not only showed you love by creating you, He also provided a way for you to be with Him forever. He loves you and wants that for you. He doesn’t need you. He wasn’t lonely and decided to create some friends. He is love and His character is best shown in His love for us even though we don’t deserve it.

Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” I don’t understand everything there is to know about creation, although I can tell you that true science will never go against what scripture teaches but that’s more discussion for tonight. Don’t miss that. But I don’t have to understand everything.

I can see with my eyes that there is creation and so there must be a Creator and that Creator loves me and wants to spend time with me and have a relationship with me and that goes for you too. I believe Genesis 1:1 because of my eyes and because of my faith and both are gifts from God. If you open your eyes, you too will see His creation. Believe in Him. Follow Him. Let Him change your life. All you have to do is believe.

Let’s bow our heads and close our eyes and remember the time in our lives when our eyes were opened and our faith was made new. Remember the day that you asked Jesus to come into your life and be Lord of your life and to forgive you and cleanse you.

If you can’t remember that day, I would love to talk with you and pray with you right now as the music plays.

“Heaven” – Part 4 – Rev. 22:12-17

Okay, here’s the scenario.  Every month you pay your mortgage.  Every month it’s difficult but you get it paid but you realize that you just don’t make enough money to keep paying it every month like you have been.  So, you cut back.  You scrimp and save.  You use coupons and buy only what you have to to survive.  You start to sell things you don’t need and then you even have to start selling things you do need but you just can’t make the mortgage payment.  You have a family to support and provide for but there is nothing you can do.  This is awful.  You can’t afford to move.  What in the world are you going to do?

So, you go to the bank officer and start to tell him your problem, hoping that he will give you some kind of hope.  But before you can even finish with your appeal, the banker says, “Oh, don’t worry.  The mortgage on your house has been paid in full by a generous man in the community.” Wow!  That’s great, right?  Now, in this scenario, what do you do?  What’s the very first thing you would do?  I don’t know about you, but I would ask some questions first.  I would want to make sure that it’s not a mistake.  If it’s not, then what does this mysterious do-gooder want from me in return?  Before I run off to celebrate, I need to know some things about this situation because I know that if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is.

I want to know if this guy can be trusted.  Am I supposed to pay him back?  Why would he do this for me?  What’s in it for him and what is expected of me?  I’m going to be leery of this deal until I get some questions answered.  But suppose in our little scenario that you get your basic questions answered.  You find out that he has done this for lots of other people and he just does it out of the goodness of his heart because he is wealthy and wants to help people.

The banker knows the man well and can vouch for him that he is trustworthy and that he doesn’t expect to be paid back.  All that you have to do is sign the papers.  Now what do you do?  Again, I don’t know about you but as for me, hand me a pen or a pencil or a crayon or something.  I’ll use my own blood to sign if I have to.  Just show me where.  But then, just as you are signing, the banker says, “Oh, there is one thing…” and you think, “Oh, great.  Here it comes.” But the banker then says that all the good neighbor asks you to do is tell your friends and loved ones because he wants to do the same for them too.  He wants to pay for everybody’s mortgage.  Hey, no problem!  I can do that!  I want everybody I know and love to hear about this guy.  I’m going to sing his praises from the rooftop.  I’m going to put it on Facebook.  I’m going to walk across the street.  I’ll go around the world.  I’ll do whatever I can to make this guy famous.

Since the beginning of time, man has dreamed of there being more to this life.  God has wired us to want more, search for more and not be satisfied until we find out what the secret is to life after we die.  Some people have concluded that there is no life after death.  Some people believe that we are reincarnated and come back as someone or something different.  Almost every religion believes it has something to do with how good we are in this life.

But God gave us the Bible to fully explain everything we need to know about how to get to Heaven and I’ll be honest with you.  It sounds too good to be true.  The benefits are way, way beyond the price of admission, if you know what I mean.  So, when we learn about what Heaven is like, like we have the past few weeks, it should make you, first, ask some questions.  Then when those questions get answered well enough, it should make you accept the invitation to go there.  Then, lastly, it should make you want to announce it to the world just like if somebody said they were going to pay off your mortgage.

So, this week as we conclude our series on what the Bible says Heaven is going to be like, I want to go through those steps in a little more detail.  Let’s ask the important questions, then accept the invitation and then announce it to the world.  Turn to the last book of the Bible; the book of Revelation; the very last chapter of the last book, chapter 22, and let’s look at verses 12-17.  The author of this book is the Apostle John and we have read what John was told to write down up to this point.  I always think, “Poor John, having to write down all this incredible stuff that would be so hard to describe.”  But in this passage at the very end of the last book of the Bible, Jesus is doing the talking.  Let’s read what He says in Revelation 22:12-17. 

Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. ¹³I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. ¹⁴"Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. ¹⁵Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. ¹⁶"I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star." ¹⁷The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let the one who hears say, "Come!" Let the one who is thirsty come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.

A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales. The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small. The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible. The little girl said, "When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah". The teacher asked, "What if Jonah didn’t go to Heaven?" The little girl replied, "Then you ask him.”

We all look forward to asking some questions when we get to Heaven and we all have questions about Heaven right now.  Well, here Jesus answers several of the most important questions we have; namely, who is going to be there and who isn’t?  He starts off saying He is bringing His reward with Him. Did you know that we will all be judged according to our deeds when Jesus comes back?  Every one of us, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist – we all get judged according to what we have done and Jesus says here He is ready, willing and able to dispense with our rewards. 

If your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, then Jesus will reward you with eternity in Heaven and whatever good deeds you have done will be rewarded forever.  But that is only for true believers who, in this life, have come to have a life-changing relationship with the One True God through His Son Jesus.  When He says that He is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, He is saying that this world was created by Him in the beginning.  He will last forever and if your life reflects that fact and you have made Him Lord of all your life, then you can expect to live with Him forever in Heaven.

“Those who wash their robes” simply means that you have had your sins washed away by your belief that Jesus’ death on the cross and the blood He shed was sufficient to wash you clean in the eyes of the Lord and you will enjoy eternity as a co-heir with Jesus to all the good things Heaven has to offer.  That’s incredible!  That’s wonderful news.  But there is bad news for those who want to enter Heaven just based on their works or their deeds.  Verse 15 starts a representative list of those who won’t make it.  It’s not an exhaustive list.  This is not every sin in the world necessarily but Jesus says that to be sure, these folks are in big trouble for eternity.  Now, his use of the word “dogs” does not mean that all our furry, four-legged, Fido friends are going to Hell.  He uses the word as most Jews thought of them in those days as being of low character.

Then some of us read this list and we might think that because we have done one or two or all of these things that Jesus is saying we are going to Hell but as He says about lying or falsehoods, only those who love and practice these things.  If this is your lifestyle and you are unrepentant about it and you keep doing it, those are the ones He is talking about.  We will discuss this more in depth tonight at six so don’t miss that.

So, that is the most important question that any of us can ask and we should ask it.  Am I going to be there in Heaven?  The answer is, only through Jesus and His sacrificial death on the cross can any of us expect to be there.  But there are lots of other questions and you should ask them.  I want to go over some of the most popular questions I hear about Heaven.  They are good questions.  We know that we will never understand everything about Heaven until we get there and we need to keep in mind that if the Bible doesn’t answer the question, it doesn’t mean it’s not a good question.  It just means that we don’t have to know the answer to get there.

The number one question I hear when people talk about Heaven is always, speaking of dogs in verse 15, “Will my dog/cat/horse/gerbil/squid/whatever pet be there?”  For pet lovers like me, that’s an important question.  We know that in Revelation 19, Jesus and all His followers are described as riding on white horses and we know that during Christ’s thousand-year reign on the earth during the Millennium that there will be animals such as the wolf, lamb, calf and lion (Isaiah 11:6-9) but there is no specific mention of animals in the New Heaven or New Earth.

So, it doesn’t say we will have pets in Heaven but it doesn’t say there won’t be and I always answer this by saying that wouldn’t it be just like Jesus to bring our pets back to us in the next life?  Although I’ve had a couple that I’m pretty sure won’t make it.  In fact, if that one dog, Junior, who kept chewing up my Bibles is there, it won’t be much like Heaven for me.  Crazy mutt.

Okay, here’s another popular question.  It’s one we have touched on several times but for the record, let’s talk about what we are going to do in Heaven.  What do y’all know about it?  What are we going to do for eternity?  I sure hope we aren’t just gonna sit on a cloud and strum a harp.  No, we aren’t.  Heaven is sometimes described as a new Eden, as in Garden of Eden and that’s right.  Heaven will be similar to how God created earth to begin with before Adam and Eve sinned. 

In the Garden, Adam and Eve had work to do.  They were created to have dominion over the earth (Gen. 2); to rule and reign over it and we will do the same.  According to our faithfulness in this life, God will assign us to be rulers over different parts of the earth or of the universe even and that will bring great satisfaction to us as we will finally be doing exactly what we were created to do and since we will have new, glorified bodies, we won’t get tired and since there will be no sin, we will do it perfectly.

That leads to our next question, which is, what will our bodies be like?  If you read Luke 24, you will see that Jesus’ resurrection body was not limited by time or space.  He could walk through doors and walls and yet he had flesh and bones and was recognizable to His disciples.  He even ate food which, I think, answers another question and that’s good.  We all look forward to that.

In Colossians 1:18, the Apostle Paul describes Jesus as the “firstborn from the dead.”  The Greek word translated “firstborn” is the same word from which we get our word “prototype”.  The Bible says that Jesus’ resurrection body was a prototype of the bodies we will one day receive; bodies that are superior, and yet similar to our present ones. (Perfect Ending by Robert Jeffress, page 217)

So, those are the most basic and most asked questions about Heaven.  Who is going to be there?  What are we going to do?  What will we be like?  And, of course, will Fido and Fluffy be there?  Now, just like in the opening illustration of the man who paid your mortgage, you should have some questions about Heaven just like you would have questions about that man.  But you don’t have to know everything about Heaven to realize it’s a good deal.

You wouldn’t have to know the shirt size of the good neighbor paying your mortgage.  You don’t have to know his eye color or his favorite Kardashian.  You just need to know the basics about him.  What matters is if he is trustworthy and serious and if he is going to do what he says he is going to do and if he is then you just accept the deal.

It’s the same with Heaven.  We should ask those questions but what it boils down to is if God is trustworthy and going to do what He says about Heaven.  So, how do we know?  Well, how do we know if anybody is trustworthy?  We have to know if what they have said in the past is true.  Is their word reliable?  If it is, then just accept the deal.  Well, we have God’s Word right here in the Bible.  How do we know it’s true? Well, I’ll tell you what.  I could go all the way back to Genesis and start talking about how what God said would happen, actually happened.  I could tell you all about thousands of prophesies that predicted the birth, life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus hundreds of years before He was born.  Then I could show you in the New Testament all the places where those came true.  I could let you talk to friends of mine who could affirm the Word of God and some of them could tell wild stories of God’s salvation power.  But the best thing I know how to do to convince you of God’s trustworthiness is to just tell my simple story.

I became a follower of Jesus on February 16, 1975.  I was just a kid so my conversion story doesn’t have the flash that some Hells Angel, rapist, murdering, drug dealing thug might have but Jesus saved me that day nonetheless.  I knew that sin was anything that displeases God and I knew I was a sinner.  I could understand enough to know that Jesus was the only way to Heaven and that only He could forgive me of my sin and that without choosing Jesus, I was choosing Hell.  I understood enough.

Since that day, I have learned a lot and the more I study God’s Word, the more I realize I don’t know but I have never, not one time, found an error in His Word.  I have never known of Him to lie or be wrong or be late or unloving.  I don’t always understand Him but I know I can always trust Him.  I don’t have to know all the answers.  He has given me enough to know that He loves me and He is control and so I don’t have anything to fear or worry about. That’s how I know and you can know too.  Ask whatever questions you need to ask.  That’s good.  You should ask.  But at some point, you have to have faith and just accept the deal.  Accept that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life and that no man gets to the Father but through Him. (John 14:6) Accept Him into your life to be Lord of your life and then accept the fact that He will forgive you and make you into a new creation as 2 Corinthians 5:17 says.  All you have to do is accept the deal.

Then, do you know what God expects of you?  He expects you to go tell everybody you know about this deal.  He expects, actually commands that as we go, we are to make disciples of Him.  Do you remember what a disciple is?  We studied that a while back and I remember that a disciple is just somebody that learns from Jesus and then tells others what they know.

The subject of Heaven is a great place to start telling people what you know about it.  That’s exciting to think about and you don’t have to know everything.  It was funny.  A while back at Bible study, we were next door having a discussion about what the sermon was that morning and Jeanna asked some question I didn’t know.  (It’s not that hard.) When I told her I didn’t know, she kind of looked at me funny and said, “Now, I don’t want to be rude, but how are we supposed to have a discussion if you don’t know the answer?”  Well, I’m just a disciple just like y’all are.  I am a long way from knowing everything but what I do know, I want to share with my loved ones.  I want everybody to know Jesus and have a life-changing relationship with Him and so does this church and did you know that the Holy Spirit of God wants that as well? 

Look at verse 17 as we close.  It says, “¹⁷The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let the one who hears say, "Come!" Let the one who is thirsty come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.”  The Spirit says come to Jesus.  The Bride, which is the church says come to Jesus.  I want to announce it from the rooftop, come to Jesus and do you know who I am talking to?  I’m talking to the elect.  I’m talking to those that the Bible calls predestined and do you know who is predestined?  The Bible makes it clear right here that whoever wishes is the elect and the predestined.

We don’t have to know how any of it works.  All we have to do is ask the questions, accept the deal and then announce it to the world.  If you have never accepted the deal then what are you waiting for?  You know enough.  I don’t want to go to Heaven without you.  I love you too much.  Accept the deal today if you haven’t already.