Sermon Transcript
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Sermon with Gene Simco on Sun, Aug 18, 2024 10AM • 1:00:12
SUMMARY KEYWORDSJesus, people, Christianity, church, bible, god, world, sins, witness, talk, Christian, love, denominations, new testament, Christians, calling, Paul, read, written, life
In this message, Pastor Gene discusses the fundamentals of Christianity, including the differences between various denominations and the reliability of the Bible. He emphasizes the importance of living a holy life according to Galatians 5:16-26 and the significance of Jesus' teachings and sacrifice. The conversation also touches on the dangers of divisiveness in the church and the perceived hypocrisy of Christians. Pastor Gene presents a comprehensive argument for the historical validity of Christianity, highlighting the witnesses, historical evidence, and consistency of the New Testament accounts.
Good morning. Welcome. If you're new here among us, my name is Gene. I serve here at C3 Church as your pastor. And I heard a story. I heard a story about a guy who was about to jump off a bridge. Well, luckily, there was a Christian man taking a walk on this bridge. He saw it. So, of course, he said, don't do it. Stop. The guy responded, nobody loves me. He said, well, do you believe in God? Yeah, well, then you know God loves you. Okay, well, yeah, I believe in God. All right, well, so are you a Jew or a Christian? Well, I'm a Christian. Well, then you know Jesus loves you. This is great. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. He's going, well, you said you're a Christian, right? What denomination are you? I'm a Protestant. Good, good, good. Wait, hold on. So, but what denomination specifically? Okay, well, I'm a Baptist. Oh, good, then God really loves you. You're in, right? Okay, good. Oh, but wait. Are you a Northern Baptist or a Southern Baptist? I'm a Northern Baptist. Oh, good. So am I. That's good. You're set. But wait. Are you a Northern Conservative Baptist or a Liberal Baptist? I'm a Northern Conservative Baptist or a Liberal Baptist? Northern Conservative Baptist. Good. Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes region, or Northern Conservative Baptist, Eastern region? Great Lakes region. I was hoping you were going to say that. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes region, Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912. Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912. All of a sudden, the very same guy that was trying to stop this guy from jumping off the bridge pushed him off the bridge. On his way down, plummeting to his death, the last thing this man heard was, Die, heretic! Now, I can't tell you the next thing that he heard, because I'm not sure the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 gets into heaven. Sure, the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council in 1912 gets into heaven. It is estimated that there are over 40,000 Christian denominations out there. And yes, there are. All who are at odds with one another. And I'm happy to say that we're not one of them. And so if you like pushing people off bridges, this probably is not the place for you this morning. So, you know, we'll try to get rid of that feeling if you have it. Otherwise, the door's right there. Anyway, okay. Band-Aid off. We just, there we go. All right. So we find ourselves continuing in our reset series. This is a great series no matter where you're at. I know people get really advanced in things or they've been in Christianity for a long time. They think they know everything, but no, no, no. You got to go back to basics, right? It's really, really important. No matter, you know, I gave this illustration, whether it was martial arts or sports or, you know, whatever, you know, playing guitar, the basics are everything, right? So you got to get good at your basics. And so maybe there are some of you out there, maybe you stumbled a little in your walk, in your faith, that kind of thing, and so it would be good for you to get back to some basics, right? It's a good thing. If you're totally new, maybe you just want to start the right way, and this is the right way to start. So if you have friends, you can share these messages with them. And it's just a great place to start, especially for nonbelievers. It's really good. So if you don't believe in Jesus by the end of the message, my hope is that you will. And that's kind of what it's about today. So today we will be discussing why Christianity. So we discussed, like, all right, why God? Like, does God even exist? We started at the very, very beginning. The Bible, is it reliable and real? And we're going to kind of keep going on that theme this morning, but why Christianity, right? So what we have to look at first is kind of like reverse engineer things, right? So when you want to get back to basics, you know, you got to kind of look, get water from the source where it's the purest, right? So kind of got to go to the beginning, but we kind of look at like the way things are. Like, are we looking at Christianity right? So what Christianity is not, that's where I'm going to start. What it's not, because in a lot of ways, Christianity has become really diluted by a lot of the world, a lot of really worldly things, right? So we talked about the Bible, right? And we said the New Testament validates and helps define the old. It has been said that the New Testament is the best commentary on the old. We don't want to throw the old out, right? That's where we get all our prophecies, the information, all this good stuff we talked about last week. But if you want to know what Christianity is, you have to look at the New Testament, right? It cannot be defined in the Old Testament. It's not yet, right? So you've got to look at that, right? Now, when we read the New Testament, if you've read the New Testament a lot, right, like I have, you notice a real strong theme will come through. And it's all over the place. It just weaves itself through. There is this idea that the world and the word are opposed to one another. And so that's kind of weird for a lot of people. So it's one place in Christianity, people are like, huh? I don't get that. So it even says, so we get this defined now in the New Testament, that Satan is the lowercase g God of this world. That is said. So 2 Corinthians 4.4 is one place. But it comes up more than once. So you have this kind of separation. But what's happened in Christianity now is Christians have adopted a lot of these things from the world. And they're not always great things. And they put it in the mix here. So what's happened is a lot of these things that the Bible calls foolishness of the world, they've come into church and they've become really important. So one big thing, like when I first came into church, I noticed a lot is people were still throwing around a lot of credentials. A lot of credentials get thrown around in church, a lot. Like I went to this school, PhD, this and that. And you just don't see that at all in the New Testament. But it's a worldly thing, right? If you want to get a good job, you've got to go to college, right? So we're going to put that in church now. But that is not in the Bible. It's not in the New Testament at all. You went to the university of the Holy Spirit. Like that's how you learned all this stuff. And it's kind of a little bit better, right? Do you think that God is perhaps a better professor? Maybe you don't, right? And that's kind of how people get, right? They start throwing around these titles. Just like programs, you get a lot of these programs that you really just shouldn't need at all if you're just behaving like a family and the Holy Spirit's working within us. But we do that, right? Because the world said, well, this is how we're going to get more members, right? You know, so we had developed this worldly program, these marketing things, but we call it outreach. It's not marketing, right? So you develop all these different things, but we call it outreach. It's not marketing, right? So you develop all these different things, but that's not how they got followers and acts. Read it again, right? Extreme generosity, miracles, things like that, right? So, you know, and we've just let every institution, political institutions, all these things in the church that don't belong there. They were never there, right? So this is the problem, is it's all mixed in there, We're never there, right? So this is the problem, is it's all mixed in there. And it's all being done under the guise of being Christian when it's not. When we get the water from the pure source, it's not there. I said sauce because, like, pizza is always on my mind. Sorry. So what happens on the denominations is that you get this kind of, like, politics, polity, and carnality come into the church, right? And so you begin having these divisions in the church. And so if you've been here for a while, we've gone over this. I think I might've mentioned it in the series. Like the motivation, Paul writes 13 letters of the New Testament, books of the New Testament, right? So his motivation for writing a lot of it is unity. It's coming together. So a good scholar might say, yeah, like denominations are one of Paul's worst nightmares. It's coming together. So a good scholar might say, yeah, like denominations are one of Paul's worst nightmares. It's actually like, you know, you hear a lot about Romans, right, in church. That's the reason he's writing, to stop that from happening. He wants, you know, there's factions developing in the church and he wants to stop it, right? Ephesians, you might have heard of that, right? That is definitely unity. It could be like, that's it. That's the reason for writing. So, and Paul within that is saying, right? So you get to Romans in particular, right? He's saying, don't be conformed to this world, right? We're supposed to be different as Christians. And so that's the first thing you notice, like these denominations and Christians dividing. And so when you read the New Testament, when you get to the churches and all that other stuff, you see that, A, and we're going to outline this today, the gospel is primary. And I'm going to, we'll go over what the gospel is. That's primary. But there's a lot of what is called now, but it's okay, secondary doctrine, right? And so this comes up and a lot of people don't really pay attention. They kind of skip over these chapters, but that's what Romans 14 is all about. So back then they have issues that they're arguing about, like meat sacrifice titles. And this was a big deal. This came down in a church council. The church had decided and everything, but Paul's like, oh, you know what I mean? Don't divide over this, right? So if one person wants to eat that meat, fine, you know, whatever. Just don't let other believers stumble over it. Another issue there is the Sabbath. And you have denominations today, right? They'll tell you need to keep a Sabbath on this day of the week. But the Word of God, when Paul's writing to the church in Rome, says, no, don't worry about it. Like, you know, if one decides to worship on that day and it's holy, that's great. Don't divide. Stop arguing. And this theme will continue, right, through Romans, right? So honor everybody. Love everyone. Don't divide over it. First Corinthians 8 through 10, again, meat, sacrifice. The whole section, the context is not dividing over these secondary non-gospel issues, right? So I get denominations. What happens is they divide over these things. When the word of God tells us not to, if we're Christians, we all believe in the Gospel, we believe, you know, we'll go over it, these core things about Jesus, whatever. You know what I mean? You decide you want to take a Sabbath this day or that day. Whatever it is, fine. It's not Gospel, right? We love one another so much that we're not going to let things like that separate the church, right? Yet, we have gotten really far off, right? And you have even in their theology, right, these people coming up with things and they're really smug and they think they're really smart. They throw their credentials. We have Christian debates. It's kind of like an oxymoron. You know, it is when you read the word of God. It's wrong. It's incorrect. We're not supposed to be doing that, right? So, but we're smart. We know everything, right? We know more than God, right? So, you know, people will take pride in that too. I've seen, you know, I'm proud to be, you know, put the denomination. I'm proud of this. I'm proud of that. Pride's a sin. So when you have pride in your divide, you're doubly sinning. Got news. So not convinced about that denomination. So, we get so smart sometimes we miss the whole point. And we've seen this. I want to bring this back up again. A little review. 1 Timothy 1.5. The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith. But some people have missed this whole point. They have turned away from these things and spend their time in meaningless discussions. How many meaningless discussions are going around the interweb right now, right? How many do we see? And that is where the mainstream church is at. That's where it's at, sadly. But the Bible says, if it's not gospel, it's not worth arguing about. But here's the thing. Most people calling themselves Christians love to argue and divide over all this stuff and love to take pride in how much more they know or they think they know or they're right. And here's the problem. When we talk about why Christianity, we've got to start here because it's not working. It's not working. More churches have to really get in line with this and get the right response. It's not working. So if you start looking at statistics, pastoral dropout rate, it's almost 40%. Don't worry. Every time I say that, they're like, you're not going to leave us, Pastor G. Almost 40%. Don't worry. Every time I say that, they're like, you're not going to leave us, Pastor G. Almost 40%. It's almost 40%, right? Why? Because a pastor, whatever it is, they go to a seminary, Bible school, they get their training, right? They're ready to go. And even though they're warned about all these different things, they're like, don't you guys love Jesus? And they're like, no, we want, like the auditorium painted a different color. We love that more. The landscaping isn't right. Right. And so they're like, I thought we were here to love one another. Right. And this person did that and the sheep are backbiting and they're like, I am done. And then you have people bringing things from the outside world into the church, even though like the Bible tells us, don't talk about that stuff, but we want to talk about it. You need to address it, pastor. And eventually they just go, I'm done. Or they're me and I just preach the word of God. I say, whatever, get out. And then again, they overextend themselves with all the bills. Why? Because they became worldly. Okay. You know, we want more stuff. We want to be impressive, right? So go ask a pastor how many members of his church he has, right? It's always like this really inflated number. Why does he do that? It's a worldly thing. I don't know. I saved one soul. Done. Good. All right. Quite frankly, it's a dying religion. Because people are not really grasping this yet. More churches are closing every day in the United States of America than opening. That's a problem. Churches, regardless of denominations, regardless. Then you have these big American churches that come in, and they promise the world like the Borg, and they swallow all the little churches up. That's what you do in business, not church. It's a problem, and the outside world sees it. Youth group. You send your kid to youth group. Dropout rate last time I checked was approaching 70%, 67%. So if your kid goes to youth group, they have like a 30% chance of making it as a Christian. And then I've had people say, like, well, great. You know, 30%. That’s me I’m good for you good for you but shouldn't we care about like the 70 of kids that are not making it so we become consumers right we care about ourselves not passing things on or doing discipleship so the outside world sees it and. And so they see that Christianity isn't really something different. It's just like the rest of the world. But we're supposed to be offering people something very, very different, a heavenly alternative that of course is better. So we've seen that the Bible is really clear about what the world offers. If you've been here for a long time, you've heard these things. These worldly institutions and the so-called knowledge that we think we have, they're incompatible. It doesn't work. The waters have become very, very muddied lately. I want to show you something. We're going to kind of reset here and just now let's take the next step. Well, it's not. What does a Christian look like? Because what? They'll judge us by our fruit, Jesus says, right? So they'll know you by your love, not your intellect, your love, right? They'll know you by that. So, okay, so what is a Christian then? Getting towards why Christianity? All right, well, the Bible says you'll know a Christian by their that. So, okay, so what is a Christian then? Getting towards why Christianity. All right, well, the Bible says you'll know a Christian by their fruit. So we've done this comparison before. I'm going to bring this chart back up because it's a nice visualization for you guys. Really important on this topic. If you want to define a Christian, I will show you biblically exactly how you do it. So this is how you do it. All right, so we'll go to Galatians 5. It's a nice little chart here. So what I do is basically like this is the first part that you're going to read and it breaks it off into two sections. So you can see bad, good, and at the bottom, the follow-up. And if you want this, people always like take pictures during it. I can email it to you or send it to you if you want. So we're in Galatians. And funny enough here, there's a faction of teachers, right, coming through this region, Galatia, and they're telling people that they need to do things like the law. So you need to do the law, you need to be religious this way, and all this stuff. And so there are factions beginning to develop. So again, Galatians, unity. Don't divide over this stuff. Don't fall for this false teaching. So Galatians 5.16, So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you're not free to carry out your good intentions. He's not letting you off the hook there, okay? So you'll see in a minute, not letting off the hook. He's just barking at the people who are not living right, right? So bad stuff. So he goes through the bad stuff. When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear. Sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. I think it's a warning. Let me tell you, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God. That's terrifying, right? So then we get to good stuff. But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So there's no law against these things. Why is he saying that? Remember the context I told you. They're dividing over the law. Galatians 5.24. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to the cross and crucified them. They're dead. So your sinful nature, those passions, they're dead. You are dead to sin. Go back to Romans. Remember we went through recently Romans 6 and 8. Talked about those, they're dead. You are dead to sin. Go back to Romans. Remember we went through recently Romans 6 and 8, talked about that. They're dead. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives. Which is what? Just keep that up. Which is what? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. We'd love to see more Christians explain that. That's judge a tree by its fruit. Well, that's Christian fruit. That's Holy Spirit fruit. So if someone's a Christian, you're going to see a lot of that. Will we make mistakes? Yes, everybody makes mistakes. But for the most part, you're going to see a lot more of that fruit of the Spirit all the time. So those who are not really Christians will display these qualities, and I want you to think about them. Sexual immorality, obviously impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. And there's the warning again, right? Let me tell you again. People living like that will not inherit the kingdom of God. So it's like a backwards question. Where's the Holy Spirit if we're not, if we're seeing more of this, right? And not enough of the other thing. The Holy Spirit's not there. You can't be saved without the Holy Spirit in you. It's kind of obvious. Now, you may have noticed something because there are a few. Like it begins with what I call the hypocrite's favorite sins to pick on, right? So, right, sort of fake Christian like to pick on, right? So, like the sexual sin. That's what they're going to do. That's what's on the picket line, right, right up there. Like, so there, they put that sexual sin up there because different things like that. And they go out and they pick it, right? But they forget about all the others because while they're picketing, they're guilty of like five other sins on that list. Oops. And did you notice that Paul didn't say, but you know, the hostility, if you do that, you're good. The quarreling, if you do that, you're good. It doesn't say that. Anyone, any of them, bad, just as bad. There's no like, well, first, you know, it doesn't say that. Anyone, any of them. Bad, just as bad. There's no like, well, first, you know, when you read your Bible, yes, sexual sin, it's worse. But these ones are still on there, though. Yeah, right? So then all of a sudden, you see these other sins in there. Hostility, Quarreling. Quarreling. Jealousy. Outbursts of anger. Boy, I see a lot of people calling themselves Christians with outbursts of anger on their Facebook page. You're frightening me. I can't even look at Facebook anymore. I'm like, I am terrified for you right now. Why aren't you just loving everybody? Forget about these divides. Just love people. When they come to Jesus, the rest will fall into place. Selfish ambition. So there's the titles in church and all those things, right? Selfish ambition. Dissension. Division. Sounds like a congregational church. This is PTSD. Anyway. Division. The motivation for denomination. Right there. So this is why most non-Christians looking from the outside in will say that Christians are hypocrites. They don't want to be a part of this country club. Because when we act that way, that's what it is. Nothing more. It's country club. And so I don't want to join that club. it is. Nothing more. It's country club. And so I don't want to join that club. It sounds terrible. Or they see these Christians posting online, all this divisive, and that's what it sounds like to me. I don't even look at it anymore. This is terrible. Like if this is what you're worried about, I thought like Jesus, and you've got heaven, and it's so great. And they mock us, right? Because we should be like screaming from, this is awesome, guys, I'm getting into heaven. I want you to be there with me. It's so awesome. Oh, the stuff in the world, whatever. The world's going to like, what does the Bible tell us? The world's going to melt. It's going to disappear in flames. That's what the Bible says. Yeah, read 2 Peter. Read what Jesus says, right? These warnings, Mark 13, Matthew 24, lets us know that. Revelation, we see that. If you're a Christian, you believe that. I'm like, I don't know. No worse day for me. I don't celebrate that. But anyway, like, I believe the Bible over anybody else. So people, whatever it is. I know, yeah, this whole thing is going to fall apart. And then Jesus has to come back. Why do I care? Like, I'm just waiting for Jesus. I'm happy about that. But they're not seeing Christians behave in an appropriate way. It's not an appropriate response to what we believe. And so they say, well, maybe you don't believe. Maybe. Right? So the first step, that's the first step. When you're looking at real, you got to define what Christianity is. What are Christians, right? So what is this supposed to look like? That's what it's supposed to look like. Everything is underneath that fruit of the Spirit. Once we get that right, we can move on to separating it out from the world. I just want to show you this. This is really redundant. So I'm just picking one part. This is very hard for me because if you've been here for a long time, you know what I like to do. If I have a point, it's like, then you're just arguing with God, right? So I'll give you one, and then I'll tell you a few, right? So Christianity is supposed to be, like, apart from all these things. So that's where we get all these things. So we get all that sin of the flesh. That comes from the world. It comes from all the worldly institutions. And it's all garbage, right? So you just watch the news, whatever it is. It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on. It's just trash. It's just a lot of just fear-baiting trash, right? So God's word tells us, no, no, no, no. So this is one place. 1 John 2.15, do not love this world, nor the things it offers you. For when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see. Remember what faith is? We define that. Faith is everything we don't see. Everything we see and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever. Did you notice that? All the things the world typically values are not from the Father. Pride. And a lot of you, if you're conservative, you're like, hmm, yeah, pride. You too. Pride in your achievements. Pride in your possessions are not from the Father, but are from this world. Pride in your denomination is not from the Father. It's a worldly idea. So very, very redundant themes where I'm restraining myself a little bit. But if we read Philippians, we go to Philippians, Paul will get to the point where he's listing off these credentials that are now garbage to him. They're trash. They're garbage. He considers them worthless. All these things. And he's like that Ph. right he's a pharisee of pharisees blameless according to the law circumcised on the eighth day Hebrew of Hebrews they're all skivala in Greek … I said a bad word in Greek but that's what Paul writes that's like a four-letter word begins with a C. It's like poop, right? Consider them all refuse. That's what the Bible says. So when Paul's converted from that worldly world thing, religion, his sect, he's converted, it's all gone. He throws it all out. They're worthless compared to the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus as my Lord. Correct response. So, again, in Romans' appeal for unity, what is he saying? Don't be conformed to the world. So all this stuff about the division, Romans 12, therefore, I appeal to you, I plead to you, to make your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewal of the mind. And then he goes on, by the Holy Spirit's power, love even your enemies. Don't repay insult for insult. Be like Jesus, right? Oh, and then chapter 13, honor authorities. Pay your taxes. That's what it says. Read your Bible. Romans 14 14 then we get to that don't divide over stuff like the sabbath and all this stuff so what is it love love love love no matter what don't just love people so that's real Christianity the crux of it anyway so now let's look at real Christianity versus other religions because the question we asked at the beginning or I asked was, why Christianity? Can't I just go to another religion and then get what I need from that? What's the difference? Okay. So we understand, right, we're in an information age. So at the same time, we want to be able to, you know, we want to be able to inform people, but we don't want to fight with people. But at the same time, just anyone can publish a website or anything. You don't need a website anymore, you know, social media. You can get on there and say whatever, right? And there's too many of that, especially in Christianity, right? I don't know what they're talking about, but they have a lot to say. So anybody can get on there. And then from any faith, anything. So we have the flying spaghetti monster religion. People will just believe anything. The universe, it's all out there. So what we have to do is kind of cut through that and start looking at historical facts. That's how you know when something's real, historical facts versus just like anything out there. So really looking at it. Now, remember, we talked about what the Bible is. So the Bible is historical truth. You have to understand that. That's very important. So I'm going to go a little bit further on that with the New Testament. So the first thing, when you look at other religions, it's this because I said something. So if you look at any other worldview, it's really weak historically. There's just not a whole lot to back it up. But furthermore, within that history, it's a because I said so type of thing. So it's one person, one experience tells people about it. And then the followers just have to believe that one person's word for it. Whereas Christianity is the opposite. And it's quite interesting. So we talked about the New Testament. So here Jesus didn't, well, the Holy Spirit inspired the human authors of these books. So we'll talk about the human authors. So let's just talk about that. So Jesus himself, since the Throne of the Pan, write down any of these books. He just allowed the witnesses to write them, which is quite impressive, right? So it tells you something about him right there. Whereas other religions, they got to write about themselves, right? So it's the opposite. So I did this a little bit, but we'll expand a little more. We'll look at the New Testament. People call them witnesses for a reason because they're written by witnesses. Now we have another problem in Christianity. We have scholars coming around and coming up with these hypotheses, right? Well, I really think that this was written then or this person really wrote this or this came about later. Stop it. That's not history. That's not what the early church fathers wrote about these things. We have to look to history to find out how they believed these things came about and who wrote them. And so when you look at these early church writings, it's like 100, 200 years after the Bible had been written, they're codifying this stuff. We talk about canonization. They're coming up with this. And so that history tells us what the church believed, regardless of what someone says 1,800 years later. Kind of silly, but whatever, right? So when we look at the history of this, we see Matthew. Matthew's an apostle, right? So clearly he knows Jesus. He wrote the gospel of Matthew. That's a witness, right? Mark. Mark, you see him appearing at the end of the gospel of Mark probably, but also in Acts. So he's a witness to some of this stuff. Luke, Dr. Luke, right? So we see him in Acts with Paul. He's together with Paul. So he's a witness to a lot of these things. John, the disciple Jesus loved, right? So he's an apostle, right? So then you get to Acts and then Acts written by Luke. It's a history of the early church. And again, you find him in there. Then you get Paul's 13 letters. And so he is a witness to the resurrection of Jesus. Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, probably not Hebrews. Okay, so you can have that, right? But whatever, right? And then you get James, Jesus' brother, an amazing conversion story. He doubted Jesus at first and then became the head of the church in Jerusalem. And he writes James, 1 and 2 Peter. Peter, he's like the lead apostle, right? So he's a witness, right? So you have first through third John. That's John, again, the disciple of Jesus, loved Jude, another probably conversion story. It's probably Jesus' brother Jude. Amazing. Now an authority in the church. He's a witness clearly to Jesus with his brother, right? Same thing with James. And then Revelation, John. Witnesses. That's amazing. There's nothing like that. And they're witnessing what Jesus does. So that's the first thing we need to understand. In addition to this, you have people like Tacitus and Josephus, like historians of that time. They're writing about Christianity. So it's not just the Christians. Like, they're acknowledging, yeah, this guy Jesus. So they're acknowledging all this stuff. Jesus. So they're acknowledging all this stuff. So now in contrast with all other worldviews, it really is what people accuse the Bible of being. That really is this game of telephone. It's a bit of a myth. You have to have a lot of faith in like one person and what they're claiming, who probably has selfish ambition. And that's the reason they're making these claims. With Christianity, it's the opposite. It's not like that. So Jesus is extremely humble. Now, back to that first person's experience. A lot of people don't realize also that there are knockoff versions, is what I call them, of Christianity. And so some of the most popular worldviews are just knockoff versions. They don't understand. So Islam's the first one that comes to mind. So you need to think about this for a second. You have someone going off, having their own personal experience, making claim, Muhammad goes off, comes back, I got this Quran. Well, here's a couple problems. One, you have to believe him. No evidence, no miracles, no nothing like that Jesus did, right? There's nothing there. No one's writing about it, right? But hold on. So you have like, let's just say, 600 years go by after the Bible's been canonized like this. So you have the New Testament and the Old Testament. It's done, right? So the church is there, everything. We've got different versions of the Bible. So you've got, actually, yeah, the Vulgate's written by then. You have the Greek Bible. We talked about that last week, right? So no English yet, but so this is already, that's it, right? So why is it knockoff Christianity? Well, because Muhammad comes by, he starts telling all these other stories about Abraham and Jesus. He says, Jesus is a prophet. He tells us, oh, the virgin birth happened, but you know, he's not God, right? So stop. So you have history and that's how all the early Christians view this stuff about Jesus. History, and you're just going to decide, nah, that's wrong. We're going to come up with a totally different version. Okay. Someone tried to do that today. It would sound kind of stupid, like someone came up with a new version of American history. I'm sure it exists. But we all know what really happened, and they come up with a different version, and then everyone's like, yeah, that sounds great. It's stupid, right? Like, oh, sorry, or not sorry, right? That's stupid. It doesn't make any sense, right? So it's a knockoff version. Within what people, and this is how bad it is, it's some of the denominations, but there are knockoff versions of Christianity that people think are Christians. Mormonism. Yeah. Mormonism, that's a cult. That's not Christianity. They do not believe the same thing about Jesus that we do here at C3 Church and, you know, evangelical churches. They don't believe he's the same kind of God. And so what's Joseph Smith, you know, goes off, has his own experience, decides that he can have lots of wives. That's cool. Right. And then and then writes the Book of Mormon. It's like, okay, but the Bible itself tells us, do not change it or you're cursed. But, yeah, sorry, ignore that. I've got new stuff. Let's knock off Christianity. That's not Christianity. So, and again, now this is like 1,800 years after the Bible's been canonized. Why would we believe that? That's nonsense. So again, taking one person's word for it versus real witness Christianity. Now, just very quickly, speaking of witnesses, it's just an interesting thing if you don't know this. If you've heard the word martyr, the word martyr actually comes from the Greek word witness. So when I first started learning how to read Greek, I came upon martyron in Greek and I was like, why is it calling? I guess, you know, most of the apostles died, but it's calling everybody a martyr. Like what's going on here in learning Greek? It just means witness. It doesn't mean martyr. How did it come to mean that? Well, because Christians being at all times loving, peaceful, right? So we went through this before in another series. There's no Christian army. They got martyred for their belief. We have a strong history of that. So if you witness, you will probably die. And so people would eventually just adopt that term and apply it to witnesses in Christianity. Well, there are martyrs. It's almost like a mockery, right? You know, like, oh, well, that's a martyr, Christian witness, and you're going to die. But what you have, again, another perversion of what a martyr is. And so from without, like Islamic martyrs, they're known for not only taking themselves out, right, but a lot of people with them. It's the opposite of just peacefully dying for Jesus. What could be a better witness to the faith? Yeah, I'm going to heaven. Great. And if you read Revelation, I'm going to rise from the dead first too. That's a great display of faith. But now it's horrible. You're killing people. So it's a perversion of martyrdom where it developed. Christianity invented this. And from within, witnessing. What kind of witness is like screaming at people and picket sign, pointing out other people's sins? That's no martyr. Not at all. I'm going to be self-sacrificial, put aside some of my points to get people to Jesus. I can't even keep your mouth shut. Not impressed. So a perversion of that term. So one of the accusations to why I mentioned it before is that when people talk about Christianity, they'll say this about the Bible. It's an extremely ignorant statement, but they'll say it's like a game of telephone, right? So it was written hundreds of years later and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's the kind of line of thinking that they'll go down. Now, we're going to talk about the New Testament writings. Even last week, though, I was saying, you know when you get these writings from the Old Testament, they come from all different parts of the world, let's just say. It's remarkably close for oral tradition considered, right, and coming from different parts. It's really close. But the New Testament, and I'll get there, is even better. So to answer this first question, right, so you can ask an atheistic question. And so I've gone down this, I do this a few times a year, and it's good to memorize if you can. All right, so ask an atheistic question. So they make this claim about the Bible. It's not reliable. Okay, great. All right. Do you believe in Alexander the Great? Start there. Most sane people will say yes. So if they say no, just walk away. Yes, right? So why? And then what it's going to boil down to is, well, history, right? Because you can't know Alexander the Great. No DeLorean, no time machine, so forget it. All right, so, okay. So we can't do that. No time travel. Sorry. My wife loves time travel shows. So her favorite. Sorry, can't do that. No time travel. Sorry. My wife loves time travel shows. Her favorite. Sorry, can't do it. So what do we have? History. It's her second favorite thing. So history. We look at the history. Great, great, great, great. So tell me about the history. Tell me about, like, what have you read? Now, 9 out of 10 people will not answer this question. You can very passively make them feel stupid. So, okay, well, here we go. Life of Alexander by Plutarch. It's probably the closest thing that we have to the Gospels are to Jesus. And it's interesting because Life of Alexander, it's written around the same time as the Gospels. Look at it around 100 A.D. So Gospels may be a little bit around the same time as the Gospels. Look at it around 100 A.D. So Gospels may be a little earlier, but around the same time. Really? Yeah. There's one problem. Jesus died, what, 30 A.D.? Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C. Yet the first and most reliable work for him we have. We have one maybe 100 years earlier, but still 300 years after he's dead. But that's the same accusation you leveled against the Bible, which is true for Alexander. Yet you still believe he existed. Interesting. So the New Testament is written in a witness period. I just outlined that for you. Really important. So what we have for Jesus, it's kind of like for that time period, historical gold. It's amazing. It's a primary document. It's really not a lot like that in that time of history for people. So what you want to do, and I've just learned this through a lot of trial and error. Gary Habermas, he does a minimal facts argument. So I'm giving you the, like, you know, 10-minute version of his hour-and-a-half version. But basically, long story short is, what happens with the New Testament, and it drives me nuts because even Christian scholars are doing it, like they'll doubt authorship and they'll move the dates around and stuff like that. But 1 Corinthians is really good, not just at weddings, and they'll move the dates around and stuff like that. But 1 Corinthians is really good, not just at weddings, but it's really good because no even secular historian will argue with that book about its authorship, its validity. Like they'll say, nope, Paul was a real person writing to real people who believed in Jesus. He was a head of a church. He believes what he's saying. So secular atheist scholars, if I didn't make that clear, they will give you 1 Corinthians. So fine. So we jump over like that whole thing about the Bible, right? So we skip that argument and you move on. So when we get to 1 Corinthians 15, here's the gospel in short. We get the gospel. And so let me read this to you. 1 Corinthians 15.1. Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the good news I preached to you before. You welcomed it then, and you still stand for a minute. It is the good news that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you, unless, of course, you believe something that was never true in the first place. I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scripture said. So there you have that prophecy, right, from the Old Testament coming in. You can't like separate them. This is how they join each other here. All right. He was buried and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Old Testament scripture said. He was seen by Peter and then the 12. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him, for I am the least of all the apostles. In fact, I'm not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God's church. So this is remarkable, because what you have here is a historical, like a primary document written by a witness. He's outlining the gospel. So Jesus died for us. He died this death on the cross. He rose from the dead. And a bunch of people witnessed him. 500. So he's calling out 500 people. He's naming real-life people that existed and say, go check it with them. This is amazing. And as I said, most historians will put this about 25 years after Jesus' crucifixion. In ancient writings, it's nothing, nothing else like that. There's your gospel. There are your historical facts. That's how we know. It's also a wealth of information worth mentioning. So I talked about the Old Testament, right? No matter where it comes from, it's pretty remarkable. It's as close as it is. The New Testament is at a different level. So if you look at ancient writings, you're looking at like Plato, Aristotle, things like that. Seven copies we have, like 47 copies, right? The New Testament, 6,000. We're getting close to 6,000 copies, ancient copies of the New Testament. That's just Greek. That's not other ancient languages. Nothing's even remotely close. And when we compare them, right? So one came from all the way over here, one came from all the way, they're like 95% agreement. They're like the same. It's literally when you're looking at things historically, it's a miracle. It's a miracle. There's nothing like this. It's unbelievable. And the little 5% difference, they're like little grammatical changes. It doesn't change anything about the story, right? There are some sections here and not there in older copies or the other copies, but it changes nothing about the gospel. It changes nothing about history, right? It's a little 5% difference. So we get to this key. So I'll go to the resurrection here. The resurrection is key. That's why I bring that up. So when Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 15, he will say, if the resurrection didn't happen, my faith is useless. It's worthless. Your faith is worthless. You're just believing for nothing. It's like the resurrection is pivotal. And so I don't really recommend a lot of Christian movies. And there are a couple of reasons for that. It surprises people. Like you're a pastor. It's like, I'm not a normal pastor. So, but anyway, I don't like Christian movies. First of all, production value, terrible. Right? So that's the first thing. Can't stand it. Second of all, acting, usually bad. Like third thing, right? So I get some nods here. Third thing, if you know the word of God, they all get it wrong. There's absolutely no Christian movies that get it 100% right. It's unbelievable. Like, hey, director, just hold a Bible in front of you. Like, that's your script, right? It's terrible, right? And so we go back to the Mormons. They're the producers of the most popular Christian-like series out there. And it's horrific. It's so bad. If you know the Word of God, you can't watch this thing for more than like 30 seconds. It's so, so bad. It veers from the word of God so much, although we're commanded never to do that, right? And they depict a different Jesus, right? That's what they're doing there. That's the agenda. It's a very different Jesus from the Bible. So anyway, there's one that I've liked and it's called Case for Christ. And there are variations of his books. Guy Lee Strobel, he's like an investigative journalist, maybe a lawyer, a smart, smart guy. And so his wife is a Christian, and so he sets out to disprove Christianity using like the real, you don't see this anymore, like what reporters are supposed to do, like the journalistic and historical method. That's what? You know what I mean? Like, anyway. So he decides to use them, right? So by the historical and journalistic method, he's going to disprove Christianity. He talks to guys like Gary Habermas. I mean, like top, top guys. Top guys after saying, oh, no, no. But anyway, you know, really well-educated guys in Christianity. He goes around to all these authorities. Gosh, I'm burying myself. So anyway, he goes around to these guys, and he asks them, like, okay, how do I disprove this? And they're like, disprove the resurrection. And they point to what Paul says. He's like, it's done. If you can just prove that, it's over. So he goes through this painstaking process, like all the historical documents, everything. The evidence, by his own process is so extraordinarily overwhelming that he converts to Christianity. That's how amazing it is. It's that amazing. So let's look at the resurrection and explore some facts here. So we'll just look at some of these facts, and I'll bring it to, like, why you should believe now knowing all this. Historically reliable, check, check, check. I've got these things, like, you should believe now knowing all this, right? So historically reliable, check, check, check. I got these things like real Christians aren't really jerks, right? Check, check, check. You want to kind of be a part of this club, right? So if it's being done, right? All right. So let's look at the facts. Jesus claimed to be God. We're going to do this a little bit more, I think next week. So Jesus claimed to be God. He is God. And it doesn't, this is another thing I'll, I'll, I'll teach you guys about this next week if you don't already know. The Bible says it. The witnesses say it. He says it in his own way. I and the Father are one before Abraham was. I am invoking the name of Jesus in Exodus 4, burning bush. And even then Paul will elaborate Titus 2.13. You're looking at Philippians 2. He called Jesus God, straight up to the God. So the witnesses believe Jesus God, doubting Thomas even like even. Like, my God. He's not surprised like that. He's literally calling him God and worshiping him. So Jesus is God. Period. His witnesses believe that. In fact, he was crucified for making those claims. So Mark 14.62. So you're the Son of God, the Blessed One. I am. Invoking that name again. You will see the Son of Man coming with power and authority on the clouds of heaven. He claimed it, right? And they said, crucified. Do we need to hear anything else? They kill him for it. So he believed it. Everybody else around him believed he thought that. His existence, death, burial are documented by the New Testament, historical documents, and other sources. He rose from the dead after three days, documented by witnesses, ascended to heaven 40 days later, documented by witnesses, 40 days later. So again, he ascends to heaven. Now this series of events is predicted in the Old Testament. So it all begins coming true. And so the early believers are pointing back at it going, yeah, did you see this? This was predicted. Jesus is doing everything that it says. So what does this mean? Well, the first thing is we must understand the need for Jesus. First of all, he's the only way to heaven. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes to the Father except through me. So we read in John 14. That's the first thing. But a story has been told about other worldviews. So there's a story that's told about a man who falls into a pit. A man falls into a pit, and then different religious leaders walk by and they have different responses. So Confucius goes by and say, well, if he'd listened to me, he never would have gotten in there. Buddha comes by. Well, if he'll just come up here, right, I'll help him out. Jesus comes by, gets down in the pit, and lifts the guy up. That's the difference. We talked about his humility and what he's done for us. Humankind chooses sin. We get ourselves in the pit, and Jesus saves us. That's the difference. That's the difference. From the very beginning, we talked about it last week, we've been rejecting God. That's the crux of the Bible, the rejection of God by humankind. I'll go back and watch it if you want to see. But despite that, people will say something like, people are generally good. Really? Okay, you must not be a parent. Because if you you're a parent you know that people are not good they're not good at all like I thought this was going to be way easier right so the first thing we do is we manipulate by crying right we're liars and we learn if we can get attention that's why you let them cry it out young parents right and you don't make your children monsters right so you let them cry it out right if you don't do that they monsters, right? So you let them cry it out, right? If you don't do that, they're going to keep working you. So they're manipulating you. Have you ever heard the phrase, like, get your hand caught in the cookie jar? Why does that exist? Because kids are thieves. They will steal from you. If you want to have kids, I'm talking you out of it. Remember, the world's going to melt. Forget it. So, right? They're liars. We're liars, right? So, right, they're liars. We're liars, right? So have you ever lied? Don't say no, right? Yes, that doesn't sound like a very good person, does it? No, liars. Have you ever stolen anything? Hand in the cookie jar, right? But classic example, I didn't even think about this until my mentor told me. I was trained to be a pastor. And he gave this illustration about putting money on, like you ever pick up money on the street? I'm like, whatever, right? And he's like, that doesn't belong to you. You're a thief. It's true. He's like, what if that was like your smartphone or something? Hello? It's not yours. Leave it. Blew my mind. The thief doesn't sound like a good person. Does it? Have you ever cheated on your significant other in any relationship you've ever been in? No? Well, Jesus says if you even look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart. That doesn't sound like a person with a good heart, does it? That's me. Have you ever hated anyone or been angry with them? Jesus says, Sermon on the Mount, if you're angry with someone, it's akin to murder. Read it. Anger. Doesn't sound like a person with a good heart. By the Holy Spirit's help, we talked about this a lot last week or previous weeks, we can start to get it right. He can clean us out a little bit. We can get it right. We can live blamelessly as the Bible says. But the thing is we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So we must understand that. That's the first thing. You need Jesus. He's the only one who can get you out of that pit. No one else. So in the Old Testament, the answer for this was, and I'm trying to make this simple, like substitutionary sacrifice. So the animal would be the substitute. You deserve to die for your sins. You're a thief, a liar, a murderer, an adulterer. You deserve to die. So what did they do? They'd sacrifice the animal. Sometimes they'd stone them to death, but they'd sacrifice the animal. So shed blood for the forgiveness of sins. But Jesus comes along, So great our God is and decides to become that sacrifice for us. He pays that price for us. So he dies the death we deserve. And so as I kind of wrap up, I just want to paint a picture for you because a lot of people will say like that old system, like sacrifice system, killing people. It's crazy. But here's the thing, guys. In this country, we have the death penalty. Very few civilized nations have that. And a lot of Christians advocate that, even though Jesus said, drop the stone. John 8. Huh. I don't like to listen to Jesus all the time. But we have the death penalty. So I want you to just imagine something happening. And maybe you can. Maybe we've gotten away with stuff. Maybe you can. Like you get put on trial for something, and you're found guilty. But the thing is, is that the death penalty is the punishment. So maybe we're applying Jesus' standards and we realize we deserve to die and so the verdict comes down right you're sentenced to death but the judge says approach the bench you approach the bench he's like kind of feeling sorry now yeah all right here's the thing I’ve got a son and he's going to take the punishment you deserve all you got to do is accept him as your and he's going to take the punishment you deserve. All you've got to do is accept him as your Savior. He's going to save you. We're going to give you a probation officer. He'll help you get it right, check in with him once in a while. And just don't do that ever again. That's what Jesus said to the woman in adultery. Go and sin no more. And he said, don't do that again. So what's this a picture of? Well, this is a picture of Christianity through our lens, what we understand in our world. So the judge could be God the Father, right? The Son is Jesus. We have to accept him as our Lord and Savior. And then he paid the price for us. Probation officer, kind of a cute way to illustrate the Holy Spirit. We have someone helping us get it right. And that's how it works. It's just like that. And if that sounds crazy to you, it is. That's God's crazy love for us. That's what he does for us. That's why Christianity. If you're still doubting it and asking why, I'll leave you with this. If you're still doubting it and asking why, I'll leave you with this. We mentioned this last week. It's a life that works. It's a life that works. Show me another worldview, right? It works. Real. Christianity works. A lot of people, maybe it's you today, you're feeling void of meaning and purpose, right? You've tried all these different things and it's not working out. Well, through Jesus, we have purpose. We're ambassadors of the most high king. What better job is there than that? Fantastic, right? And if you're tired, who's tired of abusive? Do we have someone here today? I'm tired of abusive relationships. Anyone in an abusive relationship? Maybe these things are leading to sin. Maybe that sin is causing you guilt. Maybe it's causing you shame. You ever look back at some of the stupid things I've done? Shame. I hate that feeling. I hate it. In the pit of your stomach. We have it in the past, but are you tired of doing it again and then doing it again? And that's insanity, the definition of insanity. You're going through that shame. You can be free of that. You can be free of that cycle, free of that guilt, free of that shame. And in a good relationship with Jesus, never let you down. Never cheat on you. He's faithful. So no matter what you've done, you can reset. We invite you to do that today. Jesus offers a new path to a good life through him and an eternal life in him. We have hope, something the world clearly lacks now. No hope. But through Jesus, we can have hope and something the world clearly lacks now. No hope. But through Jesus, we can have hope in an eternal life that this world is not it. It's just a journey. We can have fun on the ride, but this isn't it. So you're invited. So first of all, you're going to be told how you can connect with us, and I encourage you to do that. Connect to the church. We talked about the purpose of the church and being very, very important. We don't want you doing life alone. God doesn't want you doing life alone. It's not church. It literally means to assemble. It doesn't mean building. It means to assemble as a body of believers. So we're made for one another. We're made to help and encourage one another. And if you're not getting that yet, we are a real church for people. Like, we're real. It doesn't matter. There's none of this judgment. We understand everybody's at a different place. You know, whatever it is, it's fine. No matter what you've done, no matter where you've come from, no matter what you're doing, it's okay. Patience, kindness, gentleness, we try to lead with that. So connect with us. You're going to be told how to do that. I encourage you to do that. Or you can just come up to me and shake my hand. I bite, but like, not like you can just come up to me and shake my hand. I bite, but not like people I just met. It takes me like three or four times. So look, the thing I want to invite you, and normally I pray for you guys, but I want to invite you in a little prayer. We don't do this a whole lot, but a very, very simple prayer. You don't have to pray this out loud. You don't have to memorize the words. What's important is what's in your heart. You don't want to say, you know, you can just silently think this, pray this or not, and then talk to me. We can talk more about it if you still don't believe. But after hearing the gospel today, after hearing about Jesus from an intellectual perspective, historical perspective, and from a faith-based perspective, if you're saying, yeah, you know what? That's the kind of life I want. if you're saying, yeah, you know what? That's the kind of life I want. I'm going to invite you to pray this with me. Father, I know that I've broken your laws and my sins have separated me from you. I'm truly sorry and now I want to turn away from my past sinful life toward you. Please forgive me and help me to avoid sinning again. I believe that your son, Jesus Christ, died for my sins, was resurrected from the dead and is alive. I declare that Jesus is Lord of my life, who rules and reigns in my heart from this day forward. Please fill me with the Holy Spirit to help me obey you and do your will for the rest of my life. In Jesus's name, amen. Thank you. you
SUMMARY KEYWORDSJesus, people, Christianity, church, bible, god, world, sins, witness, talk, Christian, love, denominations, new testament, Christians, calling, Paul, read, written, life
In this message, Pastor Gene discusses the fundamentals of Christianity, including the differences between various denominations and the reliability of the Bible. He emphasizes the importance of living a holy life according to Galatians 5:16-26 and the significance of Jesus' teachings and sacrifice. The conversation also touches on the dangers of divisiveness in the church and the perceived hypocrisy of Christians. Pastor Gene presents a comprehensive argument for the historical validity of Christianity, highlighting the witnesses, historical evidence, and consistency of the New Testament accounts.
Good morning. Welcome. If you're new here among us, my name is Gene. I serve here at C3 Church as your pastor. And I heard a story. I heard a story about a guy who was about to jump off a bridge. Well, luckily, there was a Christian man taking a walk on this bridge. He saw it. So, of course, he said, don't do it. Stop. The guy responded, nobody loves me. He said, well, do you believe in God? Yeah, well, then you know God loves you. Okay, well, yeah, I believe in God. All right, well, so are you a Jew or a Christian? Well, I'm a Christian. Well, then you know Jesus loves you. This is great. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. He's going, well, you said you're a Christian, right? What denomination are you? I'm a Protestant. Good, good, good. Wait, hold on. So, but what denomination specifically? Okay, well, I'm a Baptist. Oh, good, then God really loves you. You're in, right? Okay, good. Oh, but wait. Are you a Northern Baptist or a Southern Baptist? I'm a Northern Baptist. Oh, good. So am I. That's good. You're set. But wait. Are you a Northern Conservative Baptist or a Liberal Baptist? I'm a Northern Conservative Baptist or a Liberal Baptist? Northern Conservative Baptist. Good. Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes region, or Northern Conservative Baptist, Eastern region? Great Lakes region. I was hoping you were going to say that. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes region, Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912. Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912. All of a sudden, the very same guy that was trying to stop this guy from jumping off the bridge pushed him off the bridge. On his way down, plummeting to his death, the last thing this man heard was, Die, heretic! Now, I can't tell you the next thing that he heard, because I'm not sure the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 gets into heaven. Sure, the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council in 1912 gets into heaven. It is estimated that there are over 40,000 Christian denominations out there. And yes, there are. All who are at odds with one another. And I'm happy to say that we're not one of them. And so if you like pushing people off bridges, this probably is not the place for you this morning. So, you know, we'll try to get rid of that feeling if you have it. Otherwise, the door's right there. Anyway, okay. Band-Aid off. We just, there we go. All right. So we find ourselves continuing in our reset series. This is a great series no matter where you're at. I know people get really advanced in things or they've been in Christianity for a long time. They think they know everything, but no, no, no. You got to go back to basics, right? It's really, really important. No matter, you know, I gave this illustration, whether it was martial arts or sports or, you know, whatever, you know, playing guitar, the basics are everything, right? So you got to get good at your basics. And so maybe there are some of you out there, maybe you stumbled a little in your walk, in your faith, that kind of thing, and so it would be good for you to get back to some basics, right? It's a good thing. If you're totally new, maybe you just want to start the right way, and this is the right way to start. So if you have friends, you can share these messages with them. And it's just a great place to start, especially for nonbelievers. It's really good. So if you don't believe in Jesus by the end of the message, my hope is that you will. And that's kind of what it's about today. So today we will be discussing why Christianity. So we discussed, like, all right, why God? Like, does God even exist? We started at the very, very beginning. The Bible, is it reliable and real? And we're going to kind of keep going on that theme this morning, but why Christianity, right? So what we have to look at first is kind of like reverse engineer things, right? So when you want to get back to basics, you know, you got to kind of look, get water from the source where it's the purest, right? So kind of got to go to the beginning, but we kind of look at like the way things are. Like, are we looking at Christianity right? So what Christianity is not, that's where I'm going to start. What it's not, because in a lot of ways, Christianity has become really diluted by a lot of the world, a lot of really worldly things, right? So we talked about the Bible, right? And we said the New Testament validates and helps define the old. It has been said that the New Testament is the best commentary on the old. We don't want to throw the old out, right? That's where we get all our prophecies, the information, all this good stuff we talked about last week. But if you want to know what Christianity is, you have to look at the New Testament, right? It cannot be defined in the Old Testament. It's not yet, right? So you've got to look at that, right? Now, when we read the New Testament, if you've read the New Testament a lot, right, like I have, you notice a real strong theme will come through. And it's all over the place. It just weaves itself through. There is this idea that the world and the word are opposed to one another. And so that's kind of weird for a lot of people. So it's one place in Christianity, people are like, huh? I don't get that. So it even says, so we get this defined now in the New Testament, that Satan is the lowercase g God of this world. That is said. So 2 Corinthians 4.4 is one place. But it comes up more than once. So you have this kind of separation. But what's happened in Christianity now is Christians have adopted a lot of these things from the world. And they're not always great things. And they put it in the mix here. So what's happened is a lot of these things that the Bible calls foolishness of the world, they've come into church and they've become really important. So one big thing, like when I first came into church, I noticed a lot is people were still throwing around a lot of credentials. A lot of credentials get thrown around in church, a lot. Like I went to this school, PhD, this and that. And you just don't see that at all in the New Testament. But it's a worldly thing, right? If you want to get a good job, you've got to go to college, right? So we're going to put that in church now. But that is not in the Bible. It's not in the New Testament at all. You went to the university of the Holy Spirit. Like that's how you learned all this stuff. And it's kind of a little bit better, right? Do you think that God is perhaps a better professor? Maybe you don't, right? And that's kind of how people get, right? They start throwing around these titles. Just like programs, you get a lot of these programs that you really just shouldn't need at all if you're just behaving like a family and the Holy Spirit's working within us. But we do that, right? Because the world said, well, this is how we're going to get more members, right? You know, so we had developed this worldly program, these marketing things, but we call it outreach. It's not marketing, right? So you develop all these different things, but we call it outreach. It's not marketing, right? So you develop all these different things, but that's not how they got followers and acts. Read it again, right? Extreme generosity, miracles, things like that, right? So, you know, and we've just let every institution, political institutions, all these things in the church that don't belong there. They were never there, right? So this is the problem, is it's all mixed in there, We're never there, right? So this is the problem, is it's all mixed in there. And it's all being done under the guise of being Christian when it's not. When we get the water from the pure source, it's not there. I said sauce because, like, pizza is always on my mind. Sorry. So what happens on the denominations is that you get this kind of, like, politics, polity, and carnality come into the church, right? And so you begin having these divisions in the church. And so if you've been here for a while, we've gone over this. I think I might've mentioned it in the series. Like the motivation, Paul writes 13 letters of the New Testament, books of the New Testament, right? So his motivation for writing a lot of it is unity. It's coming together. So a good scholar might say, yeah, like denominations are one of Paul's worst nightmares. It's coming together. So a good scholar might say, yeah, like denominations are one of Paul's worst nightmares. It's actually like, you know, you hear a lot about Romans, right, in church. That's the reason he's writing, to stop that from happening. He wants, you know, there's factions developing in the church and he wants to stop it, right? Ephesians, you might have heard of that, right? That is definitely unity. It could be like, that's it. That's the reason for writing. So, and Paul within that is saying, right? So you get to Romans in particular, right? He's saying, don't be conformed to this world, right? We're supposed to be different as Christians. And so that's the first thing you notice, like these denominations and Christians dividing. And so when you read the New Testament, when you get to the churches and all that other stuff, you see that, A, and we're going to outline this today, the gospel is primary. And I'm going to, we'll go over what the gospel is. That's primary. But there's a lot of what is called now, but it's okay, secondary doctrine, right? And so this comes up and a lot of people don't really pay attention. They kind of skip over these chapters, but that's what Romans 14 is all about. So back then they have issues that they're arguing about, like meat sacrifice titles. And this was a big deal. This came down in a church council. The church had decided and everything, but Paul's like, oh, you know what I mean? Don't divide over this, right? So if one person wants to eat that meat, fine, you know, whatever. Just don't let other believers stumble over it. Another issue there is the Sabbath. And you have denominations today, right? They'll tell you need to keep a Sabbath on this day of the week. But the Word of God, when Paul's writing to the church in Rome, says, no, don't worry about it. Like, you know, if one decides to worship on that day and it's holy, that's great. Don't divide. Stop arguing. And this theme will continue, right, through Romans, right? So honor everybody. Love everyone. Don't divide over it. First Corinthians 8 through 10, again, meat, sacrifice. The whole section, the context is not dividing over these secondary non-gospel issues, right? So I get denominations. What happens is they divide over these things. When the word of God tells us not to, if we're Christians, we all believe in the Gospel, we believe, you know, we'll go over it, these core things about Jesus, whatever. You know what I mean? You decide you want to take a Sabbath this day or that day. Whatever it is, fine. It's not Gospel, right? We love one another so much that we're not going to let things like that separate the church, right? Yet, we have gotten really far off, right? And you have even in their theology, right, these people coming up with things and they're really smug and they think they're really smart. They throw their credentials. We have Christian debates. It's kind of like an oxymoron. You know, it is when you read the word of God. It's wrong. It's incorrect. We're not supposed to be doing that, right? So, but we're smart. We know everything, right? We know more than God, right? So, you know, people will take pride in that too. I've seen, you know, I'm proud to be, you know, put the denomination. I'm proud of this. I'm proud of that. Pride's a sin. So when you have pride in your divide, you're doubly sinning. Got news. So not convinced about that denomination. So, we get so smart sometimes we miss the whole point. And we've seen this. I want to bring this back up again. A little review. 1 Timothy 1.5. The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith. But some people have missed this whole point. They have turned away from these things and spend their time in meaningless discussions. How many meaningless discussions are going around the interweb right now, right? How many do we see? And that is where the mainstream church is at. That's where it's at, sadly. But the Bible says, if it's not gospel, it's not worth arguing about. But here's the thing. Most people calling themselves Christians love to argue and divide over all this stuff and love to take pride in how much more they know or they think they know or they're right. And here's the problem. When we talk about why Christianity, we've got to start here because it's not working. It's not working. More churches have to really get in line with this and get the right response. It's not working. So if you start looking at statistics, pastoral dropout rate, it's almost 40%. Don't worry. Every time I say that, they're like, you're not going to leave us, Pastor G. Almost 40%. Don't worry. Every time I say that, they're like, you're not going to leave us, Pastor G. Almost 40%. It's almost 40%, right? Why? Because a pastor, whatever it is, they go to a seminary, Bible school, they get their training, right? They're ready to go. And even though they're warned about all these different things, they're like, don't you guys love Jesus? And they're like, no, we want, like the auditorium painted a different color. We love that more. The landscaping isn't right. Right. And so they're like, I thought we were here to love one another. Right. And this person did that and the sheep are backbiting and they're like, I am done. And then you have people bringing things from the outside world into the church, even though like the Bible tells us, don't talk about that stuff, but we want to talk about it. You need to address it, pastor. And eventually they just go, I'm done. Or they're me and I just preach the word of God. I say, whatever, get out. And then again, they overextend themselves with all the bills. Why? Because they became worldly. Okay. You know, we want more stuff. We want to be impressive, right? So go ask a pastor how many members of his church he has, right? It's always like this really inflated number. Why does he do that? It's a worldly thing. I don't know. I saved one soul. Done. Good. All right. Quite frankly, it's a dying religion. Because people are not really grasping this yet. More churches are closing every day in the United States of America than opening. That's a problem. Churches, regardless of denominations, regardless. Then you have these big American churches that come in, and they promise the world like the Borg, and they swallow all the little churches up. That's what you do in business, not church. It's a problem, and the outside world sees it. Youth group. You send your kid to youth group. Dropout rate last time I checked was approaching 70%, 67%. So if your kid goes to youth group, they have like a 30% chance of making it as a Christian. And then I've had people say, like, well, great. You know, 30%. That’s me I’m good for you good for you but shouldn't we care about like the 70 of kids that are not making it so we become consumers right we care about ourselves not passing things on or doing discipleship so the outside world sees it and. And so they see that Christianity isn't really something different. It's just like the rest of the world. But we're supposed to be offering people something very, very different, a heavenly alternative that of course is better. So we've seen that the Bible is really clear about what the world offers. If you've been here for a long time, you've heard these things. These worldly institutions and the so-called knowledge that we think we have, they're incompatible. It doesn't work. The waters have become very, very muddied lately. I want to show you something. We're going to kind of reset here and just now let's take the next step. Well, it's not. What does a Christian look like? Because what? They'll judge us by our fruit, Jesus says, right? So they'll know you by your love, not your intellect, your love, right? They'll know you by that. So, okay, so what is a Christian then? Getting towards why Christianity? All right, well, the Bible says you'll know a Christian by their that. So, okay, so what is a Christian then? Getting towards why Christianity. All right, well, the Bible says you'll know a Christian by their fruit. So we've done this comparison before. I'm going to bring this chart back up because it's a nice visualization for you guys. Really important on this topic. If you want to define a Christian, I will show you biblically exactly how you do it. So this is how you do it. All right, so we'll go to Galatians 5. It's a nice little chart here. So what I do is basically like this is the first part that you're going to read and it breaks it off into two sections. So you can see bad, good, and at the bottom, the follow-up. And if you want this, people always like take pictures during it. I can email it to you or send it to you if you want. So we're in Galatians. And funny enough here, there's a faction of teachers, right, coming through this region, Galatia, and they're telling people that they need to do things like the law. So you need to do the law, you need to be religious this way, and all this stuff. And so there are factions beginning to develop. So again, Galatians, unity. Don't divide over this stuff. Don't fall for this false teaching. So Galatians 5.16, So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you're not free to carry out your good intentions. He's not letting you off the hook there, okay? So you'll see in a minute, not letting off the hook. He's just barking at the people who are not living right, right? So bad stuff. So he goes through the bad stuff. When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear. Sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. I think it's a warning. Let me tell you, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God. That's terrifying, right? So then we get to good stuff. But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So there's no law against these things. Why is he saying that? Remember the context I told you. They're dividing over the law. Galatians 5.24. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to the cross and crucified them. They're dead. So your sinful nature, those passions, they're dead. You are dead to sin. Go back to Romans. Remember we went through recently Romans 6 and 8. Talked about those, they're dead. You are dead to sin. Go back to Romans. Remember we went through recently Romans 6 and 8, talked about that. They're dead. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives. Which is what? Just keep that up. Which is what? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. We'd love to see more Christians explain that. That's judge a tree by its fruit. Well, that's Christian fruit. That's Holy Spirit fruit. So if someone's a Christian, you're going to see a lot of that. Will we make mistakes? Yes, everybody makes mistakes. But for the most part, you're going to see a lot more of that fruit of the Spirit all the time. So those who are not really Christians will display these qualities, and I want you to think about them. Sexual immorality, obviously impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. And there's the warning again, right? Let me tell you again. People living like that will not inherit the kingdom of God. So it's like a backwards question. Where's the Holy Spirit if we're not, if we're seeing more of this, right? And not enough of the other thing. The Holy Spirit's not there. You can't be saved without the Holy Spirit in you. It's kind of obvious. Now, you may have noticed something because there are a few. Like it begins with what I call the hypocrite's favorite sins to pick on, right? So, right, sort of fake Christian like to pick on, right? So, like the sexual sin. That's what they're going to do. That's what's on the picket line, right, right up there. Like, so there, they put that sexual sin up there because different things like that. And they go out and they pick it, right? But they forget about all the others because while they're picketing, they're guilty of like five other sins on that list. Oops. And did you notice that Paul didn't say, but you know, the hostility, if you do that, you're good. The quarreling, if you do that, you're good. It doesn't say that. Anyone, any of them, bad, just as bad. There's no like, well, first, you know, it doesn't say that. Anyone, any of them. Bad, just as bad. There's no like, well, first, you know, when you read your Bible, yes, sexual sin, it's worse. But these ones are still on there, though. Yeah, right? So then all of a sudden, you see these other sins in there. Hostility, Quarreling. Quarreling. Jealousy. Outbursts of anger. Boy, I see a lot of people calling themselves Christians with outbursts of anger on their Facebook page. You're frightening me. I can't even look at Facebook anymore. I'm like, I am terrified for you right now. Why aren't you just loving everybody? Forget about these divides. Just love people. When they come to Jesus, the rest will fall into place. Selfish ambition. So there's the titles in church and all those things, right? Selfish ambition. Dissension. Division. Sounds like a congregational church. This is PTSD. Anyway. Division. The motivation for denomination. Right there. So this is why most non-Christians looking from the outside in will say that Christians are hypocrites. They don't want to be a part of this country club. Because when we act that way, that's what it is. Nothing more. It's country club. And so I don't want to join that club. it is. Nothing more. It's country club. And so I don't want to join that club. It sounds terrible. Or they see these Christians posting online, all this divisive, and that's what it sounds like to me. I don't even look at it anymore. This is terrible. Like if this is what you're worried about, I thought like Jesus, and you've got heaven, and it's so great. And they mock us, right? Because we should be like screaming from, this is awesome, guys, I'm getting into heaven. I want you to be there with me. It's so awesome. Oh, the stuff in the world, whatever. The world's going to like, what does the Bible tell us? The world's going to melt. It's going to disappear in flames. That's what the Bible says. Yeah, read 2 Peter. Read what Jesus says, right? These warnings, Mark 13, Matthew 24, lets us know that. Revelation, we see that. If you're a Christian, you believe that. I'm like, I don't know. No worse day for me. I don't celebrate that. But anyway, like, I believe the Bible over anybody else. So people, whatever it is. I know, yeah, this whole thing is going to fall apart. And then Jesus has to come back. Why do I care? Like, I'm just waiting for Jesus. I'm happy about that. But they're not seeing Christians behave in an appropriate way. It's not an appropriate response to what we believe. And so they say, well, maybe you don't believe. Maybe. Right? So the first step, that's the first step. When you're looking at real, you got to define what Christianity is. What are Christians, right? So what is this supposed to look like? That's what it's supposed to look like. Everything is underneath that fruit of the Spirit. Once we get that right, we can move on to separating it out from the world. I just want to show you this. This is really redundant. So I'm just picking one part. This is very hard for me because if you've been here for a long time, you know what I like to do. If I have a point, it's like, then you're just arguing with God, right? So I'll give you one, and then I'll tell you a few, right? So Christianity is supposed to be, like, apart from all these things. So that's where we get all these things. So we get all that sin of the flesh. That comes from the world. It comes from all the worldly institutions. And it's all garbage, right? So you just watch the news, whatever it is. It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on. It's just trash. It's just a lot of just fear-baiting trash, right? So God's word tells us, no, no, no, no. So this is one place. 1 John 2.15, do not love this world, nor the things it offers you. For when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see. Remember what faith is? We define that. Faith is everything we don't see. Everything we see and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever. Did you notice that? All the things the world typically values are not from the Father. Pride. And a lot of you, if you're conservative, you're like, hmm, yeah, pride. You too. Pride in your achievements. Pride in your possessions are not from the Father, but are from this world. Pride in your denomination is not from the Father. It's a worldly idea. So very, very redundant themes where I'm restraining myself a little bit. But if we read Philippians, we go to Philippians, Paul will get to the point where he's listing off these credentials that are now garbage to him. They're trash. They're garbage. He considers them worthless. All these things. And he's like that Ph. right he's a pharisee of pharisees blameless according to the law circumcised on the eighth day Hebrew of Hebrews they're all skivala in Greek … I said a bad word in Greek but that's what Paul writes that's like a four-letter word begins with a C. It's like poop, right? Consider them all refuse. That's what the Bible says. So when Paul's converted from that worldly world thing, religion, his sect, he's converted, it's all gone. He throws it all out. They're worthless compared to the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus as my Lord. Correct response. So, again, in Romans' appeal for unity, what is he saying? Don't be conformed to the world. So all this stuff about the division, Romans 12, therefore, I appeal to you, I plead to you, to make your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewal of the mind. And then he goes on, by the Holy Spirit's power, love even your enemies. Don't repay insult for insult. Be like Jesus, right? Oh, and then chapter 13, honor authorities. Pay your taxes. That's what it says. Read your Bible. Romans 14 14 then we get to that don't divide over stuff like the sabbath and all this stuff so what is it love love love love no matter what don't just love people so that's real Christianity the crux of it anyway so now let's look at real Christianity versus other religions because the question we asked at the beginning or I asked was, why Christianity? Can't I just go to another religion and then get what I need from that? What's the difference? Okay. So we understand, right, we're in an information age. So at the same time, we want to be able to, you know, we want to be able to inform people, but we don't want to fight with people. But at the same time, just anyone can publish a website or anything. You don't need a website anymore, you know, social media. You can get on there and say whatever, right? And there's too many of that, especially in Christianity, right? I don't know what they're talking about, but they have a lot to say. So anybody can get on there. And then from any faith, anything. So we have the flying spaghetti monster religion. People will just believe anything. The universe, it's all out there. So what we have to do is kind of cut through that and start looking at historical facts. That's how you know when something's real, historical facts versus just like anything out there. So really looking at it. Now, remember, we talked about what the Bible is. So the Bible is historical truth. You have to understand that. That's very important. So I'm going to go a little bit further on that with the New Testament. So the first thing, when you look at other religions, it's this because I said something. So if you look at any other worldview, it's really weak historically. There's just not a whole lot to back it up. But furthermore, within that history, it's a because I said so type of thing. So it's one person, one experience tells people about it. And then the followers just have to believe that one person's word for it. Whereas Christianity is the opposite. And it's quite interesting. So we talked about the New Testament. So here Jesus didn't, well, the Holy Spirit inspired the human authors of these books. So we'll talk about the human authors. So let's just talk about that. So Jesus himself, since the Throne of the Pan, write down any of these books. He just allowed the witnesses to write them, which is quite impressive, right? So it tells you something about him right there. Whereas other religions, they got to write about themselves, right? So it's the opposite. So I did this a little bit, but we'll expand a little more. We'll look at the New Testament. People call them witnesses for a reason because they're written by witnesses. Now we have another problem in Christianity. We have scholars coming around and coming up with these hypotheses, right? Well, I really think that this was written then or this person really wrote this or this came about later. Stop it. That's not history. That's not what the early church fathers wrote about these things. We have to look to history to find out how they believed these things came about and who wrote them. And so when you look at these early church writings, it's like 100, 200 years after the Bible had been written, they're codifying this stuff. We talk about canonization. They're coming up with this. And so that history tells us what the church believed, regardless of what someone says 1,800 years later. Kind of silly, but whatever, right? So when we look at the history of this, we see Matthew. Matthew's an apostle, right? So clearly he knows Jesus. He wrote the gospel of Matthew. That's a witness, right? Mark. Mark, you see him appearing at the end of the gospel of Mark probably, but also in Acts. So he's a witness to some of this stuff. Luke, Dr. Luke, right? So we see him in Acts with Paul. He's together with Paul. So he's a witness to a lot of these things. John, the disciple Jesus loved, right? So he's an apostle, right? So then you get to Acts and then Acts written by Luke. It's a history of the early church. And again, you find him in there. Then you get Paul's 13 letters. And so he is a witness to the resurrection of Jesus. Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, probably not Hebrews. Okay, so you can have that, right? But whatever, right? And then you get James, Jesus' brother, an amazing conversion story. He doubted Jesus at first and then became the head of the church in Jerusalem. And he writes James, 1 and 2 Peter. Peter, he's like the lead apostle, right? So he's a witness, right? So you have first through third John. That's John, again, the disciple of Jesus, loved Jude, another probably conversion story. It's probably Jesus' brother Jude. Amazing. Now an authority in the church. He's a witness clearly to Jesus with his brother, right? Same thing with James. And then Revelation, John. Witnesses. That's amazing. There's nothing like that. And they're witnessing what Jesus does. So that's the first thing we need to understand. In addition to this, you have people like Tacitus and Josephus, like historians of that time. They're writing about Christianity. So it's not just the Christians. Like, they're acknowledging, yeah, this guy Jesus. So they're acknowledging all this stuff. Jesus. So they're acknowledging all this stuff. So now in contrast with all other worldviews, it really is what people accuse the Bible of being. That really is this game of telephone. It's a bit of a myth. You have to have a lot of faith in like one person and what they're claiming, who probably has selfish ambition. And that's the reason they're making these claims. With Christianity, it's the opposite. It's not like that. So Jesus is extremely humble. Now, back to that first person's experience. A lot of people don't realize also that there are knockoff versions, is what I call them, of Christianity. And so some of the most popular worldviews are just knockoff versions. They don't understand. So Islam's the first one that comes to mind. So you need to think about this for a second. You have someone going off, having their own personal experience, making claim, Muhammad goes off, comes back, I got this Quran. Well, here's a couple problems. One, you have to believe him. No evidence, no miracles, no nothing like that Jesus did, right? There's nothing there. No one's writing about it, right? But hold on. So you have like, let's just say, 600 years go by after the Bible's been canonized like this. So you have the New Testament and the Old Testament. It's done, right? So the church is there, everything. We've got different versions of the Bible. So you've got, actually, yeah, the Vulgate's written by then. You have the Greek Bible. We talked about that last week, right? So no English yet, but so this is already, that's it, right? So why is it knockoff Christianity? Well, because Muhammad comes by, he starts telling all these other stories about Abraham and Jesus. He says, Jesus is a prophet. He tells us, oh, the virgin birth happened, but you know, he's not God, right? So stop. So you have history and that's how all the early Christians view this stuff about Jesus. History, and you're just going to decide, nah, that's wrong. We're going to come up with a totally different version. Okay. Someone tried to do that today. It would sound kind of stupid, like someone came up with a new version of American history. I'm sure it exists. But we all know what really happened, and they come up with a different version, and then everyone's like, yeah, that sounds great. It's stupid, right? Like, oh, sorry, or not sorry, right? That's stupid. It doesn't make any sense, right? So it's a knockoff version. Within what people, and this is how bad it is, it's some of the denominations, but there are knockoff versions of Christianity that people think are Christians. Mormonism. Yeah. Mormonism, that's a cult. That's not Christianity. They do not believe the same thing about Jesus that we do here at C3 Church and, you know, evangelical churches. They don't believe he's the same kind of God. And so what's Joseph Smith, you know, goes off, has his own experience, decides that he can have lots of wives. That's cool. Right. And then and then writes the Book of Mormon. It's like, okay, but the Bible itself tells us, do not change it or you're cursed. But, yeah, sorry, ignore that. I've got new stuff. Let's knock off Christianity. That's not Christianity. So, and again, now this is like 1,800 years after the Bible's been canonized. Why would we believe that? That's nonsense. So again, taking one person's word for it versus real witness Christianity. Now, just very quickly, speaking of witnesses, it's just an interesting thing if you don't know this. If you've heard the word martyr, the word martyr actually comes from the Greek word witness. So when I first started learning how to read Greek, I came upon martyron in Greek and I was like, why is it calling? I guess, you know, most of the apostles died, but it's calling everybody a martyr. Like what's going on here in learning Greek? It just means witness. It doesn't mean martyr. How did it come to mean that? Well, because Christians being at all times loving, peaceful, right? So we went through this before in another series. There's no Christian army. They got martyred for their belief. We have a strong history of that. So if you witness, you will probably die. And so people would eventually just adopt that term and apply it to witnesses in Christianity. Well, there are martyrs. It's almost like a mockery, right? You know, like, oh, well, that's a martyr, Christian witness, and you're going to die. But what you have, again, another perversion of what a martyr is. And so from without, like Islamic martyrs, they're known for not only taking themselves out, right, but a lot of people with them. It's the opposite of just peacefully dying for Jesus. What could be a better witness to the faith? Yeah, I'm going to heaven. Great. And if you read Revelation, I'm going to rise from the dead first too. That's a great display of faith. But now it's horrible. You're killing people. So it's a perversion of martyrdom where it developed. Christianity invented this. And from within, witnessing. What kind of witness is like screaming at people and picket sign, pointing out other people's sins? That's no martyr. Not at all. I'm going to be self-sacrificial, put aside some of my points to get people to Jesus. I can't even keep your mouth shut. Not impressed. So a perversion of that term. So one of the accusations to why I mentioned it before is that when people talk about Christianity, they'll say this about the Bible. It's an extremely ignorant statement, but they'll say it's like a game of telephone, right? So it was written hundreds of years later and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's the kind of line of thinking that they'll go down. Now, we're going to talk about the New Testament writings. Even last week, though, I was saying, you know when you get these writings from the Old Testament, they come from all different parts of the world, let's just say. It's remarkably close for oral tradition considered, right, and coming from different parts. It's really close. But the New Testament, and I'll get there, is even better. So to answer this first question, right, so you can ask an atheistic question. And so I've gone down this, I do this a few times a year, and it's good to memorize if you can. All right, so ask an atheistic question. So they make this claim about the Bible. It's not reliable. Okay, great. All right. Do you believe in Alexander the Great? Start there. Most sane people will say yes. So if they say no, just walk away. Yes, right? So why? And then what it's going to boil down to is, well, history, right? Because you can't know Alexander the Great. No DeLorean, no time machine, so forget it. All right, so, okay. So we can't do that. No time travel. Sorry. My wife loves time travel shows. So her favorite. Sorry, can't do that. No time travel. Sorry. My wife loves time travel shows. Her favorite. Sorry, can't do it. So what do we have? History. It's her second favorite thing. So history. We look at the history. Great, great, great, great. So tell me about the history. Tell me about, like, what have you read? Now, 9 out of 10 people will not answer this question. You can very passively make them feel stupid. So, okay, well, here we go. Life of Alexander by Plutarch. It's probably the closest thing that we have to the Gospels are to Jesus. And it's interesting because Life of Alexander, it's written around the same time as the Gospels. Look at it around 100 A.D. So Gospels may be a little bit around the same time as the Gospels. Look at it around 100 A.D. So Gospels may be a little earlier, but around the same time. Really? Yeah. There's one problem. Jesus died, what, 30 A.D.? Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C. Yet the first and most reliable work for him we have. We have one maybe 100 years earlier, but still 300 years after he's dead. But that's the same accusation you leveled against the Bible, which is true for Alexander. Yet you still believe he existed. Interesting. So the New Testament is written in a witness period. I just outlined that for you. Really important. So what we have for Jesus, it's kind of like for that time period, historical gold. It's amazing. It's a primary document. It's really not a lot like that in that time of history for people. So what you want to do, and I've just learned this through a lot of trial and error. Gary Habermas, he does a minimal facts argument. So I'm giving you the, like, you know, 10-minute version of his hour-and-a-half version. But basically, long story short is, what happens with the New Testament, and it drives me nuts because even Christian scholars are doing it, like they'll doubt authorship and they'll move the dates around and stuff like that. But 1 Corinthians is really good, not just at weddings, and they'll move the dates around and stuff like that. But 1 Corinthians is really good, not just at weddings, but it's really good because no even secular historian will argue with that book about its authorship, its validity. Like they'll say, nope, Paul was a real person writing to real people who believed in Jesus. He was a head of a church. He believes what he's saying. So secular atheist scholars, if I didn't make that clear, they will give you 1 Corinthians. So fine. So we jump over like that whole thing about the Bible, right? So we skip that argument and you move on. So when we get to 1 Corinthians 15, here's the gospel in short. We get the gospel. And so let me read this to you. 1 Corinthians 15.1. Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the good news I preached to you before. You welcomed it then, and you still stand for a minute. It is the good news that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you, unless, of course, you believe something that was never true in the first place. I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scripture said. So there you have that prophecy, right, from the Old Testament coming in. You can't like separate them. This is how they join each other here. All right. He was buried and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Old Testament scripture said. He was seen by Peter and then the 12. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him, for I am the least of all the apostles. In fact, I'm not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God's church. So this is remarkable, because what you have here is a historical, like a primary document written by a witness. He's outlining the gospel. So Jesus died for us. He died this death on the cross. He rose from the dead. And a bunch of people witnessed him. 500. So he's calling out 500 people. He's naming real-life people that existed and say, go check it with them. This is amazing. And as I said, most historians will put this about 25 years after Jesus' crucifixion. In ancient writings, it's nothing, nothing else like that. There's your gospel. There are your historical facts. That's how we know. It's also a wealth of information worth mentioning. So I talked about the Old Testament, right? No matter where it comes from, it's pretty remarkable. It's as close as it is. The New Testament is at a different level. So if you look at ancient writings, you're looking at like Plato, Aristotle, things like that. Seven copies we have, like 47 copies, right? The New Testament, 6,000. We're getting close to 6,000 copies, ancient copies of the New Testament. That's just Greek. That's not other ancient languages. Nothing's even remotely close. And when we compare them, right? So one came from all the way over here, one came from all the way, they're like 95% agreement. They're like the same. It's literally when you're looking at things historically, it's a miracle. It's a miracle. There's nothing like this. It's unbelievable. And the little 5% difference, they're like little grammatical changes. It doesn't change anything about the story, right? There are some sections here and not there in older copies or the other copies, but it changes nothing about the gospel. It changes nothing about history, right? It's a little 5% difference. So we get to this key. So I'll go to the resurrection here. The resurrection is key. That's why I bring that up. So when Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 15, he will say, if the resurrection didn't happen, my faith is useless. It's worthless. Your faith is worthless. You're just believing for nothing. It's like the resurrection is pivotal. And so I don't really recommend a lot of Christian movies. And there are a couple of reasons for that. It surprises people. Like you're a pastor. It's like, I'm not a normal pastor. So, but anyway, I don't like Christian movies. First of all, production value, terrible. Right? So that's the first thing. Can't stand it. Second of all, acting, usually bad. Like third thing, right? So I get some nods here. Third thing, if you know the word of God, they all get it wrong. There's absolutely no Christian movies that get it 100% right. It's unbelievable. Like, hey, director, just hold a Bible in front of you. Like, that's your script, right? It's terrible, right? And so we go back to the Mormons. They're the producers of the most popular Christian-like series out there. And it's horrific. It's so bad. If you know the Word of God, you can't watch this thing for more than like 30 seconds. It's so, so bad. It veers from the word of God so much, although we're commanded never to do that, right? And they depict a different Jesus, right? That's what they're doing there. That's the agenda. It's a very different Jesus from the Bible. So anyway, there's one that I've liked and it's called Case for Christ. And there are variations of his books. Guy Lee Strobel, he's like an investigative journalist, maybe a lawyer, a smart, smart guy. And so his wife is a Christian, and so he sets out to disprove Christianity using like the real, you don't see this anymore, like what reporters are supposed to do, like the journalistic and historical method. That's what? You know what I mean? Like, anyway. So he decides to use them, right? So by the historical and journalistic method, he's going to disprove Christianity. He talks to guys like Gary Habermas. I mean, like top, top guys. Top guys after saying, oh, no, no. But anyway, you know, really well-educated guys in Christianity. He goes around to all these authorities. Gosh, I'm burying myself. So anyway, he goes around to these guys, and he asks them, like, okay, how do I disprove this? And they're like, disprove the resurrection. And they point to what Paul says. He's like, it's done. If you can just prove that, it's over. So he goes through this painstaking process, like all the historical documents, everything. The evidence, by his own process is so extraordinarily overwhelming that he converts to Christianity. That's how amazing it is. It's that amazing. So let's look at the resurrection and explore some facts here. So we'll just look at some of these facts, and I'll bring it to, like, why you should believe now knowing all this. Historically reliable, check, check, check. I've got these things, like, you should believe now knowing all this, right? So historically reliable, check, check, check. I got these things like real Christians aren't really jerks, right? Check, check, check. You want to kind of be a part of this club, right? So if it's being done, right? All right. So let's look at the facts. Jesus claimed to be God. We're going to do this a little bit more, I think next week. So Jesus claimed to be God. He is God. And it doesn't, this is another thing I'll, I'll, I'll teach you guys about this next week if you don't already know. The Bible says it. The witnesses say it. He says it in his own way. I and the Father are one before Abraham was. I am invoking the name of Jesus in Exodus 4, burning bush. And even then Paul will elaborate Titus 2.13. You're looking at Philippians 2. He called Jesus God, straight up to the God. So the witnesses believe Jesus God, doubting Thomas even like even. Like, my God. He's not surprised like that. He's literally calling him God and worshiping him. So Jesus is God. Period. His witnesses believe that. In fact, he was crucified for making those claims. So Mark 14.62. So you're the Son of God, the Blessed One. I am. Invoking that name again. You will see the Son of Man coming with power and authority on the clouds of heaven. He claimed it, right? And they said, crucified. Do we need to hear anything else? They kill him for it. So he believed it. Everybody else around him believed he thought that. His existence, death, burial are documented by the New Testament, historical documents, and other sources. He rose from the dead after three days, documented by witnesses, ascended to heaven 40 days later, documented by witnesses, 40 days later. So again, he ascends to heaven. Now this series of events is predicted in the Old Testament. So it all begins coming true. And so the early believers are pointing back at it going, yeah, did you see this? This was predicted. Jesus is doing everything that it says. So what does this mean? Well, the first thing is we must understand the need for Jesus. First of all, he's the only way to heaven. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes to the Father except through me. So we read in John 14. That's the first thing. But a story has been told about other worldviews. So there's a story that's told about a man who falls into a pit. A man falls into a pit, and then different religious leaders walk by and they have different responses. So Confucius goes by and say, well, if he'd listened to me, he never would have gotten in there. Buddha comes by. Well, if he'll just come up here, right, I'll help him out. Jesus comes by, gets down in the pit, and lifts the guy up. That's the difference. We talked about his humility and what he's done for us. Humankind chooses sin. We get ourselves in the pit, and Jesus saves us. That's the difference. That's the difference. From the very beginning, we talked about it last week, we've been rejecting God. That's the crux of the Bible, the rejection of God by humankind. I'll go back and watch it if you want to see. But despite that, people will say something like, people are generally good. Really? Okay, you must not be a parent. Because if you you're a parent you know that people are not good they're not good at all like I thought this was going to be way easier right so the first thing we do is we manipulate by crying right we're liars and we learn if we can get attention that's why you let them cry it out young parents right and you don't make your children monsters right so you let them cry it out right if you don't do that they monsters, right? So you let them cry it out, right? If you don't do that, they're going to keep working you. So they're manipulating you. Have you ever heard the phrase, like, get your hand caught in the cookie jar? Why does that exist? Because kids are thieves. They will steal from you. If you want to have kids, I'm talking you out of it. Remember, the world's going to melt. Forget it. So, right? They're liars. We're liars, right? So, right, they're liars. We're liars, right? So have you ever lied? Don't say no, right? Yes, that doesn't sound like a very good person, does it? No, liars. Have you ever stolen anything? Hand in the cookie jar, right? But classic example, I didn't even think about this until my mentor told me. I was trained to be a pastor. And he gave this illustration about putting money on, like you ever pick up money on the street? I'm like, whatever, right? And he's like, that doesn't belong to you. You're a thief. It's true. He's like, what if that was like your smartphone or something? Hello? It's not yours. Leave it. Blew my mind. The thief doesn't sound like a good person. Does it? Have you ever cheated on your significant other in any relationship you've ever been in? No? Well, Jesus says if you even look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart. That doesn't sound like a person with a good heart, does it? That's me. Have you ever hated anyone or been angry with them? Jesus says, Sermon on the Mount, if you're angry with someone, it's akin to murder. Read it. Anger. Doesn't sound like a person with a good heart. By the Holy Spirit's help, we talked about this a lot last week or previous weeks, we can start to get it right. He can clean us out a little bit. We can get it right. We can live blamelessly as the Bible says. But the thing is we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So we must understand that. That's the first thing. You need Jesus. He's the only one who can get you out of that pit. No one else. So in the Old Testament, the answer for this was, and I'm trying to make this simple, like substitutionary sacrifice. So the animal would be the substitute. You deserve to die for your sins. You're a thief, a liar, a murderer, an adulterer. You deserve to die. So what did they do? They'd sacrifice the animal. Sometimes they'd stone them to death, but they'd sacrifice the animal. So shed blood for the forgiveness of sins. But Jesus comes along, So great our God is and decides to become that sacrifice for us. He pays that price for us. So he dies the death we deserve. And so as I kind of wrap up, I just want to paint a picture for you because a lot of people will say like that old system, like sacrifice system, killing people. It's crazy. But here's the thing, guys. In this country, we have the death penalty. Very few civilized nations have that. And a lot of Christians advocate that, even though Jesus said, drop the stone. John 8. Huh. I don't like to listen to Jesus all the time. But we have the death penalty. So I want you to just imagine something happening. And maybe you can. Maybe we've gotten away with stuff. Maybe you can. Like you get put on trial for something, and you're found guilty. But the thing is, is that the death penalty is the punishment. So maybe we're applying Jesus' standards and we realize we deserve to die and so the verdict comes down right you're sentenced to death but the judge says approach the bench you approach the bench he's like kind of feeling sorry now yeah all right here's the thing I’ve got a son and he's going to take the punishment you deserve all you got to do is accept him as your and he's going to take the punishment you deserve. All you've got to do is accept him as your Savior. He's going to save you. We're going to give you a probation officer. He'll help you get it right, check in with him once in a while. And just don't do that ever again. That's what Jesus said to the woman in adultery. Go and sin no more. And he said, don't do that again. So what's this a picture of? Well, this is a picture of Christianity through our lens, what we understand in our world. So the judge could be God the Father, right? The Son is Jesus. We have to accept him as our Lord and Savior. And then he paid the price for us. Probation officer, kind of a cute way to illustrate the Holy Spirit. We have someone helping us get it right. And that's how it works. It's just like that. And if that sounds crazy to you, it is. That's God's crazy love for us. That's what he does for us. That's why Christianity. If you're still doubting it and asking why, I'll leave you with this. If you're still doubting it and asking why, I'll leave you with this. We mentioned this last week. It's a life that works. It's a life that works. Show me another worldview, right? It works. Real. Christianity works. A lot of people, maybe it's you today, you're feeling void of meaning and purpose, right? You've tried all these different things and it's not working out. Well, through Jesus, we have purpose. We're ambassadors of the most high king. What better job is there than that? Fantastic, right? And if you're tired, who's tired of abusive? Do we have someone here today? I'm tired of abusive relationships. Anyone in an abusive relationship? Maybe these things are leading to sin. Maybe that sin is causing you guilt. Maybe it's causing you shame. You ever look back at some of the stupid things I've done? Shame. I hate that feeling. I hate it. In the pit of your stomach. We have it in the past, but are you tired of doing it again and then doing it again? And that's insanity, the definition of insanity. You're going through that shame. You can be free of that. You can be free of that cycle, free of that guilt, free of that shame. And in a good relationship with Jesus, never let you down. Never cheat on you. He's faithful. So no matter what you've done, you can reset. We invite you to do that today. Jesus offers a new path to a good life through him and an eternal life in him. We have hope, something the world clearly lacks now. No hope. But through Jesus, we can have hope and something the world clearly lacks now. No hope. But through Jesus, we can have hope in an eternal life that this world is not it. It's just a journey. We can have fun on the ride, but this isn't it. So you're invited. So first of all, you're going to be told how you can connect with us, and I encourage you to do that. Connect to the church. We talked about the purpose of the church and being very, very important. We don't want you doing life alone. God doesn't want you doing life alone. It's not church. It literally means to assemble. It doesn't mean building. It means to assemble as a body of believers. So we're made for one another. We're made to help and encourage one another. And if you're not getting that yet, we are a real church for people. Like, we're real. It doesn't matter. There's none of this judgment. We understand everybody's at a different place. You know, whatever it is, it's fine. No matter what you've done, no matter where you've come from, no matter what you're doing, it's okay. Patience, kindness, gentleness, we try to lead with that. So connect with us. You're going to be told how to do that. I encourage you to do that. Or you can just come up to me and shake my hand. I bite, but like, not like you can just come up to me and shake my hand. I bite, but not like people I just met. It takes me like three or four times. So look, the thing I want to invite you, and normally I pray for you guys, but I want to invite you in a little prayer. We don't do this a whole lot, but a very, very simple prayer. You don't have to pray this out loud. You don't have to memorize the words. What's important is what's in your heart. You don't want to say, you know, you can just silently think this, pray this or not, and then talk to me. We can talk more about it if you still don't believe. But after hearing the gospel today, after hearing about Jesus from an intellectual perspective, historical perspective, and from a faith-based perspective, if you're saying, yeah, you know what? That's the kind of life I want. if you're saying, yeah, you know what? That's the kind of life I want. I'm going to invite you to pray this with me. Father, I know that I've broken your laws and my sins have separated me from you. I'm truly sorry and now I want to turn away from my past sinful life toward you. Please forgive me and help me to avoid sinning again. I believe that your son, Jesus Christ, died for my sins, was resurrected from the dead and is alive. I declare that Jesus is Lord of my life, who rules and reigns in my heart from this day forward. Please fill me with the Holy Spirit to help me obey you and do your will for the rest of my life. In Jesus's name, amen. Thank you. you