Creed: Why believe in God who lived as a man? (Michael Ramsden)

it's a privilege to be here with you and to be able to spend two services here with you today especially a warm welcome if you're a visitor I'm a visitor here too so at least we've got one thing in common even before we start also just a few words of explanation because I know those of you who come in regular going through the Creed and I'm gonna be speaking about that but we're gonna start off rather more tangentially and then come back towards that in the end and then just to really confuse things we're gonna take two totally different approaches between this morning and this evening so don't worry if you're in a small group with someone because you regularly come here and you seem to be talking about two totally different things that's because depending on whether you're here in the morning or evening you would have heard two totally different things my sermons aren't even worth preaching twice that alone listening to twice so taking two different approaches just helps you know at least minimize the pain for me if not for you I I would like if I can just to start by reading something to you it's an editorial from a newspaper and when I read it a couple of years ago or last year rather I read it and I just thought you know there's something in this that just speaks very very profoundly to the time that we're in right now and we will be looking I say we'll be ending looking at a little bit about these words that Jesus Christ you know was crucified died you know and suffered under Pontius Pilate and so on but I'd really like to connect this with really where we are now because as I read this editorial I couldn't help but be struck by the fact that there are some very big questions that we simply struggle to answer in this day and age let me also apologize to those who are listening through the sign language if your sign signer suddenly keels over and dies that's because it's possible that I'm the fastest technical preacher you'll ever hear and so but the good news is we believe in the resurrection and so you will see her again sometime just may not be tomorrow so thank you but thank you for signing I appreciate it let me read to you from this editorial I said this was in a major UK newspaper last year he says what we're witnessing right now throughout the West is a new politics of anger there is anger at the spread of unemployment leaving whole regions and generations bereft of hope there is anger at the finances who brought the global economy to the brink of disaster and yet continued to reward themselves as if nothing has happened there is on our anger at CEOs using public corporations for private benefit there is anger that while a few have benefited disproportionately from the global economy most people have seen their standards of living stay static or decline there is widespread feeling that the world in the 20th century is running out of control and this has led to a resurgence of dangerous forces the far-right seeking a return to a golden age that never was the far left now in pursuit of a utopia that will never be they are both enemies of freedom WB Yeats his vision has come to pass the center no longer holds things fall apart and anarchy is loosed upon the way but there is something deeper behind the dysfunctional politics of King the contemporary West for the past half a century we have been living through one of the great unstated social experiments of our time because we have tried to construct a world without identity and without morality instead we've left it to two systems to deal with these problems of our collective life the market economy and the liberal democratic state morality has been out sourced to the market we have the market gives us choices and morality has been reduced to a set of choices in which right and wrong have no meaning beyond the satisfaction or frustration of our own desires we find it increasingly hard to understand why there might be things that we want to do we can afford to do that but we should not do because they are dishonorable or disloyal or demeaning or in a world word and ethical too many people in positions of public trust have come to the conclusion that if you can get away with it you'll be a fool not to and that is how the elites betrayed the public they were supposed to serve and when that happens Trust collapses and the civilization begins to decay and die meanwhile the Liberal Democratic state has abolished national identity in favour of multiculturalism the effect is to turn society from a home into a hotel in the hotel you pay the price you get a room and you're free to do whatever you like so long as you do not disturb the other guests but a hotel is not a home it doesn't generate identity or a sense of belonging I don't know how that strikes you but there say the first time I read that I thought that says so much so well and raises a whole series of actually very profound and very interesting questions because it raises questions about identity how we define who we are a morality how we actually go about living now when we talk about God what we begin to realize is actually these two questions within God are married to each other you can't separate them now that's why you sometimes you could asked a question it goes something like this I don't know if you ever heard this or thought about it someone will say does God do something because it's good or is something good because God does it now the reason we sometimes ask that question is it's very very clever it's saying okay look you've got God when God does something is it because there's a moral law that tells him what he should and shouldn't do in which case there's something higher than your God there's something greater than your God God is subject to that or is God basically he can do whatever he want and whatever God does that's what's good but that seems to make morality arbitrary whatever God does is good and so you can never question him and so it doesn't you know it basically makes morality meaningless and it's a very difficult question and the kind that philosophers like to argue about and beat each other up about of course within the Christian faith the understanding down through two millennia has always been the same that the moral law describes God's character it describes who he is he is light he is good he is life that is who he is so it's not the fact that there's a moral law that exists outside of God which judges him although there's nothing there at all and he's just totally arbitrary and whatever he does happens to be good it's saying no this mock morality describes his character so there is no that is why in the Christian faith we say there is no darkness in him whereas in other faiths we sometimes think more less you know light and then a little spot of darkness does that make sense because nothing is purely good there must still be the presence of evil and the answer that is is no he is completely good that is who he is it describes his character it describes who he is then that is why when you read in the Bible things like in John chapter 1 you'll see phrases like this in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God he was with God in the beginning through him all things were made without him nothing was made that has been made in him was life and that life was the light of all mankind the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it or in another book within the Bible he also finds 1st John chapter 1 you'll read words like this that which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked at in our hands have touched this we proclaim concerning the word of life life appeared we have seen it and testify we proclaim to you eternal life which was with the father and has appeared to us we proclaim to you what we have seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us and our Fellowship is with the father and with his son Jesus Christ and we write this to make our joy complete and what you see in these passages is that for one of those first points in him is light in him is life that is who God is now why is this very important well it's important because the Bible also has something utterly unique to say about us as people that we were created in His image in no other religion system of thought or even modern system of thought do you have anything aprox even the idea that people were created in the image of God so in most other religious systems you can happily reduce people to the status of animals and you have no problem in terms of their thinking but we however are like God we're created in His image and that also means that you see within us a strong connection between identity and morality is woven right into the very core of our being which means that when we as people do something which is wrong when we as people do that which is described as sin we're not just doing something against God we're also sinning against our own greatest welfare we pay the price within ourselves for that which we actually do wrong we literally reap what we sow because these things are wedded together in our life you can't simply act in any way you want and expect it to have no impact on your person this is one of the wise and I just give this as a passing illustration don't have enough time to go into the detail of it now but this is why for example if you struggle with the porn out pornography addiction and you're reducing other people into an object to be consumed for your pleasure you will also find it diminishes you it makes you less than what you are which is why if you look at some of the forums and even some of the secular struggles with the impact of pornography on society the problem is we start to use other people for our own pleasure and at the same time within ourselves we become incapable of forming true relationships we can't actually connect with people in terms of relationship we find a diminished capacity to do it and we feel increasingly lonely so we step up our consumption of the very thing which is diminishing us to stop us forming the kinds of relationships we need to feel fulfilled in the first place it literally has an impact on us and in us and diminishes us now why is this all also so important well all of us need a sense of identity and all of us need a sense of morality there's part of the most basic questions we ask Who am I why am I here where am I going Who am I this question of identity why am I here a question of meaning and purpose and which implies within it moral thinking and where am I going does this ultimately take me what is the destiny that this is actually leading me to and now we begin then to see that therefore we have this huge hunger this huge need to create for ourselves identity and if we can't inherit a form of morality again to invent it for ourselves you know I grew most of my childhood growing up in the Middle East so I grew up as a child first of all in Saudi Arabia and then well first of all actually in in the United Emirates in in in Sharjah and those are my earliest childhood memories and we live very close to a town called Dubai I lived it there in in the early 1970s there was one hotel in Dubai in the 1970s I don't know if any of you have seen pictures of Dubai but there's certainly what more than one hotel there now and then in the early 80s we moved to Saudi Arabia and you know I spent my early teenage years in Riyadh and so that's where I said you that's where I was just educated and grew up that was the culture I was in and in there when you're in that kind of setting you're very aware of how we try to answer these questions about morality and identity we assume that we inherit it so you inherit your identity either from geography the land and if you ever struggle about Middle Eastern politics and how that all works so much of it is defined by the land literally by geography or you want a sense of identity from history in terms of you know it's all about your descendency and who your father was and your grandfather was and your great-great-great nning and you keep going back and back and back and back and that helps define who you are may or may be is simply wedded into a sense of immediate family you know just in terms of your immediate upbringing and in the West we've become very popular this a become a very popular idea mainly because you can blame whatever problems that you have right now on your parents and so everything becomes your parents fault which seems like a great idea until you become a parent although it becomes strangely attractive again when you become a grandparent because now you can you can blame what's happening to your grandkids on your own kids and so you could be revenge back but either way we we're looking to define things in a certain way or maybe just more broadly in terms of culture this is my this is my culture this is my cultural background that's this is what shapes who I am and how I think and you have to understand my culture and we're all trying to for either inherits identity or construct identity now when you try to construct your own identity and morality you is because you don't feel you can inherit three more meters environs because I moved over to the Middle East very young I and what sometimes is referred to by sociologists as a third culture kit I am growing up in a culture that I haven't immediately inherited and all those kinds of things you know I moved there when I was very very young and that's just what I grew up in so it's home but it's not home at the same time and so now you have a different type of struggle which is going on which is why when my parents finally move to a country called Cyprus and now all of a sudden all the restrictions that I was brought up in in Saudi Arabia because in Saudi this a lot of things you can't do well you can do them as just that you'll die as a result of doing them so you know there were all these things that I couldn't do now there are all these things that I could do and I'm now wanting to become the person I've always wanted to be I'm trying Who am I I want to become this person and so that's exactly what I started to do I began to live my life to become the person I felt I needed to be to carve out a way of life to live in a particular way and so as I grew up I I used watched a huge number of films I watched all kinds of crazy films both Cyprus and Saudi had very liberal interpretations of the copyright laws namely they're not for us that's a different culture we have a different practice here I would see videos of films on videocassette if some of you here old enough to know what those are the rest of you ask someone with gray hair afterwards what a video cassette is we used to get films on video cassette before they had their premiere in the United Kingdom and so I used to watch just huge numbers everything that came out I saw on I wanted to be like what I saw on the screen that's who I wanted to be so I copied everything that I saw on the screen so every hero of mine I wanted to be like them one of my heroes modern man one of the biggest heroes had a huge impact on my my thinking in my life even though amazingly he's never won an Oscar despite his great body of work of work or indeed just quite simply his great body was a man by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger you may be familiar with his rare acting talents and one of his earlier movies starts with him walking up a mountain carrying the tree on his shoulder while smoking a cigar and I wanted to be like him but I'm not built to carry trees so how can I be like him well cigar smoking is the answer so I used to smoke these big cigars because that's what he did I wanted to be like him another one of my heroes was James Bond you know I read all of the James Bond novels way before I saw all the films and I just I just read all of them and if you've read the novels James Bond there are two things that mark him out amongst other things in terms of what he has one is a supercharged Bentley that was out of my price range as a 17 year old and the second one was a silver cigarette-case so I had a silver cigarette-case with my initials engraved in the bottom left-hand corner I used to smoke filterless French cigarettes called G tan because you can remove a filter cigarette from a case and you can flick it in the air and as it spins it doesn't matter what end you catch you don't have to ever take it out and put it the other way in which isn't cool that that's what I that's what I wanted you see cuz what more than anything else the reason I selected my heroes are thinking what what do I want to define me and the answer was well I want to be cool that's the single most important thing that's the be-all and end-all this is to be respected enough because you're so cool as you can see I may not have exactly arrived at that destination but yeah but but you have to give me ten out of ten for effort I mean I wish I was trying hard I am I you know with the box of matches you you you strike a match against that thing down that strip down the side well I used to remove that from a box of matches that little strip that lighting strip and stick it to the bottom of one of my shoes so having flicked a cigarette into my mouth I could lean against a wall and put my foot up and strike a match from my boot to light it like I'd seen happen in the westerns and indeed that that entire routine was inspired within me by a guy called Clint Eastwood and when I was growing up as far as I was concerned he was the coolest of them all I mean there was nobody cooler than him he was being interviewed once and the interviewer said to him mr. Eastwood why do people think you're so cool and they took a little cigarette out of his pocket and he put it on the edge of a table so the edge was hanging at the end of it was hanging over and he's flicked it like this and it's spinning in the air and one was spinning in the air he produced a match from his back pocket caught with cigarillo lit the match under the table inhaled very deeply having lit the cigar blue one big smoke ring three little smoke wings through the big smoke ring and said I don't know I and I wanted to be like that so that that's why that's why I did that I wanted to be like him he was the one aya spared aspired to emulate and all of us to that extent are trying to become something which we want to be which tells us also something very interesting we're not actually happy with ourselves in the first place the very fact that most of us feel we need to become something else that we need to change who we are means that at some level in some sense every single person in every culture of this world feels something's not quite right I need to construct build inherit protect some kind of protect this otherwise if I lose it maybe I lose everything and this is now where the Bible has something very unusual to say in Jesus Christ has something totally unique to say you just don't find anywhere else it's completely unusual if you take any ancient system of thought you'll see it gets reduced into one of three ways it's either reduced into an ideology as a set of ideas to be mastered or it was ultimately reduced into a type of experience a feeling that you have or it's reduced into a set of practices various things which you do and every major religious and non-religious system in the world historic and today is grounded in one of those three it's either a system of thought to be mastered or is the type of experience that you need to have or it's a pattern of behavior that you need to do and different cultures at different times latched on to these different things so for the ancient Greeks ideas were were ultimate if you could master ideas and philosophical ideas in particular you would have the keys to unlock the mysteries to life the universe and everything else systems which were much more mystical in their routine basically have decided that you will need to engage through your feelings you sort of reach out and have an experience that's so profound it will ultimately define everything else and when you've had this all defining experience you'll figure out why you're here who you are where you're going you'll answer all questions for you other systems which are rooted very pragmatically in doing the same live this way put these principles into effect that will enable you to become who you ultimately want to be and so they look and they want to come and change the way we think or the way we feel or what we actually do now the interesting thing is you can't reduce the Christian faith into one of those or even a combination of those three things you can't reduce the Christian faith into an ideology to be mastered even though there's nothing more profound than meeting Jesus Christ you can't reduce the Christian faith into a feeling to be experienced even though there's nothing more thrilling than coming into relationship with it you can't reduce the Christian faith into a set of do's and don'ts even though Jesus Christ Himself self said we should be known by how we live you can't reduce it and this is because Jesus Christ when he came into this world didn't come to give us new thoughts about God or new experience with God or even to tell us to do new things for God Jesus Christ came into this world as God that's who he claimed to be that's who he said he is now if you want to look at this in your own after this I would very much encourage you to try reading through the Gospel of John if you've never done it before because you'll see in the Gospel of John all the way from the beginning to the end and I've just read to you the first few verses right at the very very beginning you'll see this theme developed all the way through the gospel and if you're a non-christian you're just happened to be visiting here this morning I'd really encourage you find join one of the Alpha courses which is set up here the Alpha courses is something which now millions of people have done in the United Kingdom as a way to help them think through the Christian faith and one of the first questions you'll come across is who is jesus who is he how do we answer the question of identity for him so it's very very interesting when they're disciples at one point one of them in John chapter 14 says to Jesus show us the father show us God and that will be enough for us Jesus looks at him and says have you been with me all of this time and you still don't know who I am if you have seen me jesus said you have seen God you've seen the father do you not know that the father and I are one that's incredible do you know who Jesus is do you actually know who he is Jesus Christ did not come to give us a just as I say a system are thought to be mastered or way of life to believe or anything like that that's why you can't move Jesus from from Christianity in any other religious system you can remove the founder from the system and the system remains so for example um if you're talking with the Buddhists and you say did it have to be the Buddha who gave us Buddhism or could it have been anyone else they'll be very insistent it was the Buddha but if you push it and you say yes but theoretically well the answer theoretically is anyone who got enlightenment whoever got there first would have been able to give us the system and so you don't need the historical figure of Buddha you can remove Buddha from Buddhism Buddhism survives as a system you can remove the founder from the system the system remaining remains it's about the teaching and the experience in the way of life now you can have the same kind of conversation within Islam although you'll find it even more challenging but if you push it to its maximum theoretical limits and you say yes but look did God have to choose Mohammed or could God theoretically have chosen anyone while theoretically the answer will be well anyone but he absolutely that's the one he chose but the thing is it didn't have to be them it could have been anyone but you can't remove Christ from Christian it's impossible if you remove Christ from Christian all you're left with are the letters I am and Ian cannot save you Jesus Christ comes into this world and he basically says look you're reading this and you diligently study it this is about me he says everything you read in here is about me which is why in the Creed's you have this historical statement that Jesus Christ was born by the Virgin Mary he suffered under Pontius Pilate he was crucified and died his life his real historical existence and life is essential he had to live he had to be born he had to physically die he had to be raised again to new life he had to it's not optional it's essential because this system is about him is about who he is it's not about just the thought he offers or the experience he grants or the way of life he asks you to live it is first and foremost defined in terms of do you know he is and have you met him have you accepted him are you in relationship with him is first and foremost about him so you can't remove him from the system and say what we can get rid of Jesus and here's everything else you can't do that which is why in the early crease such importance is laid if you don't talk to a Hindu and you asked them did these various figures historically exist it's not a question that they particularly trouble with and as a matter of fact one am a guy who only got to meet several briefly several times suddenly by the name of Leslie nu begun when he was a bishop in India said Hindus were constantly amazed when they talked to him as a Christian that the fact that Jesus Christ had to physically live physically died there was a physical resurrection if you could disprove the history the whole thing collapsed they were amazed at it because the history wasn't important to them for this for what they believed but for the Christian the history is central which is why you can look into the Christian faith and ask is it real I mean did it actually happen is it true what is the historical basis and that those some of the kinds of questions that alpha tries to answer why do we actually believe this is real why do we believe this is historical why is that so essential on the answers because it's about the person of Jesus Christ now the amazing thing is is not just about who he is is also about who we are if we're created in His image if Jesus Christ is the word through whom all things came to be and that's the if you if you look at the Gospel of John and its beginning it says you know through him all things were made through him nothing was made that has been made all things that were made came to be through him literally it if you read it in its original language it says everything that came to exist came to exist through him and it draws a distinction therefore between what always existed that which never had to be created God and everything else that came to be things that didn't exist but now do and you have these two and God who was always there has now created things that didn't used to be there but now are namely you and I and everything we see around us falls into that category and he now he made us but the problem is to come back to a little bit where we started earlier when we do that which is wrong in our life when we sin it's not just the fact that we offend God and cut off relationship with him although that's primary and very important it also affects us it makes us less than we were created to be it makes us less than we were meant to be that's the effect of sin on us so then what is the fundamental challenge for every human being and the fundamental challenge for every human being is we are less than we were ever intended to be which is why we work so hard on self-improvement self-help self work ten steps to this twelve steps to that one step to this and so on we're trying to get to the place back to a place where we first were but there is no path back we can't reverse time but what Jesus does is God now comes to us in human form in the person of Jesus Christ not to make it possible to go back in time but to make it way forward through his cross when Jesus Christ is crucified under Pontius Pilate Jesus Christ takes on into his being everything that's gone wrong in ours and these are some of the most profound statements in the Bible that's why you'll see statements in the Bible that say things like when Jesus went to the cross he became sin for us he became a curse for us literally Jesus Christ took on into his being everything that's gone wrong in yours all the wrong thoughts all the harmful experiences all the bad things you have done and all of the consequence that is entailed in those things all of it he takes on into himself he literally becomes sin for us he takes on into his being and now the God who was perfect in whom there was no darkness at all takes on literary the sin of the world into himself and cries out on the cross my God my God why have you forsaken me and this history is literally ripped and through his physical death through his taking on the consequence and the reality of all of our sin all the things that we have done wrong into himself and he is buried he doesn't just take it on and pay the price for it through his resurrection he conquers victorious over it and he comes and finds each one of us and he offers us a new life in him he comes to each one of us and says all the stuff you've done wrong that's destroyed you diminished you reduce to you I'm offering you a new life I'm offering you a new creation the Bible talks about it as being born again or having new life or having a new creation or it uses all kinds of language to try to talk about the same thing this is what you were but this is who you can be you can now have a new type of existence in him do you know that have you had that in your life that's what it means to become a Christian becoming the Christian isn't just saying okay I'm gonna think this or I'm gonna do that but I'm gonna try and feel that you can exhaust yourself trying to think things and for your things and do things you'll be utterly exhausted by the end of it it could destroy you may even put you down into a breakdown which is why external forms of religion that just simply have control of your outward appearance can actually lead to breakdown and can feel very oppressive at times there's a difference between that outward pressure to make you conform and now when in a change of your very heart and who you are that changes everything else and that's what God offers to do in Christ and that's why this historical event of God coming into this world and becoming a human what we call incarnation and then the fact that he suffered died was buried and rose again and will come back is central it's the earliest Christian Creed the earliest Christian Creed that we have ever recorded anywhere we find in 1 Corinthians and it's very very simple Christ has died Christ is risen Christ will come again that is the earliest form of Christian belief the earliest Christian belief in its most primitive form that we think that many scholars around the world now say was preached right from the Year dot there's one very liberal scholar who doesn't believe that Jesus Christ is God but actually says within 48 hours I don't know how he comes to the figure of 48 hours he says but within 48 hours of Jesus Christ dying on the cross the gospel the good news the message of the Christian faith the Apostles preached was that Jesus Christ was Lord he is God he died for your sins he was raised to new life and one day he'll come back to judge us all to see who accepted this new life in him that's the earliest irreducible form of the cream which is why creep Jesus Christ as this historical figure is so absolutely central and it changes everything else it changes everything there's a I don't know if any of you've seen Michelangelo's Statue David it's a beautiful statue if you've ever been to Italy it's it is remarkable to see well the first time I went to go and see David I was expecting to be a bit disappointed cuz you know when something's being very much big dup in your mind and your head and you know you don't need to know much about antiquity and statues in particular to know that David's of King David the statue of King David who whose life we read about in here made by Michelangelo was considered by many to be one of the finest expressions of its of its type you know and so I thought that I went there thinking man I think I'm gonna be a bit disappointed it's so big in my head when I see it it's gonna be a little disappointing well I have to say it didn't disappoint at all the it is absolutely incredible but here's the amazing thing about it up for the first few hundred years of its life that statue lived outside but then it had to be moved inside the reason it had to be moved inside and then indeed they built a whole museum just more or less to house that statue the reason had to be moved inside is the marble is of incredibly poor quality I mean really bad quality before Michelangelo ever got his hands on that piece of marble this massive piece of marble because the statue is huge I mean isn't the statues just enormous and and if you're a guy you're gonna go and see it you're gonna just have to deal with the fact it's gonna make you feel much less then then you are so this huge piece of marble was outside in a quarry and two other sculptors came along and they bought this massive piece of marble very cheaply and what they did is they built a huge Tunnel all the way through the base of this massive block I mean then all the way through the middle they called from one end to the other end because they thought maybe there's a nice bit of marble hidden in there somewhere does that make sense you know maybe that's like bad marble good marble and then bad marble and if we tunnel through it we'll find the good marble and if we find good marble then we'll chip all the bad marble off and we'll make something out of the little bit that remains and they called all the way through it and they found nothing of any quality whatsoever so they literally threw it out and there it just stood unused and neglected for years this it's not even good enough quality to even do anything with and then Michelangelo came along Michelangelo could see something that no one else could see and that's one of the reasons why David stands the way he does is the one thing Michelangelo couldn't do that make sense was fill in the hole so you had to work around the hole that was made by these other two guys and he carved out of this low great piece of marble one of the most beautifully and highly regarded statues of his of a genre it's absolutely well worth seeing and in many ways that's exactly what the gospel does that's exactly what Jesus Christ does when you say yes to him when you say yes to Christ he comes and takes whatever is there stuff that if people were to know everything about your life would say you know what such poor quality it's so messed up it's so flawed it's not even worth trying which is why some of us give up sometimes even sadly Christians we feel like just like giving up there just seems to be just too many issues too many problems we just give up and God far more than Michelangelo is not disabled to carve something beautiful out of what is there he's also able to change the substance of what is there as well and begin to make it something which is far more beautiful because in God's eyes there's no life that doesn't have value all life has value because we were made in His image but when we experience sin and when we do sin we're literally also diminishing and destroying ourselves amongst everything else we're doing and Jesus comes and changes everything and makes it completely new so we draw our time to a close and we're not offer three possible responses to to what I've said today no matter where you are um and there were only three responsibles responses and there only have been three responses to this to the gospel of Jesus Christ this message of who he is number one is no I think you're wrong what you're saying is wrong your understanding is wrong I just don't believe it it's wrong and maybe you feel about that very strongly maybe actually bothers you that Christians think it's right and they're trying to make other people Christians you think that's wrong as well and so you have a moral issue with Christians who think that they should tell other people about who Jesus is and make them Christians do you think that's wrong well if that's you if you're such a strongly convinced atheist or agnostic that not only do you think that this isn't right but is actually wrong then you only have one response if you're saying no today if you're saying no you absolutely have to you have no option you are morally compelled as an atheist to come and do the Alpha course let me explain why if that's what you believe that's what you believe you believe that Christians definitely shouldn't be going out to their other people about Jesus and making even more Christians that's wrong and you heard it even in this group of churches here now they want to go and set up another Church in another country and you think that's wrong well here's the thing if you come to the Alpha course you're going to consume their resources they have to employ staff they have to provide refreshments they pay for all of that you don't so if you come to the Alpha course you are consuming and absorbing resources which would otherwise be sent to convert some other poor fellow somewhere else so it's time for you just a big up and take a hit for the team don't allow them to send those resources to convert someone else you absorb the impact of that and you take it on to stop it going somewhere else so if you are here and you fallen separate our abscess encourage you to come along do alpha the second response is possibly look I'm not sure maybe there's something in what you're saying but I'm not sure and I don't know well why not take the time to find out they're all friendly people here they're happy to buy your coffee and again it's one of the reasons why churches like this put on things like the Alpha course it's an opportunity to come out where you can sit in a group with atheists and agnostics and people who believe different things and look at this together and think about it together and figure out what is it right is it true so why not just give that a go you got nothing to lose but maybe you're sat here and right now as you're listening to this you're thinking yes actually understand what you're saying I understand where you're coming from and you're listening to this is almost like somehow God Himself has reached out his hand into your heart and into your life and just rested his hand on your life and is saying to you well look I'm interested in you I love you I created you I know exactly who you're meant to be and the only way you're going to get there is by saying yes to me and that's what becoming a Christian is ultimately it's saying yes to Christ it means thinking god I can't believe that Jesus Christ has come into this world God in human form for me that's amazing and I can't believe that even though me who I am is so messed up and I've so messed up so many bad things done to me so many bad things I've done that I'm so messed up in here that you actually are interested in me but that's amazing - that you are and I can't believe it's amazing that you went to the cross and you took on into your being everything that's gone wrong in mine and I need that divine transaction I need this for me well if that's what you are I'm going to pray a very very simple prayer and I'll invite you to join me I'll invite all of you just take a moment however you may be responding this morning my suggestion would be just to close your eyes there's nothing magical in that that's just so you're not distracted by anyone else and it also gives you some privacy so other people can't spy on what you're doing and if you know as you sit here you need to say yes to him you've completely fallen out of his hands and you need to put yourself back in them or you were never there in the first place and you're finally figuring out what a Christian actually is not someone has an ideology or a lifestyle or has certain types of feelings but someone who has this new life in Christ and you can say yes then I'll just love to pray with you so I'd invite you if that is you with us we have our heads bowed and our eyes closed just to maybe hold up your hands as you would do almost if you were to take a gift from someone because this really is a gift it's something that God gives us again nothing magical and that is just I guess a way of embodying the reality of what we're talking about a little bit and just pray this with me dear father I want to thank you that as the author and creator of the universe the one who made everything I want to thank you that you came into this world in the person of Jesus Christ no I want to thank you even more that you came for me god I find it hard to understand why you would give yourself to rescue me out of the situation I'm in but I want to say thank you well I'm sorry for all the things that I've done what I've added to all of the sin and the mess in this world and no I'm sorry for what has made me but I want to receive this new life from you this new creation this new heart and not help me to live for you nor put me in a context of a real family Norman a real part of your church where I can talk about my struggles and my successes where I can weep where I can cry that I may grow not to be like you and to be more like you and I pray all of this and the precious name of Christ

Channel: #WeAreEmmanuel

Views: 11,979

Rating: 4.9281435 out of 5

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Id: 9Ve2SCUR26s

Length: 41min 18sec (2478 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 20 2018