David Pawson at Brookhouse

and we're going to we're going to just prayer first of all our father-god tonight as we come into your presence we just ask that you would give each of us a keen sense of your nearness tonight father god help us to hear you speaking to us help us to hear what the Spirit of God is saying to the churches and father God not only may we hear but as James says may we be doers of the word also and so father God as we come tonight to worship you may our worship be in spirit and truth may be acceptable in your sight may it bring you joy and pleasure and father God may bring us as we worship together closer to you and in a place where we can hear you speaking to us we ask that in Jesus name Amen it's level and you'll see and uh I'll play on the you know good evening everyone on behalf of olive tree ministries i'd like to warmly welcome you here this evening to what I know will be a very special time for us we're very fortunate very blessed to have Reverend David Paulson and mrs. Paulson here tonight they traveled up yesterday all the way from Hampshire to spend this weekend with us so I know we're in for a treat without further delay I would like us all to give reverend david paulson a great northern welcome Jesus used to sit to teach so I'm going to my subject for tonight is this the uniqueness of Christ in an age of pluralism and I must begin by telling you what pluralism is because we're right in the middle of it in this country I was born 82 years ago in Newcastle on Tyne a majority and I was born into a country in which there was only one religion Christianity and in Northumberland there were two varieties there was always an Anglican Church and a Methodist chapel in each village and these were the two religions Aras brought up to know and I was on the Methodist side my father liked to trace his ancestry back to John Wesley and his first helper John Paulson so we were dyed-in-the-wool Methodists now I had died Methodist nevertheless I was brought up to regard those two church and chapel as the religion of England there was a sprinkling of other denominations there was a Roman Catholic Church here and their brethren assembly or a Salvation Army or a Baptist or Presbyterian but mainly it was Anglican and Methodist and that was my background if you had told me then that one day I would write a book predicting that another religion would take over Britain and become the dominant faith in our country I'd have laughed at you but eight years ago I wrote that book and predicted that Islam will become I'm sorry I haven't switched on why didn't you tell me right I've got power now amazing were you all hearing incidentally oh we didn't need you but thank you anyway so I wrote a book some eight years ago entitled the challenge of Islam to Christians when I was a boy there was one mosque in Britain down near Woking and I wasn't and I didn't see it until I was in my 20s now there are 120 Muslim schools in Britain there's even a Muslim Parliament of Great Britain already perhaps you didn't know that up here but you need to go to somewhere like Dewsbury in Yorkshire or Bradford or Leeds or London in fact if you walk along Oxford Street you wonder which country you're in and the same applies to many other parts of Britain now there are 85 Sharia Courts applying their own laws to people here in Britain and we just don't realize what's happening well now Muslims are opening two mosques every week in this country while the Methodist denomination alone is closing two churches a week that's what's happening in Christian Britain it is no longer a Christian country maybe nominally but in reality it's anything but you just wait till the next coronation in Westminster Abbey and see what happens then and I should be amazed if different religions are not taking part with the crowning of Charles who has already called himself the defender of faith not the defender of the faith which is a reference to the Christian faith actually originally a reference to the Catholic faith but he is called himself the defender of faith any faith but faith and we are now in a very different situation we're in a multi-faith society whether we like it or not and this is even regarded by some as a virtue as a good thing for us gives us variety it gives us choice gives us interest and it's not just Muslims we now have Hindus Sikhs Buddhists and even some of the ancient faiths the pagan faiths that were here in Britain before Christianity and now rearing their heads again and we shall have the witches of witch hill somewhere near you yes pendel we'll have more of that recently there was a Gallup poll in Britain asking about religion in this country and two-thirds of those questions said they believed in God but that is not a very significant statistic because they were asked the wrong question they should have been asked which God do you believe in and then we might have had a truer picture or even more important what kind of God you believe in that to me is the most fundamental question of all because even Christians are deeply divided about what kind of God they really believe believe in some believe in the biblical God they're increasing number of churchgoers who don't and so we are really living in a very different situation to my boyhood what has led to this change well I I think four factors can be identified one is immigration since world war two we've had a huge immigration as the British Empire folded up we've had immigration from the Commonwealth and from our former colonies especially from West Indies from India from Pakistan and we have just been flooded with immigrants from other countries some of them with our religion and frankly with a better form of our religion than even we had but most have come with other religions and other faiths the second factor is transportation it is now so easy to travel around the world that people no longer go to Blackpool they started going to Benidorm and now they go to Bali and it's changed our holiday habits and it means that many people in Britain have travelled to countries where Christianity is not the main religion and they've come back with a kind of impression of the force and the power of some of their other faiths around a third factor is education when I was at school religious knowledge was confined to the Bible and we were taught by a vicar who had far more love for cricket than the Bible and my worst subject at school was Bible knowledge I don't know what's happened since but there it is now religious knowledge is called comparative religion and I've been in country schools in the heart of the Cotswolds hills miles from anywhere weather has been in the main school assembly hall a complete wall covered with Islam with quotations from the Quran and with pictures of prayer towers and mosques and so on our education is now in favor of teaching even the smallest children all the different religions which is bound I think to lead them to confusion but we'll also I think prevent them from ever really lining up with one of them because they are so familiar now with information about both Christianity and other religions that they can make their choice and the media are the final factor in all this by the way I'm coming to Southern Christian later tonight very Christian but I want you to get the picture of where we are right now final factor is the media channel 4 is now in the hands of a Muslim director even the religious departments are being put in the hands of Muslims as I'm sure you must have known now in all this the big question that is going to be raised is how will these different religions relate to each other because we're going to be living cheek by John as a boy I used to collect pennies from about 30 different people every week in order to send British missionaries overseas to foreign countries to persuade them that our religion was better than theirs and that they should change I belong to what was called the Junior Methodist sorry junior missionary Association and I these pennies and I thought Britain had a calling under God to spread civilization and the truth to all these other nations especially through the British Empire but then I was born when as school Atlas was read from one end to the other and the read was not communist it was British the empire on which the Sun never set you could travel around the whole world right round without leaving British territory in my boyhood day no longer true by a long way and when the British Empire collapsed and I'm tempted to tell you why it collapsed it collapsed within five years of our washing our hands of God's chosen people the Jews and it's as if God said if you won't look after my people you won't look after any and over five years we just saw their British Empire collapse and with it I'm afraid a lot of missionary interest in Britain collapsed and the church in Britain is no longer the mission reminded body that it used to be there are some glorious exceptions but as a whole missionary work is considered infra dig why because now we have the opportunity that we once gave to our missionaries we said you go to this Hindu country you go to this Muslim country and convert them and get them civilized like us and brought in to Britain but in fact no longer is that the case because now we have Hindus and Muslims living next door in the same street so now if we were really sincere in supporting mission to work all those years ago we now can all be missionaries ourselves but there isn't the same enthusiasm for when it's on our dose and when we realize how devout some people are in other religions and we feel a bit embarrassed and ashamed at the level of our own faith and devotion so there's been a collapse in missionary morale for want of a better term so how all these religions got going to relate to each other there are four possibilities one is a relationship of antagonism in which we are enemies of one another in which we constantly lift up our own faith and put down all the others and this leads to conflict and tension and it's leading to tension within our own communities in Britain would you remember Enoch Powell speech in which he said our streets will be turned into rivers of blood he was partly right not wholly right but he was envisaging tension building up as the different religions became neighbors now history has told us that there have been endless bloody wars between religions and because of religion it's one of the commonest criticisms that I met I get when I talk to unbelievers in this country what about all the religious wars and this is used as a criticism and an argument we don't want religion here because it just leads to conflict and certainly there have been a lot of revolutions and Wars over religion and looking back it seems to me that whenever a religion gets political or military power that's when trouble starts and so whenever a religion becomes the religion in the country captures the politics and the military power then Wars are the inevitable result and so we have walls between Muslims and Christians when you go to the Middle East the Crusades of the 13th century will come up as if they were yesterday and they are thrown at Christians even today so much so that Billy Graham had to stop using the word crusade for his evangelistic mission and in fact when politicians use the word as some American presidents or unwisely done when one American president talked about a crusade against evil it was immediately identified in the Middle East as here we go again what happened in the 13th century is going to happen all over again there have been wars between Muslims and Hindus which killed millions in India when India was partitioned between Pakistan Bangladesh and India itself and there were so many refugees fleeing from the Muslims side to the Hindus side and vice-versa that millions died during that partition which Britain by the way was responsible for and then they've been wars between Muslims and Judaism in the Middle East today don't think that the conflict in the Middle East is simply humanitarian or political it is a religious conflict and you will hear a Las name shouted in the battles that take place in the terrorists attacks that take place Allah Akbar god is great it is a religious conflict in the Middle East and unfortunately many of our politicians don't even see that dimension in the conflict and until they do they will not understand all that's going on there have been conflicts within religion the recent war between Iraq and Iran in which many innocent people died was between the Sunnis and the Shia's two denominations of Islam and we have on our doorstep just across the water here Northern Ireland where two sides both claiming to be Christian were killing each other and so there's a very popular idea we don't want religion now it simply leads to conflict and death that's one possibility and tagging ISM the second possible relationship between all the religions is what I call separatism keep them apart and if we can keep them apart then we're going to get this conflict just separate them reduce contact to a minimum this involves two things it involves privatizing religion and we've already seen that in this country you can be any religion you like provided you keep it to yourself we call it the privatization of religion it means keep religion out of the public sphere don't let religion get into politics don't let religion get into even local politics let's be a secular country as far as politics goes and if we can keep religion out of politics we'll have peace within the community and that's a very strong pressure the other thing it does mean is that proselytizing will become illegal it's already illegal in many countries to put it simply evangelizing will be legally forbidden we're getting nearer that and this of course will hit two religions more than most others and the two are Christianity and Islam because both are dedicated to spreading the faith worldwide we because Jesus told us to and the Muslims because they believe that Allah has also told them to establish Sharia law in the whole world and so the real reason why Islam and Christianity appear the most antagonistic equates because they both proselytize they both spread their faith they both have ambitions of a world scale and therefore they constitute the biggest clash of religions in our society the Hindus do not have a mission religion the Buddhists don't they will certainly tell you about their faith if you ask them but they are not under orders to spread the faith seek similarly and so we don't hear much about those other religions even though they are now represented here what we do do hear about is Islam which is spreading more rapidly in this country than you realize it is becoming the biggest religious force in this land if you don't believe it read my book the challenge of Islam to Christians or read any books coming out of bound of us fund and what's the name of the man and thing Patrick's of dares writings read any of those he is laying bare the amazing expansion of Islam in our country so if we're to have a separatism answer to the tension then religion must be privatized and proselytizing must be forbidden evangelism I didn't think I'd live to see British preachers arrested in Bradford for preaching in the marketplace but they were put in prison for disturbing the peace of a city in which there are so many Muslims I didn't think I'd live to see that but I did so Christianity and Islam are on a collision course and that means suffering and I'm talking to pastors and ministers and clergy and I'm telling them all over this country prepare your members for suffering we're not used to it we haven't suffered for our faith in this country and yet were one of the few countries left in which Christians are comfortable and therefore complacent but you must be ready and I must be ready for suffering I've been invited to speak at the Christian resources exhibition three times this year yeah and my subject that I've given them is preparing for suffering because Christianity is going to be the one that will suffer most in the coming collision between these two faiths in this country the third possibility is syncretism and many people have tried this the idea is that if you take the best of each religion and then put it all together we can have one new religion in which always have a contribution in which all of us can feel at home and all of us can belong to one faith and getting back to one faith in this country will cure the tensions john foster dulles the american was one of the people who advocated this and he founded the festivals of faith in which all the religions come together to celebrate what they have in common and forget their differences and seek a new faith that will include us all the Baha'i faith started that that way and has simply become another new faith but the Baha'i basic faith is that all religions are right and when the Undertaker and Guildford came to me and said that I've got a Baha'i funeral to take and I don't know who to go to to conduct it and I said well according to the Baha'is you can go to any minister any clergyman of any denomination and that'll be all right with them but I've said as far as I'm concerned I'm not going to take is but the Baha'i faith simply believes that if we got together all the best now you know this is happening between Christianity and Islam way back in the days of Mohammed Mohammed wanted to unite his religion with the Jews and the Christians in Arabia and he issued what he called a common word and what he said in the common word was we have so much in common we should not be three faiths we should be one we all look back to Abraham he said and above all we all believe in loving our God and loving our neighbor and if we united on that we could forget our differences and Islam would not be separate from Judaism or Christianity the Jews and the Christians thank God did not listen and did not agree but what you may not know is that just two years ago the Muslim scholars of the world issued a new common word to evangelical Christians and in that common word I've got it back home they said we all believe in loving God loving our neighbor that enough for us to make one religion out of the three of us and we are the three most prominent religions in the world actually they didn't include the Jews this time but they deliberately targeted Rome and the Pope and evangelical Christians that was very interesting and I was shocked when evangelical leaders signed up to this and I'm going to say some of the names that did John Stott signed up to it George V was signed up to it Michael Greene signed up to it and I could go on 200 evangelical leaders whose names you would know have signed up to this common word but that is not the heart of our religion loving God and loving your neighbor yes they're the two greatest Commandments but that's not Christianity so syncretism is on a grand scale now liverpool cathedral recently had a united ecumenical service of six different religions all of which took part in the cathedral in the service in which they said were all one and ordinary people would love to believe this they would love to have one faith unbelievers think it's a great idea but alas there's an increasing number believers even evangelical Bible believing believers who are falling for this idea and it won't be long before your church is getting involved in one of those mix services or will be suffering because you didn't that choice is going to come very rapidly to us but you see as soon as you go from the realm of behavior loving God and loving a neighbor to the realm of belief you find such huge differences between the religions but you can't get them together at the level of belief only at the level of behavior only at the level of love as its core now you see take take the simplest question how many gods do you believe in will the Jews and the Muslims believe in one the Hindu believes in 30 million the Buddhist believes in none how you're going to unite those in one faith it's absolutely absurd and the Christians don't believe either any of those things they believe that God is three in one and one in three and that doesn't mix with any of those other faiths at all syncretism is not the way forward if we go into syncretism we shall lose the essence of christian faith and it will become powerless to help anybody interestingly there was a discussion in India a few years ago in which all the different religions sent a representative to the conference and they were asked what does your religion offer that none of the others does and they went round the circle and they came to the Christian missionary and he was asked what does your religion offer which no other religion does and he just said one word he said forgiveness and the interesting thing is that none of the others disagreed with him they accepted that that was our unique gift to the world and of course that is everyone's basic need food is not the most basic need forgiveness is the basic need that's why Jesus said when you pray pray give us this day our daily food and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us the two most basic needs of the physical need of food and the spiritual need of forgiveness and Christianity is the only religion that can offer and guarantee forgiveness and that's quite unique there's a fourth possibility and with this I'm finished with the first part and that is pluralism this doesn't consist of bringing all the religions into one faith it consists in respecting each other's faiths as equally valid now there's a word plurality which simply means the fact of different religions but the word pluralism is a belief that it's right and good to have different religions and we are now in a country that is widely accepted pluralism particularly under the labor government but now under the conservative government there is a general acceptance that it's a good thing that we are mixing the religions together in society and the one thing needed is not all accepting the same faith but mutual respect for each other's faith and this is now where we're at in England in the relationship between faiths that if we respect each other's faith as valid then we can have peace in our communities and we needn't argue about religion it involves accepting what we call relativism I hope I'm not bamboozling you with all these isms there are only two isms I believe in baptism and evangelism but all the other isms are philosophers ways of thinking worldviews and this one that I want to mention now is relativism and this is now right through our society relatives of says everything is relative nothing is absolute there is no absolute truth therefore there can be no absolute error there is nothing black and white it's all a shade of gray and therefore we must respect each other because all claims to truth that valid to put it very simply what is true for me may not be true for you but what is true for you is not true for me but we say truth is relative and therefore what is true for you is true and what is true for me is true and if Islam is true for you and Christian and is true for me let's respect each other and say that's fine were both right and it applies not only to beliefs but to behavior in other words there is no such thing now as absolute right and therefore there's no such thing as absolute wrong there is only what is right for you and what is right for me and that may be different and you may believe that's all right for you and I think it's all wrong for me but whilst respect each other and accept the relative truth and the relative principles of behavior and relative principles of behavior are not called principle they are called values have you heard that word recently it's everywhere values and your values may be different from my values that doesn't matter as long as we respect each other and realize that your values are so true and real for you that's all that matters and my values are true and real for me and that's all that matters for me so we just agree to differ now the problem with this is that the Bible is full of absolutes it's a book of black and white it's not a book of grace it's a book about what is true and what is not true what is a lie it's a book about what is right for behavior and what is wrong for behavior it's a book of absolutes and this is where we Christians are misfits in our world we believe in absolutes that is right that therefore is wrong that is true that is false and therefore we're just running against the tide now but I want you to go with the wind and not the tide I mean by the spirit and not by the social training but I'm afraid all these things are so coming at us through the media through our conversation with our neighbors that unless we are really firm as Christians we will go under and give in so let me now come to the main subject for tonight against that back cloth Christianity is unique means it's one of a kind it therefore won't mix with others it therefore cannot accept relativism it cannot agree that all religions are valid cannot agree that all faiths are different roads leading to God and that your road may be different from mine and I shouldn't persuade you to come unto my road you follow your road now follow mine that kind of thinking is now everywhere why then will Christianity not fit the answer is very simple Christ won't fit there is something about our Lord Jesus Christ that is so unique so different from every other founder of every great religion that Christianity will not mix and then for the church in this country will be whittled down to Christians with a strong conviction about our Lord Jesus Christ that he is absolutely and solely unique or to put it in a different way he is one of a kind and there are no others for Christianity is Christ it's not a way of living it's Christ or to put it another way it is not a religion it's a relationship trouble is there is such a thing in this country as Christianity as a religion I call it churchianity do you know what I mean it's not centered in Jesus Christ it's centered in Christian living and Christian practice which when it comes to the crunch is not enough so Christianity is unique because Christ is absolutely unique and I want to talk about him for the rest of the time which will be about one hour that's just a warning but I wouldn't insult you by coming all this way and giving you a 20-minute monologue but let's look at the uniqueness of Christ what makes him different from Buddha and Muhammad and Confucius and all the other founders of great religions the biggest thing of course is that they're all dead and you can't have a relationship with them it's as simple as that you can't have a personal relationship with Muhammad he's dead always Confucius Oh with the Buddha it's not possible you may believe in their teaching or their example you may try to follow them in your own way but you can't have a personal relationship with them not to talk to but let's go through his life we've got four Gospels recording what we know about Jesus outside of the Bible he is mentioned by some but you couldn't put together a biography of Jesus from outside the scripture we have the Bible which claims to me the memory of those who knew him those who lived with him those who slept with him and ate with him and those who saw him die and those who met him again three days later we have their testimony there I witness testimony in the four Gospels and when you read their record which you can either accept or reject but please you can't select some people try and take bits out of the scripture that they like about Jesus and cut out the bits they don't like that's just not only we are there except the record of those who knew him when it was on oh we don't I do and then for when I read their record I know that Jesus Christ is absolutely unique there is no one else like him let me run through some of the things that persuade me of this festival he came into this world in a unique way in a way that nobody else has ever come into our world I'm not just going to talk to you about the virgin birth because that's not the most unique thing about his coming but it is partly that all of us came into this world as the result of two people having sexual intercourse I have met met anyone yet who didn't come into the world that way but he didn't Muhammad did confucius did the Buddha did and I didn't Union but he didn't know I used to think that made him absolutely unique and then I heard when actually it was a professor of gynecology in London University told me that there have been he thought other virgin births and I said tell me more I've since found a coffee book table on the secrets of life which is not a Christian book at all in which it says the same thing there are pictures of fetuses and so on and one chapter begins then they well have been other virgin births now this was news to me and probably looking at your faces it's news to you but the simple fact is that sometimes a female egg in a woman's body can begin to multiply without being fertilized by males and it then develops into a fetus and becomes a baby all together both the coffee book coffee table book that I read and this professor told me they have probably been about half a dozen other cases of women claiming to have had babies without having had sex it has a scientific name parthenogenesis and that name refers to when female eggs spontaneously divide and grow without being fertilized it's common in the plant world it's even common in the animal world have you heard of the Komodo dragon that has had a number of virgin births but what about these women there's one interesting fact about all of them who've claimed it that has influenced the scientific opinion to accept their claims and that is this every baby born of a virgin has turned out to be a girl and that of course it's scientifically inevitable because every egg and every woman's over in her body is female and it can only produce a female fetus unless it's been fertilized by a male sperm and that can change the X chromosome to a Y chromosome and it becomes a little boy and Larry had a little boy that is unique so here is the beginning of Jesus life was unique but that is not the most amazing thing about his birth that Mary had a boy which means that somebody else was doing something in her womb other than her husband and of course we now know it was God who was the father of Mary's boy and that he had done something in her womb that changed that female egg into a male and he's never done that with anybody else that's unique but the really unique thing about Jesus birth was that he chose to be born Hugh didn't choose to be born I didn't choose to be born you didn't choose your parents I didn't he did and he never once said I was born for this he said I came for this and all through his ministry he talked as if his conception was not his beginning he's not interesting and he said where he came from he said nobody's been up to heaven but I came down from heaven that's why I can tell you about heaven because I came from there I'm the bread of him referring to the manner that came down in the desert and fed the Israelis he's saying I'm the bread that came down from heaven to feed you well now that's his unique birth in other words he came into this world in a way that nobody else has ever done before or since he chose to move on and he was born of a virgin who'd never had intercourse for the man that's unique there's nobody else in the world ever made such claims about how he began his life on earth but that's what Jesus trained from his birth onwards we know nothing about his childhood except one glimpse at the age of 12 the curtain is lifted and we see Jesus as a boy of 12 and just one incident in his life considering is the most personal death how little we know about him for the first 12 years nothing and then he had what the Jews call his Bar Mitzvah it's a great idea at that age a Jewish boy becomes a man and he throws away all his toys he puts away childish things and he's now a grown up and the next thing he does is he becomes a partner with his dad in whatever job his dad has in those days you didn't have the choice as young people have today I think they have too many choices to choose from but if your dad was a carpenter you became a carpenter and that applied in this country not so long ago now young people just go to university study anything they like and then choose any career they're like hopefully there with the present unemployment it's not so easy but in those days you took over the business you found ahead you became a partner you were now a man and especially you went to the synagogue and you read the laws of Moses because now you had to keep them up till the age of 12 your parents had were responsible for you keeping the law now you read it for yourself and you're saying now I'm a man now I have to keep it the big ceremony now they had to travel a long way from Galilee to Jerusalem for his Bar Mitzvah and this is how they traveled in those days they walked 15 miles a day and the women and children went off early in the morning and walked first when they got to the camp after 15 miles the women erected the tent the woman's lit the fire and the women cooked the evening meal and then later the men came just in time for the meal to be what a wonderful arranger wasn't there this is pre feminist behavior now they went up to Jerusalem and they had the ceremony and then they set off home and Joseph and Mary walked 15 miles and met up later that night and Mary said where's Jesus and Joseph said well he's not my boy he's yours I thought he was with you no she said he is a man now he'd walk with the men he'd be with you and they had an argument and set off to go back to Jerusalem find out where it was and searched for days and finally found him and Mary was so angry she was typically anxious mother and she stormed at him she said your father and I have been looking everywhere for you and he said my father I've joined my father in this business didn't you expect that do you understand now why he said what he did and why they'd both missed him for 15 miles it's such a real situation Mary had never told him who his father was but he knew and that's the significance of that one little glimpse you have and then he went back to Nazareth and was subject to dead nun his stepfather an Israel mullah and for the next 18 years we don't know what happened we assume that he became the head carpenter we assume that Joseph died and that he stepped into his dad shoes and money for the family we know there were at least four brothers born to marry and at least two girls as well we have the names of the boys so there was a family of six children to look after and we presume that for 18 years 18 years just a minute he was a woodworker for 18 years and a Wonder worker for three now mana mathematic says the proportions are six to one you're still with me for every six years he worked as a woodworker he worked one as a Wonder worker when did you last hear about six to one he said my father works until now now I work Regenesis one again and you'll find his father worked for six days and then took a day off for himself well doesn't the Bible hang together an amazing way well the the years go by and we still know nothing about those years until he's 30 and then he was baptized and then the Holy Spirit came on him and then he began three years of the most incredible ministry now how unique was all that I'm going to divide his public ministry into three parts what he did what he was and what he said and we'll call them his miracles his morality and his message and we've got to find an explanation as to why after only three years of doing good he was executed as a dangerous criminal strange that we've become so used to the facts of the gospel that these things don't shook us and surprises but we've got to find an explanation for this if you've got an enquiring mind at all I hope you're asking why did they do it because he had done nothing to deserve it he went about doing good never harmed anyone never hurt anyone and yet three years later he's being executed as a dangerous criminal whom they cannot allow to live any longer didn't it never hit you the injustice of it pal for anything else but doesn't the incongruity strike you that they did this after only three years well let's look at what he did his miracles now we can divide his miracles into two categories on the one hand are his miracles done on people healing them the blind saw the lame walk the Deaf ed and even dead were ranged now most of those miracles on people were being done by other people as well except for the last one other people were casting out demons in fact Jesus acknowledged this he said to the Pharisees by what power do you cast out demons admitting that they did the miracles on people were not unique until he started raising the dead and that really was going beyond anybody else and was verging on the other category of miracles where he did things on nature and these were unique let's just remember what he did he turned water into wine nobody else was doing that he multiplied a few loaves and fishes to feed 5,000 people I find the account of that so funny my sense of humor runs away with me because when he'd done that he said to the disciples gather up the fragments that are left and they gathered up twelve baskets full one for each disciple now what were they doing with twelve empty baskets did you never ask yourself that because earlier Jesus had said they had said to Jesus you better send them home now they're hungry and he said why don't you give them food which means that at that point they had food that each got the picnic basket for later they went into the bushes and ate it was nobody watching so the end of it all they finished up with twelve empty food baskets and Jesus said now you pick up what's left and there'll be enough for you - he was rebuking them if you won't feed them I will if you won't share food with them I will but that's beside the point but he fed them all he cursed a tree a fig tree he was hungry himself and was hoping there were FIGS on it and there should have been some early figs the first things but there weren't and he cursed the tree and the next day they said master that tree you cursed it's dead all the leaves are on the ground it's it's dead nobody else was kissing fig trees at that time and then perhaps they were crossing the Sea of Galilee now you need to go to understand this but the Sea of Galilee is a lake about the size of maybe L ELLs water but it's eight miles across 13 miles long and it's surrounded by mountains as the Lake District is and during the day the Sun heats the water and therefore the the hot air rises from the water by mid-afternoon and sucks cold air down the valleys and the cold air comes down the valleys from every direction to replace the hot air rising and it all meets in the middle and there's a storm and still to this day they won't let you go out in a small boat in the mid-afternoon on Galilee I've been when it's been rough in the middle but in a bigger boat and it's pretty frightening because you can't go any way unless you've got a motor which modern boats have but they had sails and which way do you say when the wind is coming at you from every direction and staring all up in the middle and they got scared and they thought they were gonna drown they were sure they weren't they said and he was sitting in the boat having a nap and they woke him up and said don't you care and he got up and he didn't say peace be still that's the polite English version he said get muzzled the way you talk to a puppy dog was jumping up at you get out get out and he spoke to the wind like that wasn't get on and there was a great calm nobody else was doing that kind of thing that's unique sir Jesus was not so unique in the miracles he did for people others were doing the healing miracles at that time except the resurrection of the Dead that was going further but when you come to the nature miracles that's unique and only God can control nature like that it's the biggest hinge you have then Jesus was not just an the disciples said one is still the storm what kind of a man is this that even the wind's and the waves obey Him that he can talk to them like a little puppy dog and they get down but it was not for his miracles that they put him to death because all of those miracles did good things they help people they save people from death that's a good thing to do that's not a crime none of his miracles were crimes so why did they put him to death let's look at his morality I'm sure you've heard the human proverb no one's perfect have you heard that nobody's perfect well one person was and you know no one has ever been able to find anything wrong in Jesus isn't that amazing knowing the media today they love dishing up dirt about heroes and heroines they love finding things that were wrong with the people that we admired look how President Kennedy's sexual escapades came to light after he was shot and many Americans had never dreamed that President was anything like that now we know and so many people heroes of the past have been torn to shreds by the media digging in their lives and finding unsavory truths which we never realized now nobody's life has been so investigated so thoroughly as Jesus hold books and books and books have been written about him and none of them has been able to find a scandal not one that amazing he sent to his worst enemies which of you can find a fault in me and none of them could and ever since none of them have been able to the greatest critics of the Christian faith have never been able to criticize Jesus that's a staggering fact it means that there has been one life on earth that was perfect and everybody has acknowledged that even the cynics who love to find fault with people and love to dig up the dirt they haven't been able to do it with our Lord Jesus Christ his relatives closest relatives had the same opinion people who lived with him had the same opinion Peter said to him depart from me O Lord I'm a sinful man you're too good for me I just can't cope with you living near to me and his cousin John the Baptist's were called and John said to him why are you coming to be baptized you've got no sins to wash away you're clean you don't need to be baptized so I'm not gonna baptize you and jesus said now look it's right to be baptized so you must do it from me but John was extremely reluctant when your own cousin says there's nothing dirty in your life put all these opinions together and you've got a man who had no trace of any desire for fame or money or sex or any of the things that people go for today and he shows complete indifference to everything that the world can offer nobody could corrupt this man no it could Brydon nobody could accuse him why then it makes the question even more poignant why did they kill him why was so wanting to get rid of him kind of in his miracles it can't have been his character his morality his purity so what was it let's come to the third thing that makes Jesus unique his message and what he said now most of the world has agreed that Jesus gave us the highest moral standards of any teacher ever born even unbelievers like Mahatma Gandhi the Indian and the Russian Dostoyevsky they say the Sermon on the Mount is the finest moral teaching that mankind has ever been given and they are right and they have agreed that if all the world lived up to the Sun on the Mount the world would be at least a much better place if not a perfect world to live in it's why the Sermon on the Mount has had such an impact on unbelievers as well as believers the only problem is who can live up to the 7:00 on the night when you read it through there isn't one of us can live it and that's the only criticism of his moral teaching that I've ever heard that it's impracticable that it's idealistic that it's beyond the human beings to achieve that's the only criticism but you see when Jesus taught us how to love he didn't do how to live he didn't do what many teachers today - and that is bring his standard of living down to our level he said I've come to lift you up to my standard of living that's the difference other religious teachers have compromised to make it possible for people to live that way Jesus knew it was impossible but he said I can make it possible and I can lift you to my standard that's a very different approach but all that his moral teaching as I call it really doesn't explain his cross so I come to another part of his teaching what he said about himself and I'm quite sure that it was for that reason that they treated him as a dangerous criminal it is what he said about himself nobody has ever talked as much about themselves as Jesus did and yet nobody ever accused him of anger Chism now all of us know people who begin every other sentence with I and their boss on there you know when you talk to someone else and they will talk only about themselves how do you feel about that I know you you wanted to be talking about you and that's an inverted snobbery because it's the same problem agate ISM but Jesus had not a trace of agate ISM or pride about him yet no one says so much about himself and it was that for which they killed him let's look at just 10 thing very briefly 10 things he said about himself the first had already mentioned he never said I was born he also said always said I came and I came from heaven in other words he existed before he was born before he was conceived in fact on one occasion he said before Abraham was I am and they said look you're not 40 years old yet the neighborhood he's been dead two thousand years how could he know you before Abraham was I am NOT I was I am which means I was always there I am that's God's name secondly he said to a paralyzed man I forgive you your sins now no human being can do that the only sins of yours that I can forgive are your sins against me do you understand what I'm saying I can't forgive you your sins against him or her I can forgive what you did to me because you did it to me but I cannot say to you I forgive all your sins not just against me but against anybody and even against God yet Jesus said I forgive you all your sins and sins to the Jews men promise sins against God how can Jesus the man forgive sins against God he can only do that if he's God but that was the second thing that he claimed about himself if it wasn't God how could he do it and he said I'll prove it to you I forgiven his sins get up and walk and the man got up in a walk and he said that's proof that when I said that I forgive you your sins his sins were forgiven thirdly he claimed to have a unique relationship to God he never said our Father so the Lord never said the Lord's Prayer he taught us to pray our Father but he never said that he said my father and your father is the difference the difference is that he's the only begotten Son of God and were adopted sons of God and the name he used for God is incredible he said Abba now that's the first name that a little baby uses for the male parent in Hebrew culture I've seen this I was walking with a Jew through the old city of beth shannon and he had a little boy who was getting more and more tired and was getting further and further behind us and he was lifting his little arms and saying Oh papa and my friend went back and picked him up first time I'd heard that word in normal language it's the word dad it's a very intimate word so when a Jewish father has a little baby boy in the pram he leans over the pram this great big monster that the baby can say about them and says baa-baa finally the little baby says as a out of the line of least resistance his son eats he knows me I'm his dad and Jesus said when you pray say ha dad daddy nobody ever talk like that about God much less the Jews they referenced God profoundly to call God dad well that's the third thing the fourth thing he made 7 no 8 no 9 statements about himself which began with the words I and I'm the bread of heaven I'm the Good Shepherd on the door of the Sheep I'm the way the truth and the life I am the resurrection and the life nine statements seven big ones like that and then that statement before Abraham was I am and then no I'll wait just for a moment and tell you this go back to Moses when Moses was met with God and God said go and rescue my people from Egypt Moses said who shall I say called I am called you the nearest I can get to that in English I once asked the Lord what's the nearest in English to your Hebrew name Yahweh which is actually a participle of the verb to be and straightaway into my mind came the word always God calls himself always always I am always and every Jew knew that I am was God's name and they dare not use it you know even to this day they won't even use the word God in the newspapers of Jerusalem God is G - D that's all they did not even put their own in case they take his name in vain I and at his trial they couldn't get witnesses to agree on what he'd said so the judge did an illegal thing and condemned him out of his own mountains that are you the son of God and he just said I am and the high priest rent his clothes and said we've got witnesses now 70 of you heard him say that did he say that then he called himself God and they all agreed because Jesus was condemned to death for blasphemy not for is miracles not for his teaching not for his character he was condemned for blasphemy for saying iron and using God's name about himself so now you know why he was put to death of course they couldn't get the Romans to agree because blasphemy was not a crime in Roman law so by the time they got him to Pilate to get permission for his death they had to change the charge from blasphemy to treason that he said he was the King of the Jews and that's treason and in Roman law treason deserves death but Romans had no law against blasphemy whereas the Jews did and it did reserve death and so they charged him with blasphemy and condemned him with blasphemy Jesus died for one reason only for what he said about himself now you think about that carefully as you go home he was put to death because of what he said about himself and I've only told you four things so far let's quickly move on fifth he said I'm the only way to God and in saying that he was condemning all other religions he's saying they don't all need to God if you want to find out God as he really is you gotta get to know me first that's an exclusive claim it's say Mohammed was wrong Confucius was wrong but it was wrong they were all wrong they won't get you through to God however meaningful Leverett liturgies and experiences that's an incredible claim all other ways are a dead end according to our Jesus six not just I am the way but the truth and the life he didn't say I am a way a truth a life no he said I'm then the only I'm the way the truth and the life others have claimed to say I'll show you the way I'll tell you the truth I'll teach you how to live but Jesus had no eye on the way the truth the life you want to know the way to God then get to know Jesus if you want to know the truth truth about God truth about yourself truth about the world and which I lived and get to know Jesus if you want the only life that's worth living so that when you get to the end of it you'll have no regrets and look back over your life and say that was it I wouldn't have changed it then you need to know Jesus because he is they live number seven I will set people free by dying for them that's an amazing thing to say and yet he did and still does number eight I promise that after I'm dead I will come back to you before my body rots in the grave on the fourth day and that claim was fulfilled and finally says I will come back to Planet Earth one day and every true Christian is looking forward to that day more than anything else the day when he comes back to put everything right to rule over this world and bring righteousness and peace and justice to the whole world when the wolf will lie down with the lamb not the lion the wolf will lie down with the lamb and both will eat straw like the Ox and the lion will cease to be carnivorous become herbivorous and little children will play with snakes safely what what do you do with all those promises in the Bible you treat them as poetry allegory would you believe that true and to have a world like that to look forward to I've given you ten things he said about himself and therefore everybody everybody in this nation and in the whole world must decide was he right or wrong was he speaking the truth or telling lies or to put it in the three choices we all have we must all say he was either a lunatic a liar on the Lord he was our the mad bad Oh God and you can't have it any other way I took part in the debate in London in the Inns of Court before a hundred-twenty lawyers and there were three speakers and we had to debate whether Jesus was a lunatic a liar of the Lord and the professor of psychology in a London College said he was a lunatic that he was crazy and the president of the British Humanist Association said he was a deceiver so one was saying he told lies to himself his second was saying he told lies to other people and poor me had to get up after that and say no he was telling the truth and he is Lord there is no other choice why then won't people make the choice why don't they even decide I wish that millions would just decide which then to believe even if they believed the wrong answer that's better than no answer but they don't want to decide because if you once decide that Jesus is what he said he was then your life has to change and people don't want their lives to be changed they want to go on living with their themselves as their own boss and deciding for themselves what to do with the only life they've got they don't want to face the real issue one day they will have to and one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father because then to call him alone lunatic to his face they won't be able to do and to call him a liar to his face they won't be able to do it if only they'd make the right decision now before it's too late to acknowledge that what he said about himself was true because he also said that one day he would judge every human being that means that one day Muhammad will stand before Jesus and answer to Jesus for what he didn't said and one day Confucius will and the Buddha will and you will and I will in Hitler will and Gaddafi will and one day every human being will face him as he opens a book called this is your life and it's all written down there already and it's not just the nice things that the bbc's selected for that program it's everything everything we've said everything we found everything we thought and the great white throne will not have God on it Paul says God has delegated the final judgement to a man whom he raised from the dead in other words one day everybody in Lancaster in this whole area will stand before Jesus not God Jesus to be judged he said that you can either call him a liar or you can call him crazy but that's what he said and I believe that's what he will do we're nearly finished sighs of relief but the one thing that makes Jesus absolutely unique it's never happened before or since to anyone else he rose from the dead no sorry I'm not quoting the Bible correctly there it says he was Ray raised from the dead Jesus didn't raise himself God raised him in the darkness of the tomb at the end of his life as in the darkness of the womb at the beginning God did a miracle and gave him a brand new body a body that could disappear and appear a body that could eat fish and cook breakfast and do without any meals a unique body and the Bible promises that one day we shall have a body just like his I can't wait to be 32 or 33 again can you imagine it I was at my best then physically mentally so many ways and to know that I'm going to be 33 again I think there are a few here who are about my age as I said I made it to but and looking around I think there are a few here who could match that but think of us being 33 again in which we have a body like his glorious body but what are the real significance of the resurrection it was not that he survived death we know that already when do you think he was between his death and his resurrection he was preaching to the people had been drowned in Noah's Flood what an amazing revelation that is did you ever notice that in Peters letter but what's the biggest thing about the resurrection the biggest thing is God was saying my son was right and you were all wrong you said he was too bad to live I say he's too good to rot and the resurrection is God reversing the human verdict about his son Jesus and declaring he is my son and the resurrection is there for the one event on which Christianity Falls if anybody can prove that Jesus did not rise from the dead we'd have to close this church and every other Church in the country because it would mean that we've been preaching a fraud and that we've been deceiving people with a lie and I would find it very difficult to believe that I'd spend a whole year whole lifetime persuading people that he was alive if it was alive but it was another life and the resurrection happened and the evidence for it is so good that judges have said that any jury in the world given the eyewitness testimony and the circumstantial evidence would have to agree that Jesus is alive there were two Oxford professors of law who decided to prove that Jesus was dead so that they could kill off Christianity and they decided to spend the summer vacation studying the evidence and when they came together at the beginning of the autumn term the first one said to the other I'm very embarrassed to meet you because he said I have examined the evidence and I'm convinced by it that he's alive and the other professor said you don't know how relieved I am to hear you say that and together they wrote a magnificent book proving Jesus loved you know that more lawyers have come to faith in Christ than any other profession because they know how to examine evidence and they've been willing to and they've come to Christ as a result hon Chancellor's of England have come to cry faith in Christ by examining the evidence for the resurrection that was unique nobody has ever come back from the dead like he did with a new body the old body disappeared and the great clouds collapsed if you don't believe what I'm telling you ask yourself this question when did Jesus get his resurrection clothes from do you ask yourselves questions like this when you read the Bible it's not the first time you've ever thought that put your hand up if that's the first time you ever thought about his clothes come on most of you why didn't you think didn't you think that he appeared stark naked so everybody will he met the women first and I think they would sure have run home to get him some clothes or do you think he waited til Marks and Spencers opened up and asked Michael to go and get him something too or do you think he stole clothes from a washing man you didn't think about it well I'll tell you where he got his clothes from in the resurrection because he appeared close to them and he'd left all the grave clothes in the tomb same place he got his new body God creates things out of nothing you won't be unclothed in heaven you'll be clothed and it's no good packing these things to take because you won't be able take them resurrection was an act of creation by God and that's why early Christians called it the eighth dinghy because God's gone back to work and we celebrate this every Sunday sunday is not a Sabbath it's not a day of rest sunday is the day when God went back to work and began the new creation and began with his own son's body and unlike the old creation where he began with a new heaven and earth and ended with male and female human beings now he's doing it all again but reverse we're in the second week of creation now and he's beginning with new men and women and we'll end with the new heaven on earth because he wants us to be part of the new creation and so he's beginning with us and every Sunday and for that matter every weekday thousands of new men and women are being born born-again prepared for a new world it's God the Creator has gone back to work and is now making all things new that's the gospel I know and the ghost won't preach just a word about his ascension which we often neglect because it happened on a Thursday and so because it didn't happen last Sunday we tend to overlook it Jesus went out of the world in a unique way he came into the world in a unique way he went out of it new new new unique way let me tell you how first he didn't go out of this world until two months after he died now there's a startling fact for you you will leave this world a minute you die I will but he didn't leave for a couple of months after he died and secondly took his body with him the one thing I can predict about you is that you'll leave your body behind but he took it with him the more you look at the life of Jesus the more unique he is the more different from everybody else and yet it was a real human being like us that's why you can't mix them with anybody else you can't compare him with anybody else you can only contrast him with everybody else and that makes our faith at sundered unique and I finish with these two thoughts because Christianity is Christ not a religion but a relationship with him and if you don't have that personal relationship with him you are not a Christian and I would beg you to consider that the best thing you can do is to go home and talk to Jesus and if he's really what I was he will reply because it's a person relationship but there are two things that follow from all I've said number one Christianity is therefore an exclusive religion it's got to be can't be compared combi contrast it can't be mixed up with anything else it is exclusive it is the only way they're grown in truth the only life because Christ is the only one of a kind but secondly it is also inclusive it is for everybody and Jesus meant everybody he said go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost and teaching them how to live everything that I've taught you that's our job it is because it's inclusive it must be a Glee exclusive it must be inclusive it's because it's unique that it has to be the only religion in the whole world and therefore every true Christian has within them the desire to spread this faith to everybody else and we'll find some way of doing it and that's why this meeting is here the olive tree represents a group of Christians who are exploring ways of including everybody in the faith that's why this medium with Glendon is held and every true Christian will feel the same way I have an exclusive faith that can't be mixed with anything else but it must include everybody else in it because it's so unique because he is so unique and that's all I wanted to say tonight thank you for listening and may God bless you as you really become firm in your own faith it's going to be tested you're going to suffer for being a Christian in what used to be a Christian country but no longer is and the pressures are going to be so subtle that you will mix your faith with everybody else's and respect every religion is a way to God I just pray that when the crisis comes you will stand firm and that you will fight for the faith and go on spreading it as long as ever you can let's pray Lord Jesus forgive me for talking about you in your presence but I wanted to share your truth and your way in your life thank you Lord Jesus for coming into our world becoming one of us so that we could understand not only you but your father we could look at you and see your father and thank you Lord Jesus that you're coming back a heartcry Maranatha even so lord come come quickly and establish your reign in this sad sick and sinful world for your name's sake we ask it oh man so we come to the end of a very special time and thank you very much David for being with us tonight we're going to take another song of worship and take up an offering but before we do I have a rather special announcement to make could I ask a Paul and Diane to come up please a little bird told me at the beginning of the evening that we have a special birthday girl here tonight and it happens to be mrs. Enid Paulson so we're going to just sing happy birthday I see the King of glory coming on the clouds with fire the whole earth shakes and we look forward to that day don't we when the whole world will see Jesus coming back again let's start to our feet shall we I see I see I see I see the king of glory are you this generation that will rise up to take your place with self-respect I see let's just maybe stop shall we just pray Heavenly Father we just thank you for this time together you've filled us up Lord with your word and we thank you for David and fitting it for making this journey up to here tonight to be with us we pray that as we leave here Lord you'll go with each one of us and fill our heads and our hearts with what we've heard tonight that we may act upon it Lord and be your servants we're called to serve your Lord and we are so grateful we thank you in Jesus name for all you've done here tonight opening hearts of minds so Lord as you take us out of here go with each one of us we pray in your precious name of Jesus amen

Channel: Steve Lamb

Views: 19,058

Rating: 4.7018633 out of 5

Keywords: Logical, Volume, Identifier, WMV, V9

Id: R5ukXL7vo58

Length: 118min 59sec (7139 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 15 2012