(upbeat rock music) - Just some light meditative music for you as we work through the Scriptures. Good morning! Are you awake? Hey, say good morning
like you're almost awake. Good morning! - [Audience] Good morning. - It's great that you are here
and across all of our sites. We are glad that you are at
The Meeting House this morning. We have a special guest
that I'm very excited about. Nabeel has been someone
I've been a fan of for years and now becoming a friend
of and it's nice to know that we are all brothers
and sisters together. And so he has an amazing
journey personally and is also a wonderful
thinker on who Jesus is, and certainly coming out
of his background in Islam, being able to shed light on
both Islam and Christianity and keeping Jesus at the center. And we're really privileged
to have him with us today. So, let's welcome our brother, Nabeel. So glad you're here.
(audience clapping) - Thanks, brother. Bruxy, I notice nobody sits
in the front row here, so... Does he spit when he speaks,
is that what's going on? I'm wondering. I'm very privileged to be here. There is so much to talk
about and so little time. This period in human history,
I think, is unprecedented. How's that for starting a sermon? I think right now, we're living in a time that's unlike any other. God has given us an opportunity to reach people unlike any other time. He's placed you specifically
here now for a purpose. You are not an accident. You are not living in 2016
in Toronto for no reason. And we don't have too much
time to talk about this, so let's pray and let's get right to it. Heavenly Father, how much Your heart must break seeing what we're doing to each other. Throughout the world, God. We just keep killing one another. We keep destroying one another. We keep fighting. And if we don't destroy others, we destroy ourselves through addictions, we destroy ourselves through
fear, through anxiety. God, through chasing after
greed and personal dreams, Lord, when we could be living
like You lived, God. And here in Canada, we have
been given so many blessings. I mean, we're in this room
with air conditioning, with great music, great
people all around us. When, Lord, more than half of the world, 3 1/2 billion people right now
live on less than $3 a day. God, I pray that we wouldn't feel guilty, but also that we wouldn't take for granted the gifts that You've given us. May we pour it forward, Lord. May we live these lives for
others, not for ourselves. And can we understand,
Lord, in this moment, can You please be with
us and help us understand how we can engage this world
that's so actively involved in destroying itself. For Your glory, Lord, we ask. Please meet us, please encounter us now. Speak to us individually, Lord. Everyone in this room, I pray You would speak
specifically to them. If You'd like to speak through me, Lord, I would be honored to be a
vessel, broken though I am, but if You wanted to just speak directly into people's hearts and bypass
me for the next half hour, I would love that, Lord. We just pray You'd be present. We thank You that when
we gather in Your name, there You are also. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. I normally close my eyes when I pray and I can walk off stages. So I'm thankful this little lip is here. That's very good. I was raised in a Muslim
family in the West. My parents are from Pakistan. My mom is the daughter
of a Muslim missionary. So she was, even though she's Pakistani, she was raised in Indonesia
because that's where her father was preaching Islam in
the jungles of Indonesia. My grandfather was a
Muslim missionary, as well, preaching in Uganda. And he was also a physician, so he was healing in the name of Islam and preaching in Uganda. So I come from a line
of Muslim missionaries on my mom's side. On my dad's side, my dad chose
to come to the United States in the '70s from Pakistan
because our sect of Islam was being persecuted by other sects. So, it was a bit of a
matter of religious freedom. He actually landed the
day that Elvis died. Why is that funny? (laughing) He gets off the plane,
he looks at a newspaper, the newspaper says, The King is Dead. (audience laughs) And my dad says, I could've
sworn they had a democracy. That's how they came from Pakistan. Just devoted to Islam. Passionate people about
their family, their culture. My dad immediately joined the US Navy. For 24 years, he served the US Navy. And for me growing up then, being an American was not
opposed to being Muslim. It was a matter of being
both at the same time. I was an American Muslim,
both American and Muslim. I saw my dad go out to sea and
defend our country regularly. And so when I was taught that Islam is a religion of peace growing
up, I really believed it. I believed that this was what is Islam. It's a matter of bringing peace with Allah and also peace with others. And so being a devout Muslim involved that component of patriotism. It also meant praying five times a day. We prayed the salat regularly. During the five daily prayers, Muslims recite portions of the Quran. So that means having
portions of the Scripture memorized from a very young age. If you hear your father
recite Scripture every day during the prayers, you memorize it. So by the time I was five years old, I had the last seven chapters
of the Quran memorized. And my mom had taught me to
recite the Arabic of the Quran, so I had the whole Quran recited in Arabic by the age of five. Didn't even know how to read English yet, but because Arabic was
the language of the Quran, my mom had taught me to recite
the Scriptures in Arabic. That's what it meant
to be a devoted Muslim. For me in my childhood growing
up and everyone around me, that's what it looked like. When 9/11 happened, everything changed, everything changed. Because all of a sudden we
felt really vulnerable, too. The world has not been
the same since then. I'm not sure if you've noticed this but everything has changed since then. And not only did it change
for Americans at large, but it also changed for Muslims
in particular in America. Because we felt the same
vulnerability everyone else felt, but at the same time, we had
to defend our faith from people who started saying, well, how do you explain what
these terrorists have done? How can you say Islam
is a religion of peace, given what they have just done? And so, we had to try
to reclaim the rhetoric. And one slogan that I remember memorizing, by the way, I memorized this slogan at the Masjid in Vaughn here. My family would come twice
a year up to Toronto, because we had some aunts who lived here, and we'd go to the
Masjid here, the mosque, and we'd come and receive
instruction and pray. And one of the things
they taught us here was when someone asks you,
were the hijackers Muslim, your response should be that
not only did they hijack planes that day, they also hijacked Islam. Our religion is a religion of peace. And so that's how we were
responding to people. And we believed it. These were not lies
because we truly believed what we were saying. But I had a specific friend
who I had just encountered a few weeks earlier. I was 18 years old. I had just started
college in August of 2001. September 11th happened a few weeks into my adulthood really. And this friend turned
out to be a Christian. And he started asking me questions. Now, one thing that I respected about him was that he actually believed his faith. Most Christians that I encountered
were unwilling to explain why they believed what they believed. If I asked them questions,
why do you believe the Bible, they'd have no response. If I said to them, where
did Jesus claim to be God in the Scriptures, they wouldn't know. God forbid if I asked
them about the Trinity, they have no clue. What is the Trinity? Well, it's God is three in one. Well, God's not a shampoo bottle. What does it mean for
God to be three in one? Can you explain this to me? And no one could explain these things. But I finally ran into
a friend who was able to start explaining to me why
he believed what he believed. Why he thought the Bible was reliable. Why he believed Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. Turns out, he had been
an atheist growing up, and so he had to actually
wrestle with this himself when he became a Christian. So in the midst of me challenging him and asking him questions,
which by the way, if you've encountered Muslims in the West, they tend to be very informed on how to challenge
Christians in their faith. So, I was not an anomaly. When I was challenging him
in his faith, 9/11 happened. And then he started asking me questions. He said, Nabeel, how can you say Islam is a religion of peace? And I'd give him the spiel. And then he'd say, yeah
Nabeel, I get that, I get what you're saying
but what about those verses in the Quran that those
terrorists are reciting? What about those teachings
of Muhammad's life that they're referring to? And I would do whatever I could. I would read defenses that my
teachers and my imams gave me, and I would ask the scholars around me, how do I respond to his questions, and I'd give him the responses. But as he was asking these questions, now I was also internally
beginning to wonder, as well. Is what I have been taught, is what I have been received true? Or is there more to this story? So it turns out that were
many things in the Quran I hadn't been told. For example, when people challenged me, is Islam a religion of peace, I would say: (speaks in foreign language) Chapter two of the Quran, verse 256 says: (speaks in foreign language) "There's no compulsion in religion." So of course Islam is a religion of peace. Look what the Quran says. "There's no compulsion in religion." Or I would quote: (speaks in foreign language) Say to the disbelievers,
oh, you who disbelieve, basically, those of you who aren't Muslim, you can believe what you want to believe. I do not worship what you worship. You don't worship what I
worship but that's okay. We can get along basically,
is what the chapter says. Peaceful message. Those were the verses I knew. What I didn't know were verses like chapter nine, verse five. "Slay the infidel wherever you find them. "Lay siege to them and take them captive." That's in the Quran, too. Verses like, "Fight the Jews
and Christians until they pay "the ransom tax and feel humiliated." I didn't know about that verse, either. I honestly didn't know about these verses because when Muslims read the Quran, most of them are not Arabs. The Quran is written in Arabic. Less than 20% of the Muslim world is Arab. And those who are Arab
speakers speak ammiyya, they speak colloquial forms of Arabic. They don't speak the
classical Quranic Arabic. And so we didn't understand
a lot of these texts unless our teachers told us about them. And so when I was confronted with these I started studying and
investigating for myself. What is the truth about Islam? What is the truth about Muhammad? Because ultimately that's
what it boils down to. If you're a Muslim, you're
a follower of Muhammad. Yes, there's belief about the Quran and about Allah and all that, sure, but you're following Muhammad
to get to those beliefs. When you're a Christian, you follow Jesus. So, the life of Jesus
and the life of Muhammad are very important in these conversations. Especially when it comes to the Quran, there's so much I wish I could tell you, but basically, here's
what I began to realize: that there are plenty of
peaceful verses in the Quran, and in the traditions of Muhammad's life, and there are plenty of
violent verses and stories. Tons. How do you reconcile them? We in the West had been
taught that the violent stuff should be seen as all defensive
and coming under the lens of the peaceful stuff. The peaceful stuff is
the stuff that prevails. But as I was challenging my
Christian friend in his faith, he began to show me not
20th, 21st century books written about Muhammad. Those were all very much combed through and made palatable to westerners. He started to say, Nabeel, let's look at the sources
of Muhammad's life. Let's look at the Quran itself
and the hadith and the cedar. Let's look at the original stuff. Not what people are writing
now, but the original stuff. And that's when I found
that what I had been taught about Islam wasn't
consistent with the sources. Turns out, Muhammad had started, let's call it a prophetic
career, in 610 AD, he dies in 632 AD and in that
time he goes from peaceful, starting off with the message
of worshiping one God, and helping widows and
orphans and travelers, etc. Takes that message and it
becomes increasingly more violent until the time he dies. The first 13 years of Islam
no battles are fought. No wars, this was a peaceful
time with peaceful messages. But he only had 115 followers
or so during that time. In the last nine to 10 years of his life is when he had power, when he
had a city under his control. And it was during that time that we see battles increasingly fought. In fact, at a rate of
nine battles per year. 86 before he dies, in the
last nine to 10 years. The Quran is not laid out chronologically. So the last major chapter of the Quran to have been composed is
actually chapter nine. That's the last, follow me here, this is the last major
chapter or the Quran. This chapter is called
the chapter of disavowals. (speaks foreign language) And what is it disavowing? It starts off by disavowing
all treaties with polytheists, with Jews, with Christians, ultimately we see it's
disavowing all treaties. And it's basically this
is the chapter that says, "Slay the infidel wherever you find them." These are the final orders of the Quran. "Slay the infidel wherever you find them. "Lay siege then take them captive." The Jews and Christians, fight them until they pay you
the (speaks foreign language). Why? So that's chapter nine, verse 29. Chapter nine, verse 33: "Islam has been made to prevail
over every other religion." Fight the Jews and Christians because Islam has been made to
prevail over every religion. I'm seeing this as a Muslim
and this is all shocking to me. I'm learning this and it's shocking to me because I didn't know this growing up. And then I get to chapter
nine, verse 111 of the Quran, which says that Allah has saved you, that's the Christianese way of saying it, "Allah has bought your persons
and your property for this: "that you might slay in
battle and be slain." Allah has made you Muslim so you can slay in battle and be slain. That's what chapter nine, verse 111 says. Incidentally it's the same verse that says if you die in Jihad you will go to Heaven. The only guarantee given in
the Quran of going to Heaven. This was earth shattering for me. And by the way, I was
invited to speak here because of my book that
just came out on the topic, Answering Jihad, after what
happened in San Bernardino, after what happened in Paris,
we have all these questions that people are asking and
I'm not hearing good answers. I'm hearing very polarized answers, answers which say that
Islam is a religion of peace and the terrorists have
nothing to do with Islam. Or, on the other side,
Islam's a violent religion and we can't trust any Muslims. Those are kind of the two
responses I'm hearing. One's focused on compassion, the other one is focused on truth, but we as Christians
have been called to focus on truth and compassion. The fact of the matter is, even
though these are the things that are found in the Quran, these are the things that
are found in the hadith. We are called as Christians
to see Muslims as people. Children made in the image of God. Broken, apart from God, but still people who are
image bearers of God. Are you with me? So this is what I was going through as a Muslim encountering this information. At the same time, my Christian
friend was introducing me to good reasons to
believe in Christianity. I had been taught growing up
that the Bible was corrupted. He showed me that that's simply not true. In fact if I used the
arguments consistently, and I said, you know,
the Bible is corrupted actually I was condemning
the Quran far more so. Because the same arguments
I was using on the Bible was actually much more
applicable to the Quran although I had no idea. When I was saying that Jesus
never claimed to be God I would point to the Gospel
of John and I would say, well, John's Gospel was written
60 years after Jesus died. You can't trust John's gospel. What about the other Gospels? Where do they say Jesus
claimed to be God?" Well, ultimately I found
where, in the other Gospels, Jesus claimed to be God. It's pretty clear once you read it through the lens of the Old Testament. But I had denied the
reliability of John's Gospel because it was written 60
years after Jesus, supposedly. I don't think it is but
that's what people said. You turn to Muhammad's life,
the first biography written about Muhammad comes
140 years after he dies. How can I consistently
deny the Christian message in light of the way the
Islamic evidence works? And so this information was coming to me. I was beginning to realize
what I had received was problematic both
in terms of its history and in terms of it's theology. And so at that point I started
praying fervently to God, saying, God, can you
reveal yourself to me? Can you show me the truth? And you have to understand,
Muslims generally speaking don't believe Allah communes with us. Not generally speaking, that's
just what Islam teaches. Chapter 48, (speaks foreign language) says that it is not proper for
Allah to reveal himself to you. He remains behind a veil. So, what Muslims expect if
they want to hear from God is a dream usually. And this is why I think God
speaks to Muslims in dreams around the world, especially
Muslims who are praying to receive the truth. Anecdotally I've heard, and
from my own experiences, that 70% of people who leave
Islam and come to Christ had a dream of some sort, because that's how they're
expecting God to speak with them. And it's not a misplaced expectation. My dad received plenty of
prophetic dreams when I was a kid. My mom received plenty of
prophetic dreams when I was a kid. We often knew what was going to happen because of these dreams. I'm not here to speculate
why we got those dreams, but that is just what happened. So I asked God to guide me
through visions and dreams, and ultimately God gave me
a vision in three dreams, which showed me that
Christianity was the truth. That the Gospel message
was the true message. I wish I could go into the details but we don't have time right now. So after doing all this
studying first for years it brought me to the altar of Christ. And then I started asking
for dreams and visions, and he gave me dreams and visions, placing me right in the middle of a biblical parable I'd never read. But you can't just convert. It's a very western concept to just do what you think is right. Most of the world is not
that individualistic. You do what is right socially. You think of the ramifications
that it's gonna have for your family, for
the people around you, what it looks like for your own reputation to do these things. If I were to become a Christian, that would mean that I was throwing my whole family under the bus. Not only am I gonna
destroy my own reputation in the Islamic community
with everyone around me that I know, but that
also means that my mother, who's the daughter of a Muslim missionary, everything she has done in her
life has been done partially to build her reputation
within the Islamic community, if her only son becomes a Christian, that throws everything
she's done into the trash. Does that make sense? Am I willing to not just do this to me but to do this to my mom? And to do this to my dad, as
the only son in our family. There are the issues
that I'm wrestling with, and it's hurting, and
that's why I'm asking God for more dreams, more visions,
asking him to give me more and more but at a certain
point enough's enough and the Lord stopped giving me more. And so that's when I realized
I had to do what I had to do. But I couldn't quit do it. Like I said, I met David my
freshman year of college. By this point I was in my
second year of grad school, so this took years to get to this point. And as I was driving to school one day, I just started bawling,
I just started crying. And I said, God, I know what I have to do but I need time to mourn. I need time to mourn. Instead of going to school,
actually I turned back around and went back to my apartment
because I was a total mess. And I sat down at my couch
and I pulled out a Bible and a Quran and I put
them both in front of me and I said, God, can you just comfort me? Can you just comfort me? And I opened up the Quran. Understand when Muslims recite the Quran they usually do so liturgically. They don't know what they're
reciting for the most part, so this was the first
time I went to the Quran for personal guidance, to
exegete it for personal guidance. As I'm flipping through its pages, I realized there is not a
single verse in the Quran designed to comfort a hurting man. Not one. Sure, there's plenty
that say if you repent Allah may forgive you. Sure. But there's not a single one that says God loves you regardless. And so I put the Quran away, I said, this doesn't apply to my life. I opened up the Bible,
didn't know where to go. Every time I'd opened up the Bible before it was to rip it apart apologetically. And this time I was actually
turning for guidance, and I said, well, Christians
read the New Testament, I'll flip to Matthew. So I opened up Matthew, chapter one. Saw a bunch of genealogies,
so I skipped them. I was a Muslim, I had an excuse. You guys have no excuse. So I... Turn the page. It didn't take me long to
get to Matthew, chapter five, which says, "Blessed are those who mourn, "for they shall be comforted." Those were the exact words
I'd just spoken to God and it felt as if the page was electric. It felt as if the word of God
had jump started my heart. I actually couldn't let go of the Bible. I was like, this is amazing! I read the next few verses and it says, "Blessed are those who hunger
and thirst for righteousness "for they shall be satisfied". And I'm thinking, I do hunger
and thirst for righteousness. I'm not righteous, I
want to be but I'm not, but God will bless me anyway? Why is that? Why will God bless me
even if I'm a failure? And all the sudden I
encountered a God who loved me regardless, like my father loves me, so does God, in fact far more so. And this unconditional love
was mind blowing to me. And I started reading
the pages of Scripture encountering this God,
and God's pretty awesome, this was a study Bible that
my friend David had given me, I would, out of exasperation,
I'd say something like, God, how do I know you can
even hear me when I pray? And I'd read the footnote: If you wanna know that God
hears you when you pray, turn to 1 John 5. Sweet, boom, thanks! And I'd start reading. And so I'm going back and
forth within the Scripture and I finally get to Matthew, chapter 10, and here's what I read
in Matthew, chapter 10: "He who confesses me before
the people of this world "I will confess before
my Father in Heaven. "And he who denies me before
the people of this world "I will deny before my Father in Heaven." You see, I had all the evidence, I had all the spiritual guidance
through dreams and visions, I had emotional comfort, as
well, through the Scripture, but I hadn't confessed. You actually have to confess. Before the people of this world. And I said, God... This is Matthew, chapter 10, verse 29. Through, falling. I said, God, I would have
to give up my family. If I confess to you I would
have to give up my family. You know what the next verses say? "He who loves father
or mother more than me "is not worthy of me." I said, God, it's not just my family. It's everything, it's my life. Everything I know,
everything I've worked for. If I became a Christian,
I'd have to give it all up. You know what the next verses say? "He who does not pick up
his cross and follow me "is not worthy of me. "He who loses his life
for my sake will find it." The Gospel has been a call to
die from the very beginning. Let me repeat that. The Gospel has been a call to
die from the very beginning. Pick up your cross and follow
me was not Christianese when Jesus said it. And so at that moment I bowed my knee I prayed to receive the Lord, sounded very Muslim when I prayed. No one had told me about a sinners prayer. But I prayed to receive the Lord. Intellectually in that moment
I accented to the Gospel, but it didn't really hit
me until a few days later. When my mom was standing in front of me and, if you had met her before that day you would have seen a woman
who had light in her eyes. She just loved to receive people, she welcomed people into her home, fed them till they were far beyond full, always gregarious,
talkative, that was my mom. But it was like that day
I reached into her eyes and turned off that light. She's never been the same. And my father, who had
been in the US Navy, I saw him kind of as my Superman. A man who stood strong and
went out to defend our country. He said, in that moment, "Nabeel, today I feel as if my backbone "has been ripped out from inside me." And they walked out,
that was all they said. And I dropped to my knees. And I started just crying. And this was hours of just
crying and trying to pray, and just flustered and saying ultimately, while I'm just bawling, I'm saying, God, why, God, why, God why? And what I was trying to get out was, God, why didn't you kill me? 'Cause I was thinking to
myself, if you'd killed me, God, the moment I believed, I'd
go to Heaven, I'd be happy. They wouldn't know, they'd be happy. I'd be worshiping you, you'd
be happy, we'd all be happy, if you'd just killed me
the moment I believed. And so I'm rocking back and forth saying, why didn't you you kill
me, why didn't you kill me? Stuff coming out of my face, saliva, tears, mucus, just
like rocking back and forth, why didn't you kill me? I don't know theologically where
you stand but I'm just here to testify to what happened in my life. While I'm saying, why didn't you kill me, why didn't you kill me, I
heard audibly these words: "Because this is not about you". And when I heard that, I froze. Just boom, froze. Couldn't move. For 10 minutes I was stuck
and when I finally could move it felt as though as if the
guy who had been crying saying, why didn't you kill me, was somebody else. It felt like that was somebody else. And I walked outside, and I looked around and,
this is gonna sound cliche, but this is true for me, when it happened everything
looked different. The sky looked different,
the trees looked different, the parking lot looked different, everything looked different. And I saw somebody
walking across the street. Very mundane thing to see. But for the first time in my life I didn't just see somebody. It struck me that this was somebody God was willing to die for. Okay, that's very common for
us when we say as Christians, but can you imagine from
the perspective of a Muslim for just one moment, can you imagine the notion
of God dying for someone? God who remains apart from
this world as if behind a veil, that God who created this universe, just by thinking it into existence? The God who is all powerful,
the creator of time and space, entered into it and suffered at the hands of His own creation. How does this make any sense? And when He entered into it, He entered as a child
born to two children, we have to remember Joseph
and Mary were very young. Born to two children who had been accused of an illegitimate relationship. Jesus bears the ignominy of
being an illegitimate child. This is the God of the
universe we're talking about. And then when He comes He
lives as a blue collar laborer. He could have come into
the household of a king. No, He works with his
hands, and sweat, and tears. And He ultimately gets 12
disciples in whom He invests His whole heart and they betray Him, one of them with a kiss,
betray Him to death. And then He gets flogged. Have you ever read about
the flogging process, what that's actually like? Cicero tells us that it
was called the pre-death. That people were whipped
such that their skin fell off their bodies in ribbons. People's abdominal walls were torn open, intestines fell out, during
the flogging process. Our God, going through this. And then placed on a cross. You know, the cross was designed
to be the most humiliating, the most painful way to
die ever in human history. We had to invent a word to
describe how painful it is. Excruciating. Ex-cruce means from the cross. This pain is what God
decided to use, this death. He takes a look at all of
human history and He says, that death, that execution
is enough to show people what I want to show them. What was He trying to
show us through all this? The depths of His love for us. If you were born in an
illegitimate relationship, God understands and He loves you anyway. Enough to bear that with you. If you are trying to make
ends meet, working hard, blue collar laborer,
doesn't matter who you are, God love you enough to take
that burden upon Himself. If the people you
invested yourself in said that they would love you
till the day they died, and then they left you
in your moment of need, God's been through that. And He loves you. If your body is broken and you are saying, God, why me? Why me, God? Jesus' body was broken on the
cross out of love for you. And why, is this just a gesture? Is this just a pointless gesture? Or maybe a heartwarming gesture? No, we have to remember what
Jesus says in John, chapter 15, "As I have loved you,
so love one another." Okay, this is what it all
boils down to at this point. God loves us tremendously. He was willing to go through all this to show us what love is
and then He charges us with loving one another
with the same love. As I have loved you, so love one another. What does that mean,
what does that look like? Romans chapter five, verse eight, "While we were yet sinners
Christ died for us." God is willing to die for us when we're in active
rebellion against Him. The people who crucified Him, Jesus says what in the Gospel of Luke? "Forgive them, they
know not what they do." The very people driving nails through Him. And then we tend to skip over those verses in the gospel of Matthew
in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, "If your enemy is hungry,
give him something to eat. "If they're thirsty give
them something to drink." Your enemy! Who is it you're supposed to love? Just other people who love you? No, read the end of Matthew five. Even the pagans love those who love them. You are called to love
those who do not love you so that you can be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. That is teaching we have been given. What breaks my heart is
that I see people responding to the refugee crisis. They see 4.6 million Syrian
refugees coming from the West and the first question they
ask, even Christians, is, am I going to be okay? Yeah. You're going to be fine. "Take heart, I have overcome
the world," says Jesus. John 16:33. You're good. Anyone who's unsaved, their needs are infinitely
greater than yours, which is why you can lay
down your life for them. You can follow Jesus. Jesus gave us the example
of dying for our enemies. And then He says, "Follow me." Now when we call ourselves
Christians, what are we doing? We're taking God's name, Christ, and putting it on ourselves: Christian. Little Christ, that's what it means. Now, the bible says very clearly, "Do not take the Lord's name in vain." That doesn't mean if you stub
your toe don't say, oh God. That's not what it means. It means do not bear the name
of God and not live like God. This is how Christ lived, this
is how He calls us to live. This is God's plan for saving this world. For 2,000 years we've had
God's plan of saving the world, which is the grace He gives
us, the love He gives us, we pour forth because there's nothing that can stop this grace. Unless we don't pour it forth. And then I wonder if we
received it to begin with. There's no way I think you
can receive the Gospel, receive this much forgiveness
from God, and not love others. There are 1.6 billion
Muslims in the world. 1.6 billion. That's one out of every four people. Of them, .01% actively
fight in the name of Islam. We are called by our God
to receive these people. And I love that picture
I saw of Justin Trudeau with open arms receiving Syrian refugees. I love Canada. You guys are so darn friendly. Is there a risk? You better believe there's a risk. It's a small one, but it's there. Should that deter us as Christians? Absolutely not. We have eternity to worship God in bliss. We have eternity to live
joyfully without pain. We have this short life, a blink of an eye, to preach Christ. My aunt passed away. Two days ago. Right when I landed here I
found out that she passed away. She lives in Cambridge. Lived in Cambridge. She's been in Cambridge since the '70s. She's been in our backyard here. I don't think anyone
shared the Gospel with her. She's Muslim. I wasn't planning on ending with this. But I have some time
left, which never happens. People are dying apart from God. We have been charged by
God to preach His message. The great commission is
to preach the message. For 14 centuries we haven't
reached the Muslim world. Up until a few years ago we were sending one Christian missionary
into the Muslim world per million Muslims. And the majority of them came back with less than 10 converts. So God is sending them here. In droves. This is our opportunity, this is the unprecedented
opportunity I was talking about to reach the world with the Gospel because the world is coming here. And in the last 14 years, we have seen more conversions
from Islam to Christianity than the previous 14 centuries combined. You are part of a worldwide
movement of the Holy Spirit, which for eternity we'll be talking about. We'll be talking about what
we did here for eternity. Are you going to grab
the Holy Spirit's hand be led by Him and reach this world? Are you going to follow Jesus? Or are you going to
carry His name in vain? This is the task we've been given. Let's pray. God, we thank you that we
don't have to be afraid even in the face of
jihad which is very real, which is grounded in the pages
of the Quran and the hadith. Lord, we thank you that the
vast majority of Muslims are peaceful anyway. But those who are violent,
Lord, we do not have to fear. Please equip us to love,
even in the face of death. Even if we have to lay
down our own lives, Lord. Let's let others worry, but
let us, God, follow you. May we live lives worth of
the calling we've received. May we love as You have loved. May we heal this broken
world with Your Gospel. We need You, God, for this. We desperately need You, Lord. Keep our knees on the
ground, keep our eyes on You. Humble us, Lord. Take our eyes off of these petty things that will take care of themselves anyway. Let us seek first Your kingdom
and your righteousness, God. We need you for that. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. - Hey, thank you for joining
us for this week's teaching at The Meeting House. If you wanna see more
sermons that are associated with this series, then just click up here. If you want to see answers
that I offered to questions that you guys send in, then click on here and check out the BBQ. That's Bruxy's Bag of Questions. And if you wanna just
see some other cool stuff that we're doing across our sites, then check out this link down here. Well, I'll leave you to it. Go ahead and click away. (upbeat jazz music) Just click into your future. To be human is to make choices. Be bold. Click, click, click, click, click. Okay, now this is just getting awkward. I will leave you to it.
