Michael Ramsden-Courage, Christ, and Finishing the Mission

well it really is a delight and pressure for me to to be able to join you as you can gather from my accent I'm not from these parts but I do love the United States I've been here many times it seems that I've been moving increasingly north in terms of my visits my first few visits to this nation were in to the state of Georgia where our ministry is headquartered and I just fell in love with the people there from the culture they gave me grits for breakfast that's that's that's such a novel food it not only feeds you but it brushes your teeth at the same time and and I think this may be about its far north in the United States of America as I've probably preached now our would lie also like just to start this as well as I'm there also with the word of thanks because it's been a privilege for me to be associated with the desiring God ministries part of what's being honored here for I don't know maybe starting about 10 years ago in a very minor very minor role where at one point John Piper steps will be Dean distributed in Europe and that was happening under the UK and they needed some board members and they couldn't find any good one so I ended up doing that and as a result as a gift I got given a complete set of everything he'd written and and then every year I got everything else that he had written and I am just so grateful for that and if any of you are here would understand that your primary calling is an evangelist as I would then you really have to make theology your hobby and that therefore puts us makes is very dependent on those who could help bring clarity to what it is what is the gospel that were actually preaching and you know I've quoted John more times than I care to remember and sometimes I even attribute it so they understand it wasn't me and so it is a great pleasure and it is a great privilege simply to be part of what's going on here now what's also been interesting for me is as I was preparing this message was trying to think okay how do I put the emphasis on a on a message where the scope so brought courage Christ and finishing the mission and my initial reaction was to say well I I should really focus on the whole issue about who is Christ and who is sending us and as I prayed about that I thought what I'm not sure that's really where in terms of what I'm being asked to bring here is where I should put the focus which would be the most logical thing that's looking at the title now is listening to louie giglio yesterday thinking I'm so glad a I didn't put the focus of my message here because that's exactly the question you're asking and B the only way that I'm going to be able to somehow speak alongside this is if maybe I convince John Piper to do an interpretive dance while I'm preaching because I was also just like David a little bit concerned about this whole whale song thing and the pulsars and everything else thinking you know this is a challenge to communicate into this context so then as I continue to work through I thought well what I should maybe do is really talk about how we understand the gospel the glory of God the lostness of man and therefore the imperatives we have to finish the mission and I was praying about that and I wrote three different messages along that theme and none of them I just thought I'm not sure how it was all correct and absolutely it really should be part of if you this talk was to be a complete in and of itself would absolutely have to be there and I just didn't seem to be the place to put the emphasis and I was listening to David this morning thinking well I mean it was fantastic this morning it was just it was glorious it was wonderful and thinking while god I'm just so glad that first of all I didn't put that emphasis there and I'm so glad that that's that's been addressed already and so that therefore leaves then the part on the courage now I am going to touch obviously on the other aspects of this just for the sake of a completeness to it but what I would like to do is I would really like to try and start off by speaking into this issue of courage and I would like to ask a question which I'd like to ask a couple of questions which I found myself asking as I was preparing this number one if we were to take the finances from my local church that I'm a part of and put it together with the calendar that we have of everything that we do and send it to a group of non-christian management consultants and say analyze our finances analyze time and you come back and tell us what you think our priorities in life are I'm wondering to what extent they would conclude that to go and make disciples was actually a key part of how we understood who we were about and I'm wondering I found myself extending that as we look at the church to what extent is the evidence there that would demonstrate that actually this is a core understanding of of why why we're here would it be deducible or not now the second question I also find myself asking was that when we think about courage the the first thing we do is we often think about the the challenging situations in the world where people are literally losing their life for the gospel and to talk about the courage that we see there as an inspiration to us and again I think there's some legitimacy in that and it's wonderful to hear the testimonies it can be very very encouraging and we're gonna do a little bit of that as well but then I began to can be concerned about a distance issue so one question was would it would we is it obvious that we have this concern for the nation's or this concerns simply to even go and make disciples is that obvious would that be discernible from how we use our time and how we use the resources which have been given to us but then the other thing I thought if we put the emphasis on this overseas part and I said we are going to talk with something about that I found myself coming back to another question which was actually much closer to home which is why is it in the Western world we seem to have a crisis of courage why is it in the Western world we seem to be so silent at times why is it in the Western world it seems like so much of the church have taken a few words that Jesus said to a small group of disciples in a very particular set of circumstances see to it you tell no one and therefore and applied it as some kind of universal mandate to how we should understand well how we talk about him does that make make make sense in other words why why does it seem that that there's so little of this so the message I have maybe at times challenging I hope I hope not too challenging because I would like it to be inspiring too but I found myself increasingly disburdened and I wanted to overcome that challenge of distance and so I'd like to try to bring it home so what I'd like to try to do is to phrase a message about courage for the gospel about in answer to those questions why is it that maybe at times we seem to be expending so little effort to go and make disciples and why is it that even when we think of a title like this the first thing we do is think of countries thousands of miles away and not about the people who live next door now I think there are lots of reasons why maybe we have a crisis if you lack of confidence a crisis of courage a crisis of being willing to step out for the sake of the gospel at home and one of them was actually highlighted in the conversation last night in the interview and others to do with the sense of intellectual shame that a lot of Christians feel in relationship to the gospel which is namely that okay even though we feel the gospel is true we're not sure that maybe it is true or could be demonstrated to be true and so maybe it's true for us now I don't has anyone ever said to you I'm so happy for you that you're a Christian I wish I could believe what you believe but I can't have you ever heard that okay now this is the softest form form of this now I heard that said to me so many times especially when I first got into ministry I began reflecting on that sentence why is it that so many people are saying this to me and what I realized is what they were saying was this it's Michael there does seem to be a joy in your life but this joy comes because of your faith in Jesus but Jesus doesn't exist you believe in something that isn't there now what do you call people who believe in things that are not there the answer is mad people so what they're saying is Michael you are insane but the main thing is is that you are happy and insane now I'm happy that you're happy as a matter of fact I am so desperate to know some legitimate source of joy in this world I too would embrace insanity just to join you and I thought about it but I can't now whatever the gospel is it is not a plea for wishful thinking it is not an invitation to believe in something that you would like to be true but actually isn't it is a plea to respond to a God who is true and who is real who has revealed so who is manifest himself who has made himself known who is been who is revealed to us that we've already heard this morning through creation who is revealed to us in his word as revealed to us and his son and that there has to be a response to that and the only legitimate response to that is repentance and faith that is the legitimate response to this gospel and this God who was true in real now when I talk about a sense of our intellectual struggle I'd like to make a differentiation between two different types of things which can go on because as I look at how maybe as Christians we sometimes struggle with the sense of this intellectual shame that we had referred to on the platform in in the Q&A panel last night because there were two different forms it takes in they're very very different there is a huge difference between the intellectual questions we have that are born from cynicism and skepticism and the kinds of questions which are born out of doubt and confusion they're very very different and then if you remember in the beginning of the Gospel of Luke we have that whole series of angelic appearances I they're fantastic now if we had timeout I'll read through all of them we don't have time to do that and so let me just give him a summary because there was another larger passage of Scripture I'd like to be able to read later to you out of Hebrews 11 but I just like to start here out of Luke 1 now if you remember Gabriel comes first of all to Zachariah and he says basically Zachariah I've got good news you're gonna have a boy and Zachariah says well look I'm I'm pretty old my wife is pretty old how can this how do I know this and Gabriel looks at Zachariah and says I am Gabriel I stand in the presence of God and I have come here to tell you this and you did not believe me therefore from this time onwards you'll be struck dumb until these words are fulfilled in their correct time and when he comes out of the temple he cannot speak it's not that he has nothing to say it fart rather he is unable to say it now a little bit later the same angel Gabriel goes to see Mary and says Mary don't be afraid you're gonna have a boy hey it's good news and Mary says how can this be because I'm a virgin and Gabriel says well the power of the Almighty will over come you and the touched power of this Spirit will overshadow you and you will be with child and he will be the son of the Most High and will be the Son of God now I don't know if you've ever asked yourself the question is that fair in the sense that the gay angel comes to Gabriel and says you're gonna have a boy and Zachariah says well I'm pretty old my wife is pretty old and Gabriel says that's it you're struck dumb and then he goes to Mary and says hey you can have a baby and she says well I haven't slept with anyone so you know how can this be and he he gives an explanation now is that fair I mean what happened between those two instances now I suppose one imaginative approach would be to say that Gabriel you know came to Zachariah good news I've got some great news for you did have a boy he's a bit disappointed with the response he's a bit new at this he loses his rag and he says ok that's it Zachariah you can't speak anymore he gets back to heaven and God comes and puts his arm around the angel and says why don't we have one of those 360-degree job reviews I've heard about you give me some feedback I'll give you some feedback wait we need to work on your interpersonal skills so when Gabriel goes to Mary and seems to give a very similar message and she says well I'm a virgin he sort of breathing deeply counts to 10 and says ok let me lay it out for you now that would be imaginative probably not true to what the text is about at all and therefore not what is actually going on so so how is it fair and the answer is I believe if we look closely at this text is that God is dealing with them differently because although their questions appear to be very similar as a matter of fact in the NIV translation there there are two responses I made exactly the same the ESV correctly puts a slight nuance of difference between the two which is actually very very important is although they appear to be very very similar there is something very very different because their difference between the question of complete skepticism and cynicism and the doubt a question that's born out of doubt and confusion they are not the same now the parallels are striking okay the angel appears they are both afraid which is why the angel says do not be afraid so they neither of them sees the angel and goes moo' angels Wow I want if there any unicorns about and they are both respond to this revelation of holiness with terror they are both frightens they both are given emotional reassurance do not be afraid this is good news okay they are both told they will have children they will both have boys and yet the responses are so different now questions born out of cynicism and scepticism are never interested in an answer how will I know this how can I know this is true it's different from a question how will this be how is this possible let me just try to explain what I what I mean in the cynicism anything that's related to the gospel and we live in a very cynical culture today will be written off as chance answered prayer chance fulfilled prophecy chance soon as we write things offers chance we're basically making them meaningless now our culture has become so cynical in our contemporary age that even language itself has been put down to a thing of chance which makes even meaningful communication impossible everything becomes meaningless and we're not interested in truth anymore a couple of years ago I had the pleasure of meeting a guy called Anthony flue now I was interested to meet him because Anthony flue was a well-known atheist who wrote the most widely reprinted philosophical essay of the 20th century Anthony flue who debated CS Lewis and was widely considered to have won that debate wrote out the proceeds of that debate into an essay called theology and falsification his father had been a minister and he turned away from the faith now Anthony flue popularized a lot of arguments against the Christian faith one of them was this if you give enough monkeys typewriters eventually they'll produce the works of Shakespeare ever heard that now Anthony flue was once debating a Christian and a Christian actually pointed out to him that someone had done some research on this believe it or not the British Academy gave a grant to a group of PhD students to put a typewriter in a cage with a group of monkeys and leave it there for a while and see what happened now apart from using it as a toilet the monkeys produced six typed pages but not one single word which is remarkable when you consider that the shortest word in the English language is a or I however to qualify as a word the word had have a space out the side of it and therefore we have a keyboard with 30 keys the chance of randomly producing a one letter word would be one in 27,000 now forget about reproducing the works of Shakespeare what would be the chance on this basis a monkey or group of monkeys in this case with a typewriter randomly producing one Shakespearean sonnet which by definition by the way are all fourteen lines long so the researchers took the Shakespearean sonnet shall I compare thee to a summers day 14 lines of poetry 288 characters what is the chance of randomly generating 288 characters in sequence now the answer is 1 divided by 1 with 690 zeroes after it now unless you're a banker or perhaps a telly evangelist you'll find it hard to imagine that number so let me let me try to spell it out for you if you want to take every particle in the universe and we're not talking about grains of sand we're talking about protons neutrons and electrons if you want to take every particle in the universe and just remember Ludicolo slides yesterday and how we all seen a small portion of the sky not all right but if you could take all of the mass in the universe and break it down all into neutrons protons and electrons and count them individually to our best guess is about 10 to the power of 80 that's 10 with 8000 that's the number of particles there are not enough protons neutrons and electrons to randomly write down the trials or let's put it another way let's suppose you took all of the mass in the universe and you want to convert it into microchips each microchip weighs one millionth of a gram every microchip randomly produced one million times a second random combinations of 288 letters and let us assume that those computers when a millionth of a gram producing 1 million random calculations of 288 combinations have been running since time itself began and for the sake of this illustration we'll go for an older theory under those conditions we would have randomly produced 10 to the power of 90 random trials the universe would have to be 10 with 600 zeros after it times older than even our oldest guess of the age of the universe to randomly produce on this basis Wang Shakespearean sonnet apparently monkeys can do it every time now Antony flew when he he came across this and this was presented to him he found his world rocked you see was so easy just to say well it's just random it's just chance you know it's an inevitable we can easily imagine these monkeys producing Shakespeare and if you read some of the books written by some of the New Atheists you you wonder if they have been written by monkeys randomly typing typing away some of them seem to support one theory of the universe which is that the total amount of intelligence and the world is fixed but the population is growing but that's a whole other as a whole other area we won't get into it's very easy to write it off and all of a sudden Antony flew found himself confronted by a rather inconvenient line of argument now he didn't suddenly conclude that Jesus Christ was God but he went to write a book now you have to remember Antony flew up until the beginning of this millennia was considered to be the philosophical leader for the new atheist movement Richard Dawkins Peter Harris all of these guys referenced him as a matter of fact if you went to the secular website or the humanist society's website his basic book on philosophy was the basic text book recommended for all good atheists agnostics to read in terms in the field of what's called epistemology what how do we know what is happening what is true and how do we know it now after he wrote this book he fell out of favor with them and he was removed from the recommended reading list because the next book he wrote was there is a God after all now what is interesting as I said when you look at Zachariah somehow he bodily out lives this fact that without God language just simply even disappears and the Zachariah here asked this question of complete skepticism he finds he can't speak at all now there is a clue further clue that's a differentiation between what's happening here with Zachariah and Mary and it happens if you read obviously from chapter 1 verse 9 of the Gospel of Luke very carefully where when the angel appears to Zachariah what he actually says is Zachariah I am Gabriel he says a Cariah your prayer has been heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son now this is amazing this changes everything Gabriel when it comes to Zachariah unlike Mary who was not praying by the way for you know Immaculate Conception Zachariah was praying for a child we know this because Gabriel says your prayer has been heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son so I guess we could go into the Greek and do some fancy hermeneutics but I think it's safe to conclude from the text that Zachariah was praying for a child so forget about atheistic or skepticism at the moment this is theistic skepticism Zachariah a priest in the temple has been praying and asking God for a son or a child we don't know if it's a son maybe he was asking for a son it wouldn't be unreasonable scultures assumed it was but a child an angel comes to him and says good news your prayer is being heard God is gonna deliver you're going to have a boy and Zachariah says how will I know this seriously you've been praying and asking God give me and this is if you have wrestled with the issue of childishness these are the kinds of issues that cause tears sleepless nights on your knees begging God please Lord help answer our prayer may we have a child and now an angel comes your prayer is finally heard and Zacharias responses how can I know this now both Mary's objection or question and Zacharias a question are rooted actually scientifically they both have biological objections to to the angels a message right this is biology 101 Zachariah I'm old my wife is old do the maths baby's very remote chance now Zachariah should have known better because if he'd been reading his Old Testament he would know that God actually has a history of delivering babies too you know unlikely people regardless of age but you know this is leave that aside Mary's objection is also scientifically grounded I'm a virgin I haven't known a man to have a baby now if you're confused about this pastor John will deal with this in the Q&A and he'll explain to you what's going on but please hear hear the point here they both have scientific objections to the divine revelation as to what God can actually do but zachariahs question is not a question that's going to permit an answer and his skepticism in the face of this revelation invites judgment Mary however is simply confused she hasn't been praying she hasn't been asking the angel comes she has a question of legitimate confusion I don't understand how this is biologically possible the necessary steps have not been fulfilled and the angel says let me explain to you how this will happen as I was I'm preparing this message and running through it again last night in the first thing this morning I you have to have forgive me for but times I ask too many challenging questions I can't help it I'm an evangelist that's what we're programmed to do God made it that way I couldn't help asking myself the question is it possible that some of us are here today and we're asking God for the nation's we're asking we're looking to him to do something to move too and the simple truth is that even if Gabriel himself came and stood in front of us and said your prayer has been heard we will respond in exactly the same way is it possible that there are some of you in this room and God has been calling you he's been calling you for a while and you're busily praying away it's a dangerous place to be it's a dangerous place to be in our day and age there are a lot of scientific objections to to God but most of them are completely misunderstood there is no intellectual shame there should be no hesitation in our hearts or minds as to the truth and the reality of the gospel that has been given to us or even deed of the nature of it or how it relates to science or indeed anything else so because it's become such a contemporary issue and I believe it's one of the issues that seems to have so many Christians running for cover I just want to just pick up just two issues where I feel that this Christians are being feel that they're being forced into silence to say nothing because they're fearful that actually maybe this doesn't ultimately make sense and this isn't ultimately true so let me just pick up on two first one which is very common is to say well look we don't need God anymore you've got science science will answer all of these questions now one of my colleagues John Maddox wrote a very good book recently in response to a guy called professor Stephen Hawking who sums I'm sure many of you will know who basically came and said look because of this thing called m-theory which is sort of a fairly controversial field of mathematics because of this we know that the universe can and will create itself from nothing due to the effect of gravity now I have time to go into all of this statement but let's just assume that actually Stephen Hawking is correct in saying that he can mathematically model the creation of the universe from zero and let us assume that there is no error there is no mistake that the model works 100% it explains everything there is nothing which is not explained does that therefore mean that there is no God even if it were true which I think it's not I don't think what he claims for his theory was actually gonna be able to do what he says he can but even if it were I flew here on a plane it's a big metal thing with engines I don't like flying keeps my prayer life healthy now there is nothing on that aeroplane that cannot be explained to scientific law does that make sense every function every part of that plane every aspect of it everything can be mathematically modelled and explained with a mixture of physics chemistry maths pure mathematics we can model 100% there is nothing unknown does that make sense there's no gap there's no for God to fill everything about that plane from how it takes off to how it lands everything about it can be explained with science there was no hole there's no gap for God to fill however the very fact and even though we can explain the airplane in this way does that in any way tell us that there was no one who built it well there was no intelligent mind behind it you see there was a big difference between the idea of what's called law and agency law describes how things are agency tells us whether anyone was involved in doing anything so even if it were possible for us scientifically to model the operation of this universe with complete accuracy every law every interrelation everything in no way does that tell us or all answer the question is there a mind behind this as a matter of fact he may be very strong evidence to suggest that there is a mind behind this you witness is too complicated for Saturday morning you need more coffee it simply wouldn't be true even if were able to do it if we had an exhaustively scientific model of this universe the question as to whether or not there is a God would not be settled by that as a matter of fact the second thing which is related to this is even more important now it's a shame that CS Lewis came up with this argument all these years ago because it seems a lot of the people who are currently writing books in this area have forgotten what Lewis actually had to say because he actually arms heard a question that's been raised by Stephen Hawking but he answered it about 50-60 years too early the second one goes like this because we have a scientific understanding of this universe and we understand the laws and the principles by which it operates therefore God cannot intervene because if God intervened he would be violating the laws of nature and the laws of nature cannot possibly be violated now does this hold and the answer is no Lewis put it like this he said let's suppose you take a thousand pounds and a thousand pounds and you put it in your bedside table let me convert that into dollars one thousand six hundred and thirteen dollars and one thousand and sixteen six hundred and thirteen dollars and he put it in your bedside table when you open the drawer in the morning there should be two thousand pounds there right what happens if you open the drawer and there's only one thousand pounds there what do you conclude that the laws of mathematics have been broken no you conclude the laws of the land have been broken someone broke into your bedroom and took a thousand out of your drawer so excuse the increase in pitch my voice is delayed adolescence it is because the mass is uniform and operates without exception that we are able to detect the presence of an intruder who came in and interfered in the system it is because we live in a universe governed by uniform laws that we are able to detect when God has intervened and when he has done something if we lived in a random universe when random things happened or we can concluded that it was random but because we live in an orderly universe and the governed universe when Mary falls pregnant it's not that the laws have been broken the very fact that she understands the science behind how you get pregnant and that hasn't been fulfilled means that something else must have taken place which got her pregnant Terry better have the baby you still with me you want to start again from the beginning Maryanne Zachariah Bo's have a scientific objection Zacarias question is I think they say I'm convinced born out of a position of complete skepticism he'd been praying for this and so when the answer is announced he still doesn't won't accept it how can I know this mariya comes out of the blue she has no idea she says how's this possible and God says well this is how it will go and she's she responds in worship now this is a very happy story this is why I've Angelus like this passage okay because Zachariah story also ends in worship right the baby's born his mouth is opened in he praises God that's kind of stories that around just like to tell one hundred percent response rate genuine worship before God we need to take the time and the effort in this culture to know that this gospel is true to understand that the questions which people bring about that come from confusion can actually be dealt with and answered could you answer them if someone asked you why are you a Christian could you answer it have you ever noticed when people are asked why they are Christians they respond by saying how they became a Christian have you notice that well I met this person that gave me a book I went to that church you know I heard this message I became a Christian what does that sound like to a non-christian you never thought that doesn't it sound very random again if you met him Muslim that day and he gave you a Koran and invited you to the mosque you'll be a Muslim right so that's the explanation chance lucky you you believe that it also sounds a bit like brainwashing doesn't it you met this person they persuaded you you responded to their persuasion now you're a Christian you've been brainwashed one of my friends when he became a Christian his mother said to him you've been brainwashed he looked at his mother and said if you knew what was in my brain you'll be glad that's been washed is that is that the answer I had a lucky break how we became a Christian why this is true they're not the same question and they do not deserve the same answer can we respond to the honest questions in our culture which are born of confusion and so long as we're running scared that maybe this is not true we'll run from them but we have no need to feel that shame this is true now the second source of shame and I we don't have time to to go into this in huge detail its moral shame now I'm not talking about moral issues so much in our culture although most Christians feel they're on the wrong end of every moral debate but it seems to me in the Western world at least there's a sense of moral shame connected with the gospel when we ask questions like if your God is so living loving why couldn't just forgive us doesn't that seem reasonable or why does Christ have to die on the cross in order for us to be forgiven why is that necessary now those are huge questions I'm wondering how many Christians in the average church could answer those two questions correctly could you it surprises me that so many Christians are scared have been asked a question like that when we should be rejoicing that someone else's question that that is a great question thank you for asking me that I'd love to talk with you about God's love and God's justice I would love to talk to you about the necessity of the cross why there what's no other way that what a gift of a question I love these questions I I was in a country IIIi can't name this isn't you you in case the guys about to stop the streaming you can leave this bit in and I was speaking to a group of people who who had very successfully bombed a nightclub in a part of the world and from probably from a non-christian persuasion and I got to do a three-hour Q&A with a thousand of their students and their two leading professors of Islam and before I went in I remember praying and saying lord please at the end may the last question come to me and may it be about this and God was gracious enough to allow someone to ask me a question to which I already knew the answer and by the way if you're nervous about speaking to people about the gospel then why not try praying that prayer God could they try asking me some questions to which I've already got the answers and then help me with the other ones which I don't know but I said the question came what a gift what a gift as I was answering the question several hundred of the students as we got to the point about why Christ had been crucified on the cross to send he broke down into floods of tears and afterwards one of the Muslim professors came up to me and point me in the chest and I said they should have warned us about you and I and and then and they said they told us you were from Oxford University and you know we teach it up to the University so he said he said you weren't meant to be interesting what does that say about education today now I could give a whole talk just short purely on this moral issue but the simple truth is so long as we remain so theologically confused about the basic moral questions about God and the primary objections that most people have the primary struggle that most people have about the gospel in the Western world is moral and this is both outside the church and inside the church why isn't God more obvious if he wants us to believe in him why doesn't he just you know everyday you know 6 p.m. broadcast from heaven to us that would do it right or why doesn't God sort of lend us angels on rotation everybody gets Gabriel for a week you know so one week it's David Platts turn and Gabriel comes along and you go door knocking with him you knock on the door hi we're here from the local church when I said about Jesus they're about to slam it Gabriel puts his foot in the door he suddenly grows to five times what his size was before he withdraws his angelic sword which is flashing with lights and as he slowly turns on his hands he says would really like to come in and talk with you I mean wouldn't that help why is any more obvious why does he allow all this suffering how can this loving God judge us these are all moral complaints about God's character the primary number of struggles people have in the Western world to do with the gospel and what the scripture is moral and that seems to me to be just as true within the churches without the church there how desperately do we need to get a clear understanding of what these questions are let me ask you those questions I just gave you why isn't God more reference why does God allow suffering what about people who haven't heard how can a loving God judge us is there anyone here who has never been asked that question one of those questions just put up your hand nobody shamed if you've never been asked a question like that I think I don't know I don't see any hands but if you put your hand up shame on you you're not going out at all you can't be you must be somehow I don't know living in the middle of nowhere we already know what the questions are they're not surprising we actually know what the questions are before they've been asked however there is one question that I think is led to a complete a one issue I should say in our culture this has led to a complete lack of courage in the face of the gospel when I lie to serve our duty to explain the gospel which isn't primarily intellectual or moral in its nature but it is this we live in a very affluent culture in the West we're very rich we're very comfortable I don't know how many of you have ever heard of a guy called professor John Gray now there are two professor John Gray's there's one who wrote a book called men are from Mars and women from Venus I'm not talking about him I haven't read his book there's another professor John grey who's the professor of the history of echo of political thought at the London School for economics who wrote a book called straw dogs now he's an atheist now what's amazing with this John grey is that he and I agree about everything apart from one thing does God exist or not now as soon as you move beyond that question we weren't exactly the same page what grey argues is that he is an atheist who hates humanism the reason he says he hates humanism as an atheist is that he says humanism is basically Christianity dressed up in secular terms and I would agree with him now he says that we live in a universe where there is actually no sense at all this is the trouble with humanism it is bothered about human rights and there can be no such thing as human rights or human dignity or human persons because it doesn't make sense with the science he sent as an atheist how can you believe in any of those things he said you can't believe in any of those things none of those things make sense without God he says you can believe Christians for forgiving for believing in the myth that there's something sacred about human life because they believe we were created in the image of God but if there is no God in whose image we can be created of how can we maintain that myth he says we can't what grey says therefore is we are all animals the strong prey on the weak and then what he goes on to say is we need a political economy that reflects the scientific truth that the strong prey on the weak and then he goes on to say that the Western world has been held back from world domination and killing everybody else even though it's more strong more stronger than everybody else because it's it's being weakened by this Christian faith this Christian idea that somehow you can't do that that would be morally wrong are you with me and so he says we need a political economy that would be consistent with a strict form of scientific atheism now I find what he says very very scary but there was something which he says which I think he's absolutely spot-on and this is this is how he phrases it he saying the trouble is however is that morality is a convenience that makes us feel comfortable and we cling on to it I think that's true most parents would like their children to be respectful to be honest because it makes their life easier it's convenient and then he goes on to say something else but when you look at the church what you see is a group of comfortable people needing convenient lives and I'm wondering if that's true because if the gospel is anything again it's not income is not convenient it's simply not the gospel that we have tells us that we should lay down our lives in order to take it to other people the gospel says that we deny ourselves and follow him we come full circle we started off talking about the checkbook and the calendar is it possible that we have ordered our church life and our Christian life so that it is convenient for us to look after our children to do things that we wouldn't like to do to pay the occasional missionary 1% of our total income so they can go and do things that we would rather not do so that we can have an easy life here I wonder I wonder I have three children Lucy is 12 my son James is 10 I have another daughter who's seven and a half of us the most expressive face you've ever seen she we found this out late she was deaf for part of her early life and we only discovered that when her speech just clearly wasn't there so she learned to talk with her face to communicate to us it's the most incredibly expressive and delightful face you could imagine now I love my children and because I'm away a lot we often do things together so let's suppose in that way one things we love to do is we we do all kinds of crazy things I'm sure a lot of other people do camp in your backyard sleep down in front of the coal fire we have in Oxford we still burn coal then Oxford to stay warm go out on picnics suppose the person have taken all the kids out on a picnic we've had a good time the kids have disappeared into the woods so the end of the picnic we start calling for the children Lucy James Amelia come back we're going Lucie appears there's no James and there's no Amelia we say Lucy where are they the sort of while they work deep into the forest so we take Lucy we go into the forest Lucy and we start calling James Amelia James Amelia it starts getting dark we find James Amelia our most fiercely independent child is still not present it's now dark and it's cold so what do we do do we go home oh well two out of three isn't bad you win some you lose some it's awfully cold out here we've got a nice cold fire back home we will stay there until we find her dead or alive that's the simple truth is it possible that in the Western world we're struggling with the intellectual doubt about whether it's true because we've never taken the time for proper discipleship to actually know that it is true is it possible that we're feeling morally ashamed so we're not actually going out to those who are lost and perishing without the gospel because we don't know how to properly explain this glorious gospel in all of its fullness in order that we may not again be ashamed is it possible that actually all we're interested in is in ourselves that we have a narcissistic gospel that revolves around us our comfort and our ease and regardless of the cost we're not interested in going to tell anyone else is it possible and I'd like to end with this question there are gospel by our gospel I mean the gospel obviously that may not actually be the true gospel at all if this is what it has become as a gospel that's left us so unmoved about the realities of heaven and hell that we heard about this morning that we won't go anywhere to do anything with anybody now the trouble is is that when we step out to do and respond in this way what we discover is that the only safe place that we can actually be with God is to stay close to him regardless of where he may be sending us here's the point the challenge of our gospel the threat that that we may feel in our hearts the call because thread isn't a good word but it can feel like a threat the call that we have may seem scary and I am NOT suggesting by any means that therefore that we should be stupid that we should be undiscerning that we should be reckless in a sense of being unbiblical eclis unwise however when God calls us somewhere we should go and we should be attentive to his spirit and then if he for some reason closes the door then by all means we may end up saying no but we have to be absolutely sure that that's what he actually means because the only reason God didn't want me to be there at that place is not because he didn't want me to die I am gonna die he knows what I'm gonna die so it's not there it's gonna be somewhere else now I would like it to be when I'm sharing the gospel with some militant group it could be that I'm gonna die eating some errant pickle in Burger King now I prefer option one - option two if it was a question of preference hey option one is much more attractive to me than option number two God knows exactly what it is and we're not gonna add a day to our life or lose a day from our life by doing anything that he's asked us to so do not be afraid of going all of the miraculous stories that you may hear from other parts of the world about how God has intervened in people's lives and turned situations around and sometimes on the most incredible thing and I have seen many of those things sometimes even with forms of prophetic assurance that have been startling I can remember that debate I was telling about earlier I was in the car and I was terrified and I was seriously wondering because I brought my family and my children with me laughs about to do this debate whether I was actually doing the right thing at all given the fact these people just blown up all these people just simply a few I'm just a year before and my wife touched me she said do you remember the church leaders who prayed for us in South Africa and I suddenly remembered that being in South Africa three months before and they said to us you're gonna go to a place and you'll be surrounded by red and white flags and you should have no fear in your heart and we got the map out as we did after everyone left and we looked at every country I was going to and every flag and there wasn't a single one that was red or white and I said to my wife well that doesn't make any sense maybe if we get invitation from China we should say yes and here we are we're in this country were driving down the street and on every lamppost in every shop window and zigzagging across the road in the form of Jews and time bunting little triangular Flags that hang from string what's that cool fun bunting okay with these red and white flags and Anne said to me Michael do you see the flags and I looked out the window and I started crying then my wife said to the driver what are these red and white flag she said Oh our local football team won a game yesterday and they put all the red red flags up on the street now is that because God doesn't want us to leave this planet at some point not at all it's just that we're not gonna die there want to die somewhere else is the final question I'd just like to ask in relationship to this thing about courage and you don't very well in listening and I'm sorry for the distraction of the blood although it seems like I'm now some kind of prophetic embellishment of blood on my hands you should be glad that I don't spray while I talk that could be interesting I want to be careful how I asked this next question because because I understand it could be taken in the wrong way and with the wrong emphasis this could get us into some trouble so again I'm just have to displace my comments in light of the converse of the talk we've just had and indeed the one before but I would like to ask this question is it possible that if you were perfectly honest you would say that you'd been disappointed with your Christian life so far that you rather thought there'd be more to it than this that somehow you just thought they'll be more the center we run in Oxford a guy applied to come and study with us some time ago and I was interviewing him I said what did you do before you came here now he used to work with an organization in Ealing called the SAS which are like our special Armed Services so I think Green Berets and basically black ops and this guy was pretty good at what he did he was actually head of covert operations in Afghanistan for a while in the recent war and he he let's just say he's been to a lot of countries I didn't even know Britain was actually militarily involved this is leave it at that so I said to him why do you want to come and study with us why do you want to do apologetics you've been involved in all this covert operations 17 and a half years I've been working behind enemy lines he said well I became a Christian a few years ago he said when I was in Special Ops he said we used to work in small units and we would do anything to accomplish the mission that we had been given he said there's no sacrifice that we could have been asked to make there was no thing that we could be asked to do there was nothing that was too dangerous that we could have been asked to to complete that we weren't prepared to do he said we had each other's backs we were totally committed to each other and to the mission because we believed in what we've been asked to do and we believed in the importance of it he said now I've become a Christian he says the mission and the vision that God has given me is more important than anything any government has ever asked me to do and here's my question he said where is the commitment in the church where is the willingness to suffer where is the willingness to pay the price where is the willingness to do that which is heart where is the willingness to lay down your life for this is I don't see it he said we seem to be arguing about what kind of songs we should sing and whether we should have folding chairs or padded chairs or whatever kind of chezy's and it's killing me he said so I'd like to be training with you and then I'd like to go to some of these countries you go to so he did some training a little while later we went to this particular country I'll leave it unnamed and as we were in the queue going through customs control I said Tim have you ever been here before he said yes but I've never been through passport control and customs he was hallo dropped in we had eight wonderful days we had to dress in local dress we met some interesting people some of them violent people and if you want to preach a while you should try preaching to an armed audience I mean it really does up the game and we're sitting on the plane and we're flying back home eight days later and I turned to him and I said well was it worth it and tears came to his eyes and I'm always very moved when I see military men crying covert operations black ops for seventeen and a half years that is a seriously long time seriously long even to just have survived tears came to his eyes as I feel like I'm alive again he said this is what I'm looking for this is what I want to die for to lay down my life sharing this gospel with other people is it possible that we've been trapped by shame it's a possible ravine caught up in an affluent culture is it possible that God has so much more let me conclude with the Bible reading for what shall I say for time would fail to tell me of gideon barak samson jephthah for David of Samuel and the prophets who true faith conquered kingdoms enforce justice obtained promises stopped the mouths of lions quenched the power of fire escaped the edge of the sword were made strong out of weakness became mighty in war but foreign armies to fight flight women received back their children from the dead by resurrection is not amazing some were tortured refusing to accept release so they might rise again to a better life thus offered mocking flogging chains in imprisonment they were stoned they were sawn in two they were killed with the sword they went about in skins of sheep and goats destitute afflicted mistreated of whom the world is not worthy wandering about in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth all these though commended through their faith did not receive what was promised since God provided something better for us that apart from that they should be made perfect therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let's run with endurance the race set before us looking to Jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God and consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted if you only like the first half of that reading I don't have a gospel for you but if you liked all of that reading then there is this glorious gospel you may see the most amazing things and it may well cost you your very life I'm wondering if we could pray to Him as a prayer I would like to read him some of you will know it and I'm wondering if we could pray it Lord facing a task unfinished that drives us to our knees a task that undiminished rebukes our faith slothful ease we who rejoice to know thee renew before thy throne the solemn pledge we owe thee to go and make thee known where other Lords beside thee hold their unhindered sway where forces that defy thee defy thee still today with non to heed their crying for life and love and light and numbered souls are dying and passed into the nights so Lord we bear the torch that flaming fell from the hands of those who gave their lives proclaiming that Jesus died and rose as is the same commission the same dad measured ours fired by the same ambition to thee we yield our powers her father who sustain them her spirit who inspired Savior whose love constrained them to toil Zealand tired from cowardice defend us from lethargy awake forth on my errand send us to labor for thy sake you

Channel: TheLordsPage

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Keywords: Christ, holy, gospel, lord, spirit, truth, word, prophecy, prophet, study, salvation, jacob, pastor, grace, messiah, ministries, kings, hebrew, preaching, ministry, somebody, use, queens, age, broadcast, live

Id: oGMhn-tQ_0w

Length: 62min 40sec (3760 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 28 2011