What is Christianity?
The most important truth you need to know..
Click here to hear Pastor Kim explain the most important truth you need to know.
Let me ask you a question, "what is the most important truth that you know? Think of everything you know, and if you had to rank them, what would be the most important? Let me offer you some help, it would be the truth that answers life's biggest questions: Where did I come from and where am I going? What is wrong with the world and how can what is wrong be made right? What is my purpose in life? What happens when I die?
These aren't questions that all of us think of, [I mean] when you were young, did you ever think about death? I rarely did... but as I get older, things will happen that will make me contemplate it a little more.
It was sad to read a little while back that in the Olympic trials for the marathon, one of the racers, Ryan Shay collapsed and died, he was 28. Can you believe that? He grew up in a family of runners and from the time he was a young teenager wanted to qualify for the Olympics. His dad, the night before the race thought about flying in to see the race, but decided against it because he himself was a cross-country coach and had to coach his team and he said he so regretted it. Imagine missing the last chance to see a loved one here on earth. To me, what is so sobering is that he was young and one of the best athletes in the world. We aren't nearly as surprised when someone dies when they are older or because they don't take care of themselves. But he was a world-class athlete. Because I exercise a few times a week I like to think it will help me to live a little longer. But he was a marathon runner and it didn't matter. To me at least, it makes death very real, and the difficulty is, we don't know when it will be. Again, it brings up one of those life's questions that are so important; "What happens when we die?"
It's something we avoid for many reasons: We don't want to know the answer, we don't think we can know the answer, we hope we know the answer. But the reality is this, there is an answer to that question, and we find it in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, the gospel answers the question "what is Christianity? But it also answers the greatest questions of life: It tells us where we came from, it tells us what is wrong with the world and how can what is wrong can be made right, and it gives us our purpose and tells us what happens when we die. This being said, I think there is no question that the gospel is the most important truth that you could ever know.
But to understand the gospel, we need to start from the beginning, and it starts with this:
I. God is the loving ruler of the world. He made [this] world. [and] He made us rulers of the world under Him.
Because God is
Creator, He is Lord. Let me
illustrate: my sons enjoy playing with
legos, and the rule is this, you can break your own creation but you can't
break anyone else's creation, because if it is your creation, you can do with
it what you want. In the same way,
because God is Creator of the world, He is the Ruler of the world.
God is the creator, he made the world. Unless you get this, the rest will be difficult to understand. This world is God's, he "owns it," if you will. And because he created it and owns it, God rules it (the world). He determines right and wrong, even life and death. But, he is a good ruler, a great ruler. He is not like the leaders we think of. He always knows what is best for us and he rules in love. He is the kind of leader we would desire - he truly has our interests upon his heart and has the power to accomplish his plans.
He made us as well. We are the pinnacle of creation. And we were made to rule the world, to care for it and enjoy it. It had been put in our charge and we were supposed to look after it according to God's desires and directions.
"Worthy are you our Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things and by your will they existed and were created," Revelation 4:11
This passage is recognizing that because God is the creator and sustainer of this universe, he deserves our praise and allegiance. This teaches us that in light of our Creator God, we have purpose. Have you ever wondered what your purpose is? Our purpose is this, to honor God.
By that I mean that your life is meant to point to this God who created you. You honor him by loving and adoring and obeying and making much of him.
When we understand God is the loving Creator and Ruler of the world, it helps us understand better what it means to follow Him and to obey Him. I think sometimes people see Christianity as some ogre God giving us a bunch of rules that make life miserable and stop us from doing those things that will make us happy. But understand that God's laws (His rules for conduct), are an incredible blessing set before people to guide them and to show them how they were really meant to live. Let me share another illustration to help us. There is a Dad who wants his child to stay within the yard even though the child wants to leave. The father's rules are meant to be a blessing, whether the child understands it or not. They are meant for his good and even his joy.
When you think about Christianity and you think of all the rules and things you have to do, how do you see them? Are they unfair rules from an unloving God? Or do you see them as a blessing from the Creator of this world who knows how we are to live and is showing us the way?
So God, the loving ruler of the world made us to follow him and to obey him and enjoy and rule his creation. But just stop and look around for a moment, is that the way it is now?
II. We all reject the ruler God, trying to live life our own way without him. But we fail to rule ourselves or society or the world.
It
doesn't take much to see that we have messed up this world. If you are not sure, hit yourself in the head
and then turn on the news for two minutes, or listen to conversations after
church, or most simply, look at your own life; is your life the paradise it was
meant to be?
It is not difficult to look around this world and understand this idea: people don't want to live for God. We don't want anyone, least of all God, telling us what to do. We don't want to do what he says, or live how he wants us to live, or think how he wants us to think. Simply put, we want independence and so we rebel against God. Before we became a country, we decided we didn't want to follow another country any more, so we rebelled and fought for independence. But our rebellion against God isn't a good and heroic rebellion; it is one of foolishness and sinfulness.
Think of it more as a child who wants to live his own way. When we (my family and I) are walking near the street or in a parking lot, we tell our boys that they need to hold our hand, but they don't want to. Sometimes, not realizing the danger, they will try to break free and run away. We see their desire for independence and dislike of authority - we recognize this as rebellion. Most of us have seen a child who doesn't want to do something simply because a parent wants them to do it. But we know that as parents, our way is best for them, we understand this, and we see the sinfulness and danger of their rebellion. But we fail to see that it is no different between us and God.
God wants us to live in a way that is best for us, but we don't want to do what he says. So, we rebel. This rebellion takes on many forms. It might be telling God to shove off and that you don't want anything to do with him. Or it could be disobedience to his commandments. He tells us not to lie and not to be sinfully angry and not to lust, and so when we fail in these areas, we are living in rebellion. Or we might simply ignore him and try to live our lives our own way, as if he doesn't exist. This rebellion is called sin.
Have you ever wondered what the term sin means? In the Greek, sin means "missing the mark," not hitting the target that God has set for us. You may have heard Christians talk about sin, but do you see why this is important? It describes every person's response to God and as we will see, it will be what stands in the way of a right relationship with God. This sin and rebellion also explains why we don't believe in God.
In Romans 1:18 it says that in our sin, "We suppress the truth about God," the truth that we should know about God. In other words, we should be able to look around and see the world, and know that there is a God, but our sinful heart says "there is no God." People claim that they don't believe in God because there is not enough evidence of God, but in reality there is a knowledge of God in all of us, but in our sinfulness, we suppress that truth.
Our rebellion and independence also explain the world. They explain why the world is the way it is, sin has entered. We have a world full of people trying to live life on their own terms in the way they deem right, forgetting that the only way to know right living is to the know the God who gives us our lives. We look around at the suffering and misery and injustice and we should remember it comes from a world of people who are trying to live their own way on their own terms. Romans 3:10-12 says it well, "None is righteous, no not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside." This passage describes our world; we are rebels, living in a world full of rebels.
Tough news to hear, no one wants to think of themselves as living in rebellion to God. In fact, this is where many people fail to move forward in their understanding of God. They refuse to see themselves in rebellion against God. No one thinks they are perfect. But what people don't realize is that even our small sins are rebellion against God. This rebellion brings us to a very important question, what will God do about this rebellion?
III. God will not let us rebel forever. God's punishment for rebellion is death and judgment.
One thing you
hate was your parent's punishment. When I was growing up with my brothers, we
would have to weed, or miss sports as our punishment. The legend is that two of us brothers had to
hug on the couch as our punishment.
Punishment reminds us of the simple truth, with sin comes judgment.
God hates sin and rebellion and will judge people for it. But why? Why not just let it slide? If God is loving, why not just overlook our mistakes? It is because God is a just God who deals with all sin justly.
We know what being just means to be guided by truth and fairness. It ts doing what is right and proper. God is a just God. In fact, if God were to ignore sin, he would not be a just God.
Imagine a murderer and thief takes everything you have and kills someone you love. At the trial the judge says, "I want to be loving, so I am going to let him go free." Would you say, "What a loving judge? Isn't it good that he ignores those kinds of things?" No, you would cry out for justice. Now remember God is even more fair than our legal system and will deal with all sin in a way that is just.
The problem is our rebellion clashes with God's holiness, his perfections. Every sin we commit is a sin committed against him because he is our Creator and Lord, and the more we understand God's holy perfection, the more we understand why He must deal with sin severely and fairly, because he is always just.
Most of the world doesn't worry about judgment or punishment, because most of the world doesn't see itself as bad. We compare ourselves to the next person and think, "I am not so bad, I am definitely better than him..." For many of us, we look around and hope that God grades on a curve. But we can't look around and say that everything is ok because we are doing better than the next guy, because we don't get to judge ourselves. Each of us will stand before the almighty God of this universe one day and we won't get to look around and point out who we did better than the other. Rather, God himself will judge our lives.
I think some people comfort themselves by having this picture of God as some impotent, grandfather type, and that after we die he is going to overlook all the bad things we have done and give us some big divine hug. In fact, I heard statistics that most people believe that when they die, they will go to heaven. But we fail to see that this incredible loving God is just and righteous, and will judge people for their sins.
Hebrews 9:27 says it well, "And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment."
What a sobering thought. I am not some mass murderer, and I am faithful to my wife. But I also know that I sin every day. I know I have told lies, have been jealous, have lost my temper, I could go on and on and on. And the reality is this, I will stand before God one day and He will judge me, and the criteria will be His own character, and I know I will fall far, far short. Do you ever take the time to think about that? I mean, are you ready to stand before God one day?
I used to have a boss, a non-practicing Catholic and we would talk about religion often and my faith and I would share the gospel with him. And he would say this in response to it, "I just can't believe that my life has nothing to do with it." He really thought he was a good guy and that when he stood before God one day that God would say everything was okay and he just didn't get that God would judge everyone according to his(God's) own holiness.
What is that punishment? It is death and an eternity in hell. Hell is a place of eternal punishment for the wicked. I know that the concept of hell has fallen on hard times and most people don't believe in it. But realize this, whether or not someone believes in it, doesn't determine its existence. I have heard people say when the topic of hell is brought up, "Well, I don't believe in hell." It's kind of humorous to me and in my mind I am thinking, "Oh you don't believe in hell, then it must not exist." But remember, truth is what corresponds to reality, whether or not people believe it.
Imagine someone believed with all their heart that they could fly and that gravity had no effect on him and so he jumps off a cliff. Would we say, "the real question is, does he believe in gravity or not?" No, we would say, "he is going to kill himself, regardless of what he believes." Whether or not we believe in it, hell is a reality, and it is meant to have a sobering effect on us. Hell is not a concept invented by Christians to scare people into heaven. It is a teaching given to us by Christ himself, and it is meant to get us to think of eternity. So here we are, sinners who deserve condemnation and judgment is coming to each one of us. Things aren't good; we are both hopeless and helpless. What are we to do? Well, God's justice does sounds hard, but...
IV. Because of His love, God sent His Son into the world: The Man Jesus Christ. Jesus always lived under God's rule. Yet by dying in our place he took our punishment and brought forgiveness.
Here is a
question that not enough of us ask, "how do we get right with God?" We know plenty of people who believe in some
general idea of God, but leave it at that.
But these theists (people who believe in God) need to ask themselves,
"If there is a God, how I am supposed to live in light of that truth?" For most of the world, and for every religion
apart from Christianity, the answer is fairly simple - it's based upon the life
we lived. In other words, if I have
lived a good life, then I can hope that in the end it will all work out. But is that true? No, as we have already talked about, each of
us is a sinner under the condemnation of God.
It's not a matter of grading on a curve, or doing more good than bad, or
going to church enough times because we are sinners, each of us deserves to
come under the very wrath of God.
Thus the wrong solution offered by other religions is that we must earn our way to God. This is where Christianity differs from them all. We understand that our only hope is if God reaches down to us.
God sent his Son to be a Savior, and that Savior is Jesus Christ. He lived the perfect life we weren't able to. In other words, he always lived under God's rule, he never tried to live his own way, he never rebelled, he never ignored God, and lived the perfect life that we were meant to, but didn't. But it doesn't stop there. Then he went to the cross to take the punishment we deserve. He stood in our place and suffered the wrath of God for sins.
Do you see what is happening? We said that God is a just God and has to deal with sin justly. He must punish sin, as it says in Romans 1:18, "God's wrath is revealed against the ungodliness of man..." God's solution is this; he gave us a substitute, someone who would take the punishment we deserve. Jesus took our place. He suffered God's just wrath instead of us. His death doesn't mean that he asked God to take it easy on us. It doesn't mean that he deflected the wrath of God. But it does mean that God's wrath was exhausted on Christ, so that we wouldn't suffer.
We read in 1 Peter 3:18, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God." The debt we owed to God, Jesus paid in full when be died in our place. Doesn't that make you see God's rules differently? We see that God's laws didn't just tell us how to live rightly, but they showed us that we would never live up to God's perfect standards. In a sense they became this guide that by showing us our sins, pointed us to Christ, the one who could bring forgiveness for those sins. If you are someone who has bristled at the thought of God telling you what to do, remember that not only do these rules show us how to live rightly, they also show us our need for the Savior, Jesus Christ. When you hear of someone talking about being forgiven by God, realize that it was no small act, it cost God his very Son, who died in our place.
Imagine this; we were still in rebellion when Christ died for us. He didn't see us as cute, helpless people who needed his love. We weren't crying out, "God we love you, help us!" We were rebels, sinners, who apart from the grace of God would just as soon tell God to shove off than ask for his help. Yet he reached down to us through Christ. Maybe this is a truth that is lost on you. But just stop and think about the depth of love of a God who reaches down to us when we were lost and grants salvation.
The love of God was one of the first lessons I learned. But it is one that only now I am starting to get a small glimpse of. With my children, I have this unique love that I never understood. You want so much for your children and you hate to see them suffer. Our baby girl had to have an operation on her ears to insert tubes because she had so many ear infections. It's a simple operation, but already my heart broke for her. I remember the night before just holding her and praying for her and wishing there was a better way. Then I think of God and what it must have been like to send his Son to take the punishment for the sins of every believer from all of time. I think of what it must have been like to not just let it happen, but to send Jesus to bring salvation to the lost. Then I think of Romans 5:8 and it starts to have a deeper meaning; "but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." God's love is no cliché, but it is powerful and personal. I can't fathom why God would love me, but I am so thankful he does. The incredible thing is that it doesn't stop there.
V. God raised Jesus to life again as the ruler of the world. Jesus has conquered death. Now gives new life, and will return to judge.
With the
resurrection of Jesus, we know that God accepted Jesus' death as payment for
our sins. He conquered death that we
might conquer death. I Peter 1:3 puts it
this way, "According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be been born again
to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."
Christ's resurrection tells us there is hope. And not the earthly hope that is filled with fearful anticipation, but the heavenly hope that is filled with confident expectation. Because Christ was resurrected, as believers, we too will be resurrected to new life. Christ was not only resurrected, but exalted to heaven and reigns at the right hand of God and one day he will return to judge. But as Christians this judgment no longer needs to be something we fear, because the price has been paid. Jesus himself suffered for our sins when he went to the cross.
This is a summary of the Bible; in fact it is the summary of all of time. God created the world and all that were in it, and he created us to live for Him. People rebelled against God and tried to live their own way and because of that, they were facing God's judgment and punishment. In his love, God sent His Son to live the life we couldn't and then die in our place. He was resurrected, went to heaven and will come again to judge.
This is the story of the Bible, this is our story. We were meant to honor God, we rebelled, we were facing death and judgment, Christ came and died that if we embrace Him, we will have eternal life and when he comes back to judge, we will be safe because we have been forgiven through His work on the cross. For much of the world, people are willing to ignore eternity, they don't think enough of what will happen when they die, but we must remember that one day, Christ will return and judge. That leaves us with a choice that we all face.
VI. There are two ways to live.
Will you follow
Christ, or not? This is the decision we
all make, do we live for God or not. There
are only two ways to live.
1. Our Way:
- Our Way: Reject the ruler God; try to run life our way.
- Result: condemned by God; facing death and judgment
2. God's new way:
- God's new way: Rely upon Jesus' death and resurrection; Submit to Jesus as ruler.
- Result: forgiven by God; given eternal life
There are only two ways to live. There is no spiritual Switzerland. It's easy to want to think of yourself as neutral. Maybe you say, "I may not be a Christian, but I am not against God." But the reality is this; you are either for God or against him, because there are only two choices. In fact, if you have not chosen for God, then you have chosen against God.
It says in John 3:36, "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God remains upon him." What then must you do to be saved? Is it going to church or saying a certain prayer?
Salvation is this: faith and repentance. Faith is believing that Jesus died for your sins. Repentance is turning from your sin and acknowledging Jesus as Lord of your life. What will you choose?
I remember a while back, sharing with a friend of mine. Her conclusion was, "you may be right, but I am going to wait until I die to find out." In her mind she wasn't against God or for God, but wanted to wait until later to figure it out. But in reality she had chosen; she chose to try her own way. She would hope that she was a good enough person, yet only death and judgment await her. For me it was tough to swallow, because though she saw herself as indifferent, I knew that she had made her choice.
Is this you? Have you chosen against God by your rebellion and indifference? Has your lack of belief declared to God that you are going to try to do it your own way? Are you too proud to see your sin and need for a Savior? Are you making excuses that there is not enough evidences for God? Are you afraid to give up a certain lifestyle? Then realize this, you have already chosen. You have chosen your way and judgment awaits. But there is hope, you can trust in the Lord today and know salvation.
Do you see who the gospel answers life's biggest questions? Where did I come from? I was created by God as the pinnacle of creation. What is wrong with the world? It is me and you and specifically the sinfulness of our lives. How can what is wrong be made right? Through Jesus, who died in my place that I may be forgiven and have a relationship with God. What is my purpose? To worship God through loving Him, obeying Him, adoring Him and making much of Him. Where am I going? Through Christ, I am avoiding the hell I deserve and being given an eternity in heaven, worshiping my King.
Remember that God is our ruler, but He is a good and great ruler and to know him is to know life. For whatever reason, if you have the wrong perspective on Christianity, if you think it is about rules or being judgmental or ignoring science, realize that Christianity is this: seeing your sin and embracing Jesus as your Savior and Lord.
To know Jesus is to know forgiveness and eternal life. It's having a peace that transcends understanding. It's to know that your purpose in this world is to live for God. It's to know where you came from and where you are going. So I exhort you, trust in the Lord and be saved. Ask God for forgiveness; tell God that you trust in Jesus for salvation and that you are going to turn from your sins to follow him.
Dear Heavenly Father we thank you for salvation that is offered through your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, we are truly rebels living in a world of rebels and so we are truly humbled by your love that you would reach down to us, that you would give us your Son. Lord we pray that for those who don't know you that you would touch their hearts, that their eyes would be open to the truths of your gospel, they would see their sin and their need for a Savior and that they would embrace your Son Jesus Christ. Lord, we can't do it our way; our way ends in death and judgment, so Lord, we want to do it your way, we want to rely upon our Savior, we want to rest in your salvation, we thank you Lord, we thank you for everything that you are to us and everything that you've given us, we thank you and pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.