Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): Welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching the clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: So here's the million-dollar question. As a Christian, I'm a Christian, we're here, and I proclaim Christ. I'm assuming most of us are. Some of you might not be, but that's okay. That's between you and God. I proclaim Christ. Do I have a Christian worldview? If you say, "Yes, I have a Christian worldview," then what is your source for that worldview? For the believer, the obvious answer is the Bible, this book.

But what if the Bible contradicts my preference? What if the Bible contradicts my comfort, my choice? What if I really want to do this, but the Bible tells me not to do that, but to do this? What is the final authority? Who makes that decision? Do I bring myself under the governorship and the leadership of this very narrow, intolerant book, or do I do what I want to do?

If my worldview is a Christian worldview, then I come under the authority of absolute truth. I can say I have a bunch of worldviews, a mongrel worldview. "Yeah, I have somewhat of a Christian worldview, but I also want to do my own thing." Good enough. You can live there if you want. It's not right, but you can live there if you want. Just be honest about it. Just be truthful about it. If you want to live a non-biblical worldview, then live that way. That's between you and God. I'm not judging anybody, but don't say that's okay when it's an absolute contradiction to this.

That's where the problem comes in. That's where hypocrisy happens. State it for what it is. "I'm living my life on my terms. To the heck with what the Bible says." Just say it. Or say, "You know, this is not only maybe socially, morally, ethically, whatever, but intellectually dishonest. Maybe I have to adjust here and see what's going on in my own life."

We either do not know what the Bible says, and this is very true, this ignorance. When I was a young man, I was born again, and I did not know what the Bible taught about anything. I was untaught. I didn't have a pastor. I didn't have a church. I was just floating around in the world for about nine months. I had a Good News for Modern Man Bible, and I just kept reading it, but I didn't know. I was living a certain lifestyle that I shouldn't have been living, but I didn't know any better. No one taught me until the light of the word of God came in and I began making adjustments in my life. I was ignorant. I wasn't doing it purposely. I was just ignorant, and I understand that.

Or the word of God may discount or interfere with my personal preference. One of my favorite TV news commentators, who claims to be a Christian, yet I watch him mock people on his program that take the Bible literally. I've heard him say, "You take the Bible literally?" And he would mock them, shout over them, and make them look like fools. My question to him, if I could talk to him, is then what part of the Bible do you rip out? Do you pick and choose what you want to believe? That's hypocrisy. That's dishonesty.

"Well, you know, Jesus, I love the teachings of Jesus. Blessed be the poor. Love your enemy. Forgive those who have despitefully used you." I love the teachings of Jesus, but Jesus didn't just teach those things. He taught other things too. Let me show you what Jesus taught because one of the most intolerant men in history was Jesus Christ. He just was. He didn't give any wiggle room at all for any of those other things. He said in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man gets to the Father but by me."

That is narrow-minded. "No man gets to the Father but by me." What about the good-hearted person over there? "No man gets to the Father but by me." What about the person that does all the good deeds and all the good things over there? "No man gets to the Father but by me." Jesus said that. I didn't say that. Jesus said that. He said that he is the only way to eternal life.

He also said, "Blessed be the meek. Blessed be the poor." He said those things too. I can't take the beautiful Beatitudes and loving your enemy and feeding the poor, take those wonderful things that Jesus taught about, and then come over here where he says, "No man gets to the Father but by me," and throw that out. "I don't want to deal with that." That's dishonest. That's hypocritical. I either take all of what he says or reject all of what he says.

Josh McDowell, his son Sean McDowell's dad, and actually the guy before him that brought it up was a contemporary of C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton. I always get his name wrong. Anyway, he's the one who brought the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument up. Jesus either is who he says he is or he was a crazy person. He said that he was the Son of God. He said no one can get to the Father but through him. He said his death on the cross would pay for the sins of mankind and that there was one way to eternal life and it was him. He said that.

He also said, "Feed the poor. Blessed be the meek. Love your enemies." He said that. So either Jesus is who he says he was, John 8:58, or he was a crazy person. I'm not dancing on some dangerous ground. No, I'm not. He was either who he says he was or he was crazy because this man said he was the Son of God and co-equal with God and he came to die on a cross to pay for the sins of mankind. That's who he said he was. That was his purpose. It wasn't just to heal people. It wasn't just to have a good sermon. It was to redeem mankind. That's what he said was his reason for coming.

So I accept that or I reject that. There is no middle ground. That sounds narrow, my friends. I'm just trying to be honest. I'm just trying to be honest with myself. I'm trying to be honest with you. I want you to be honest with yourself. I don't want you to live in this gray area somewhere between black and white and this mishmash of what the world wants to say is okay. No, either accept it or reject it. That's really your choice. It really is. I'm not here to judge any direction like that. There's not a judgmental bone in my body.

Did you know that Jesus taught that the world was created through Adam and Eve? Jesus taught that. "Well, maybe he was wrong." Well, he also said he was the Son of God. If he was wrong about that, then we are of all men most miserable. He said that he believed in Adam and Eve and that the world was created just like it was in Genesis 1, 2, and 3. He also said that a really big fish swallowed Jonah. He didn't say what type of fish it was. I think it was a grouper. I saw one the other day; it was really big. Matthew 12:40, he said that.

I bring up something else Jesus said that was really hard. He said there's a real place called Hell and he said it three times for every one time he talked about Heaven, maybe even more than that. Over 80 times in the New Testament, he spoke about a literal Hell. I'm not saying that to discourage anyone. I'm just telling you, look it up yourself. Don't take my word for it. Just prove me wrong if you want to. That's what Jesus taught. Not what I'm teaching, it's simply what Jesus taught. How can I throw that out? I can't.

Did you know that he was against divorce unless it was in a case of adultery, and even then, due to the hardness of their heart? Matthew 19 talks very clearly about that, Mark 5 as well, in the same passage. So I take this if I'm a Christian and I say, "Yeah, I have a Christian worldview." Jesus said, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life." So I take this book and this becomes my worldview.

Is that just logical? That's not illogical. That's not being intolerant because you can believe anything you want to believe. You really can. But I'm just saying, if I'm going to be intellectually honest with myself, then I have to look into this book and find out what Jesus taught, what he believed, and that becomes my belief system because I can't rip out the pages. I can't take a little bit of what he teaches and reject some of the other things that he teaches. I can't pick and choose what to believe. I either need to accept it all or reject it all. To do it piecemeal is dishonest.

Another thing, Jesus was not tolerant about other religions. I think we said that already. There was no pluralism; there was no relativism in him. He was strict and he was absolute. He also said in John 17:17, "Make them holy by your truth. Teach them your word, which is truth." So he's given us two clues here as to what truth is. He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," and he says, "Teach them your word, which is truth."

John MacArthur said this, "Any ethic that starts outside of Scripture or does not have Scripture as a foundation might not rightly be called a Christian ethic. Our response to moral questions is not determined by politics, economics, personal preference, popular opinion, or human reasoning. It is instead grounded in what God has told us is true about ourselves and in the world."

My friends, I'll close with this. This is the launching pad. We're going to talk about a lot of things in the next four weeks, but it's all going to come back to this. I'm launching off this book, and you could say you don't believe it and that's okay. You can show me where I've erred. I'm going to do my price of homework and study on it, but I'm launching off this book. When we talk about whatever happened to Adam and Eve, it'll be off this book. When we talk about human sexuality, it'll be out of this book.

So please know, this is where we're coming from. This is not some fundamentalist, right-wing, narrow-minded, egotistical opinion. No, it's not that at all. It's just simply that I'm a Christian. I have a Christian worldview, so everything comes from an understanding of Scripture and launches from an understanding of Scripture. Not the Scripture plus the world, just Scripture.

So that's where I'm coming from for the rest of this series. Throughout this series, you can say, "I don't believe that," and that's absolutely okay. That's between you and the Lord. That's not between you and me. That's between you and God. But understand that by saying that, you're also saying, "Well, I'm not really embracing all of this too." That's all I want from you. I want you to be honest with yourself. I want you to say, "Okay, I'm rejecting what this guy's saying, but I also understand I'm rejecting at least a portion of this too." If I reject a portion of it, I've got to really kick the rest out if I'm going to be honest, and I just want to be honest.

It's the only thing we have as honesty and transparency with God. I was a young man when I got saved 10 years ago. Just kidding. I was a pathological liar. I could lie with the best of them. I had to to survive in my house. I could twist a story and use my words and get out of anything. Then when I got saved, this thing came to me. I said, "You know, I can't lie to God. I can't. I can even lie to myself, but lying to God is just stupid."

This is how I processed my little thoughts back then. I can't trick him. I can't fool him. I can't convince him. He is untrickable, unfoolable, and unconvincible by anything but truth. He knows why I do what I do. Just be honest with the Lord. Say something like, "I'm not ready to believe that yet." That's okay. It really is. But I want to understand, it's one way or the other. The relativism of the day just does not come under the umbrella of today's relativistic thoughts. This stands by itself. I believe there is absolute truth, and it's found right in this book, and that's what we'll be teaching for the next four weeks. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to Grace Thoughts. To see more from Pastor Kelley and Grace Connection Church, please visit us at gccoflowell.org. Join us next time for more Grace Thoughts.