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Guest (Male): Welcome to Key Life and welcome to day two of a sermon Steve gave back on November 6 of 1988, a sermon called What God Hates. Yesterday, we learned that God hates obstructors of life, people who stand in the way of people coming to Jesus.

So how do we stay out of the way of people coming to Jesus? Well, that's what we're going to get into today. And once again, this week's sermon is brought to you by the Vault Project, our ongoing effort to digitize and preserve classic sermons from Steve going all the way back to 1974.

You can access and support this work for as little as $5 a month. $5, that's a good deal. You can find all the details at KeyLife.org/vault. I'll tell you more about the project shortly, but for now, let's dive back into our sermon for this week called What God Hates. Once more from 1988, here's Steve.

Steve Brown: Listen to me, he is so winsome and so wonderful, and I've been walking with him for a long time. I've never once had to apologize for him. I've never once had to back off. I've just had to get out of the way. Preachers are always saying to their congregations, what have you done to lead your friends to Jesus Christ? And that's a good question, I reckon.

But let me give you a better one. What have you done to keep your friends away from Christ? See, if you can just get them to him, he's going to win. He's really something else. He says, I offer you life. I offer you joy, the laughter of the redeemed. You can live forever. You can be forgiven. You can have meaning in your life.

You don't have to get up in the morning and say, what am I getting up for? To make some money so I have a bed to get up in the morning and make some money? Jesus comes and says, I offer you the abundant life. And all we've got to do, folks, is just to get out of the way.

As I studied this text, I've done some serious repenting. And I want to ask your forgiveness if I've ever said anything that got in the way of Jesus. I want to ask your forgiveness if I've ever done anything or in any way offended you so that you couldn't get to him.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, I recognize that the task of evangelism is getting people to Jesus and then getting out of the way. God hates barriers to the knowledge of him. Let me read you a portion of a letter that I got from a listener in California to Key Life.

Last year, I took a course at a liberal private university. It had been several years since I had been out of my Christian community. Many surprises awaited me. One was that the pagan community in our little class of 10 was far more tolerant of differing opinions than they were of a Christian opinion.

They were also intolerant, adamant about their personal beliefs, just like my Christian acquaintances. I couldn't talk to them because I didn't know their language. There I was, one small person holding the secrets of eternal life in my heart and on the tip of my tongue, unable to give that gift away because I was so entrenched in Christian jargon and phrases.

Fortunately, I learned. I discovered that I couldn't talk to them in terms of the Holy Spirit. They had no consciousness of anything that was holy. But I found that I could speak to them in terms of their pain, and by acknowledging the validity and value of their experience, by loving them where they were.

And so I was able to give them the gift of life on their terms, and God gave me the gift of life in the joy of seeing his love in action. God came in his fullness. So the word is simply this: don't get in the way. Tell people, look, he's great, and don't judge him by me.

Remember in Matthew 19:13 through 14, where the little children are coming to Jesus? And they were coming to Jesus so Jesus could put his hands on them and pray for them. You remember what Matthew says in that text when he studied it? He said that the disciples rebuked those children. They prevented them from coming.

And that's the place where Jesus said, forbid them not. Let the little children come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. I was reading that the other day, and I couldn't believe it. Can you believe that? The children are trying to get to Jesus, and the disciples prevented them from getting there. We're doing that all the time.

We've got AIDS, keep them away from us and Jesus. They don't look like us, they're not beautiful, they don't have an education, they're not sophisticated the way we are. Keep them away, rebuke them. Ladies and gentlemen, Jesus hates barriers. He calls us to be faithful and to point, and then for God's sake, to get out of the way.

And then secondly, you ought to be careful because God not only hates obstructors of life, he also hates crushers of joy. Look at Matthew 23:15. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

Boy, you go through the gospels, you can find example after this after example of this over and over again. In John 12, you remember Mary, who was the sister of Martha and Lazarus, the dead man Jesus raised from the dead? And you remember that Mary took an expensive fragrant oil and anointed Jesus, and Judas stands off to the side and says, tut-tut.

You should have sold that oil, gotten some money, and given it to the poor. And I want to say, Judas, you don't understand. You really don't understand what's going on here. Or Luke 7, when Jesus was at a dinner party? And you remember they had an uninvited guest? She was a whore.

And she came breaking into the dinner party, and then she fell on her knees before Jesus and washed his feet with her tears and dried it with her hair and used a fragrant ointment. And the Pharisee stands over in a corner and says, tut-tut. If he knew the kind of woman she was, he wouldn't allow her to do that.

Don't you see you're crazy? Don't you understand what's happening? The people who are sick have found a physician. They've found delight and joy and the laughter of the redeemed, and you're out raining on their parade. Remember Luke 9, when John said to Jesus, master, we saw some guys casting out demons in your name, we told them to stop.

Jesus said, what? That's the Greek. But the translation we have in the English, Jesus said, he's not against me, he's for me. I want to say, don't you guys understand? Jesus is bringing joy and laughter and you're raining on that power and reality in people's lives.

You remember John 8, the woman caught in adultery? They drag her by the hair in front of Jesus and they say, stone her. That's what the law says. And you want to say to those guys, you don't understand. You don't see what this thing is all about. You've missed it, and you're out there raining on everybody else's parade.

A friend of mine this past week when I was in Detroit was talking about animal heaven. And you need to know that while I haven't found it yet in the Bible, God has told me there is an animal heaven. And if you don't believe that, as I've said on numerous occasions, keep your spurious theological views to yourself. I have two German Shepherds and one cat in animal heaven.

At any rate, there is an animal heaven and Saint Peter was making his way around animal heaven one time. He came upon a little mouse and he said, how are you enjoying heaven? The mouse said, I love it. Said, we mice are having the best times of our lives.

But Peter, could you help us out a little bit? We're so little and our legs are so little and there's so much to see and we don't move very fast. Could you give us some means of transportation? Peter snapped his fingers and the mice had skates on their feet and they just had a wonderful time skating off.

A couple of weeks later, Peter came on a cat and he said, how do you like heaven? Cat said, man, this is a wonderful place. Saint Peter said, you really like it? He said, I just love it. He said, I love everything about it. But the thing I like best is the meals on wheels.

Well, that happens in the kingdom. We get them in and then we eat them alive. We get a new Christian, and instead of allowing Jesus to deal with that new Christian properly, we begin to lay out the rules. The way you wear your hair, the clothes you're kind of you're supposed to know, the theology you're supposed to believe.

And you better believe it, and if you don't, you really don't have this thing really. And then we get on them and we ride them to death until finally they leave the church. That's what Jesus hates. He says that the Father hates that too.

There was a young man in New England, his name was Eddie. And I can close my eyes and I can see Eddie. He came out of the Jesus movement. He had a ponytail, it went down to his belt. Eddie had been on drugs, and when he found Christ, it literally changed his life.

And he came into the church with a whole bunch of kids. And every time you looked at him, he grinned because he knew he had found Christ, and that's what he had been looking for all of his life. He carried a big black Bible with him, every time you'd look at him when he was sitting down somewhere he was reading the Bible.

And then some very mature Christians got on Eddie. They said he really shouldn't have the kind of witness he had with that kind of hair. They said he dressed rather slovenly and didn't he love Christ a little bit more than that? They said, Eddie, there are things that you really need to know, and we need to teach these things to you.

And I turned around and then turned back and Eddie was gone. And I tried to call Eddie at the place where he lived in his apartment and I tried to chase him down, I never could find him. I want you to know God hates that. God hates that, ladies and gentlemen.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Steve. If you're just joining us, all this week we're listening through a sermon Steve gave back in 1988 called What God Hates. You know, at his heart, Steve is a Bible teacher. So every now and then, we take a break from our ongoing teaching series to do a deep dive into a full sermon, divvied up across four days.

If you're enjoying this approach, do let us know. And be sure to check out KeyLife.org/vault, where we have an amazing and constantly growing archive of classic sermons just like this one. And you may have heard me mention that you can access this content for as little as $5 a month.

That five spots simply helps us defray the expense of this labor-intensive digitizing process. And once you see the volume and quality of the sermons we already have, I think you'll say that it's well worth it. Tomorrow, we'll continue from where we left off today and explore the problem of separating the spiritual from the secular. Hope you'll join us again for that.

The avatar of all things evil doesn't mind you saying you'd move mountains for those you love as long as you don't adjust your schedule to attend an important event or talk about your feelings. The red-suited one yawns when you say you'd die for a partner if you're not considering their needs and wants and desires as much or more than your own.

Well, that excerpt is from an article by Chad West who, by the way, is an amazing writer. You can find it in our digital summer magazine. You'll also enjoy articles from Steve, Jerry Parries, and Justin Holcomb. Get all of it on demand for free at KeyLife.org/digitalmagazine.

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