Leading The Way

Guest (Male): Lifelong pastor and international Bible teacher, Dr. Michael Youssef.

Dr. Michael Youssef: We've been exploring in this series of messages the importance of understanding the greatest lie because for the first time, at least in modern history, that greatest lie is penetrating deep into so-called evangelical churches. The greatest lie which says that there are many ways to God. And yet the Word of God is so clear, there's only one way out of sin and that is through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the most innocent lamb of all.

Guest (Male): A reminder of how the greatest lie has permeated today's culture and invaded churches, steering many away from the truth of the gospel. Now before Dr. Youssef continues today's lesson, allow me to quickly mention that Leading The Way is a listener-supported gospel and media ministry, meaning Dr. Youssef and his leadership team rely on God's provision through God's people to fund outreach in your neighborhood and in neighborhoods just like yours all around the world.

Find out about the best way for you to stand with Leading The Way. Give us a call. We are at 866-626-4356, or we're at ltw.org. All right, let's move to Dr. Michael Youssef and his teaching from God's word. Join me in listening to another life-changing message in his series, The Greatest Lie.

Dr. Michael Youssef: If you read anything about England in the 1700s, if you read any of Dickens' books, you read about these debtors' prisons, that people who owed money and cannot pay go to that prison. It was a hopeless condition, a desperate situation. And many of the people who ended up in these debtors' prisons, they lived and they died in those prisons unless someone sacrifices to pay their debt and set them free. Otherwise, it's hopeless.

And today we see so many people, particularly the movie stars and the famous singers and all those people who are trying to ease the pain of their feelings of indebtedness with which they are born by doing a lot of good works and charitable works. And that's why the Hollywood community consumes more drugs than anybody else. Why? That empty feeling, that debtors' prison with which they don't know how to deal.

There is a great deal of difference between a believer serving and giving of themselves because of the debt they feel to God, and they do it out of gratitude, out of thanksgiving for salvation, out of gratitude and thanksgiving for what Christ has done. There's a world of difference between that and the non-believers who are trying to do things and do charitable works for publicity and to ease that internal pain.

Listen, the only person who was ever born without that debt of sin is the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is why He is the only one who is qualified to pay the debt of everyone who would come to Him and ask for that payment to be theirs. We are all born with the sin gene, and the sin gene keeps us in that spiritual debtors' prison until we come to the only one who is qualified to pay our debt and set us free.

When Jesus hung on that cross and said, "It is finished," He was saying that I have paid the debt in full for everyone who would receive Me as their only Savior and Lord. We have been seeing throughout this series of messages on the greatest lie is that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and tried the do-it-yourself religion, when they tried the "all ways should lead to God, why should there be the one way" syndrome, they got themselves and their descendants all into trouble.

And then they tried to cover their debts with fig leaves. They tried to come to God in their own way. They tried to cover up for their sin, but they failed. And finally, God is the one who in His mercy and in His grace had to make garments of skin to cover their sin. And this is the first time in human history do we see the first animal sacrifice. Bloodshed is mentioned in all of human history.

Today, thousands of years later, people are still trying to use fig leaves to cover their sin through all sorts of charitable works and human effort, receiving the applause of men and the acceptance of society. But as soon as the fig leaves wither, that pain, that emptiness, that burning conscience sets in. Why? Because God is the only one who can provide a covering for all of the sin of all humanity. God was, is, and always will be the only one who could cover the scars of sin.

We've been exploring in this series of messages the importance of understanding the greatest lie because for the first time, at least in modern history, that greatest lie is penetrating deep into so-called evangelical churches. It jumped out of the mainline churches and now it's invading the evangelical churches. The greatest lie which says that there are many ways to God.

And yet the Word of God is so clear, there's only one way out of sin and the punishment of sin, and that is through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the most innocent lamb of all. That Jesus is not just a founder of religion, we've been seeing this, that Christianity is not just a religion among other religions, that not all religions are going to lead to God and heaven, but rather that the Christian faith and only the Christian faith declares that God did it all.

That I don't have to do anything to become accepted by God, that all of my good and hard work comes after salvation, not before. And that is all of the serving and all of the giving of ourselves, not to get us on God's good side, but rather done in gratitude, in thanksgiving for what He has done. In fact, in the next message, I'll be talking about grace. Grace sets the Christian faith apart as the only one true faith. And therefore, when there's only one true faith, all the others are false.

Do you know why God slew a lamb for Adam and Eve in the garden? Do you know why? He did this to provide a covering, but He also was saying that this lamb is pointing to the most innocent lamb of all, the Lamb of God who will take away the sin of the world permanently, the Messiah, my Son who will sacrifice Himself in order to permanently forgive and cover the sin of everyone who would come to Him.

The slaughter of that animal was a visual lesson for Adam and Eve. It was a visual reminder to look forward to what God will do in order that He may set their descendants free from sin that they got us into. And the reason animal sacrifice is practiced almost by every culture, every religion throughout the world for the thousands of years is because it followed from what God did in the Garden of Eden as humanity scattered on the face of the earth, so did their understanding of what God did, of what they inherited from their first parents.

Nobody had to tell them that; it transmitted from the time of Adam and Eve. And that is why the message that you and I must take to the ends of the earth, across the street, and across the world is this: you don't have to sacrifice animals anymore to be accepted by God. That the true Lamb of God came from heaven, died on a cross, shed His own blood so that He may pay for the wages of the sin of everyone who would come and accept that payment.

It's for the Hindu, it's for the Buddhist, it's for the Muslim, it's for the atheist, and it's for the agnostic. And it's not only for the church people. Slaying of an animal to provide a covering for Adam and Eve's sin was only a temporary basis. That was God's temporary solution, and it was a picture of what is to come. It was a shadow of the real thing that is coming. It was a visual reminder of the cost of sin. It was an arrow that is pointing the way to the coming of the Lamb of God.

Listen, that was God's chosen way of doing things. Could God have done it some other way? Yes, of course. But this is the way He chose to do it. In fact, God always has one way and only one way of doing things. Did you know that? God never gives you a buffet. He never offers you a smorgasbord. God always had one plan for salvation. God always is an exclusive and not inclusive. God always says either my way or the highway.

Our culture does not like that. And everyone who tries to twist the words of God, anyone who tried to put words in God's mouth, they not only bring trouble to themselves, they bring trouble on their surroundings. Everyone who says, "I don't like this," and "I don't believe this," or "I don't accept this," or "I don't feel this is the right way," they are sunk.

Listen, even Adam and Eve's descendants, the next generation, the first generation, they ran into exactly the same trouble as millions of people run into today. Nothing has changed. Let me tell you about it. The question that faced Adam's children was, are they going to choose to follow God's only way that He has instituted, or are they going to try to come to God their way?

And that was the challenge. And believe it or not, Cain and Abel represent all of humanity today because one chose to come to God God's way and the other one decided that he's going to come to God his way. And people have been doing that ever since. You see, when God promised Adam and Eve a Savior and He said that He will crush Satan's head, it was in Genesis 3:15.

But Adam and Eve did not know when God is going to give them this Savior who's going to crush Satan's head, right? He didn't tell them that it's going to be thousands of years down the road. He just said, "This is what's going to happen." And so to their mind, this animal sacrifice is a reminder and forces them and causes them to anticipate, to wait, to look forward to the day when that day comes.

They did not know, so when their firstborn came, they thought, "He must be the one who's going to crush Satan's head." And so they named him Cain, which means "here he is." That's what Cain means: "here he is." They thought that he must be the one who's that Savior that's promised in Genesis 3:15. But far from it, Cain refused his parents' teaching. He rejected God's plan of salvation.

Cain refused to follow God's temporary solution for sin. And so he decided that God is too big and too vast to just allow one way to come to Him. And he said to himself, "I know God said to come to Him with an animal sacrifice, but I know better." By the way, that makes Cain the very first Unitarian Universalist member in the world.

And all of his descendants have been going to churches that believe that all the roads will lead to heaven, all the ways will lead to God, all religions are equal. God said when you worship Me, you come with an animal sacrifice and the shedding of blood of an innocent lamb. Why? Because the shedding of that blood is a reminder for them to look forward to that day. It is a pointer to the coming Messiah and the shedding of His blood on the cross.

But what did Cain do? He says, "I don't like this business of only coming to God one way. I don't like this intolerance of one way to God. I don't like this business of this bigotry and this exclusivity. I don't like this narrow-mindedness of only one way. I'm going to come to God my way. I'm going to offer grain instead of slaying an innocent lamb. I'm going to do what I think is right.

And I think if I live right and if I just be good in my own eyes, God will have no choice but to accept me. I'm going to tell God what he should have. I'm going to live the way I think is a good way to live. In fact, God better listen to me. I'm angry about this business of coming to God through Jesus Christ. So much so that I'm going to call every one of His followers, I'm going to call them names.

I'm going to call them intolerant. I'm going to call them bigots. I'm going to call them narrow-minded. I'm going to call them prejudiced. I'm going to call them every name that I can think of. No, I'm going to eliminate them because their very presence condemns me." Sounds familiar? And so Cain got out and killed his obedient brother Abel, the man who offered the sacrifice the way God said it should be done. So he eliminated his brother who came to God God's way.

You see, Rome and Romans and Nero and the emperors, they were tolerant people. They really were. They were tolerant of every god that comes down the pike. They were tolerant of every religion. You got a new god? Great, come on in. Welcome. The more the merrier. The only thing that really rattled their cage are these pesky Christians who were saying there's only one way to God, one way to heaven, one way to salvation.

And so like Cain, they burnt the Christians. They threw them to hungry lions. Be very careful because that drumbeat of intolerance as it gets louder and louder and louder is going to lead to persecution of Christians in this country. Beloved, listen to me. Don't be surprised when they call you names for the sake of the truth. Don't get bamboozled when they refuse to receive your loving kindness.

Don't fret when they falsely accuse you of intolerance. Don't panic when they exclude you. Don't get bent out of shape when they tell you that you are narrow-minded and out of touch. You keep on loving them. You keep on serving them. You keep on praying for them. You keep on interceding for them. You keep on reaching out to them. You keep on explaining the truth to them.

And just as there was a confusion in the mind of Cain toward his brother Abel, there is a whole lot of confusion in the mind of those who say, "Yes, Jesus is my Savior, but he's not the world's Savior. All the religions have their own saviors." They don't. Fallacy. Falsehood. Jesus is the only Savior for all of humanity.

Cain thought that his brother Abel was self-righteous and he hated him for that. He thought that his brother Abel thinks that he's better than him. That's not true. Cain thought his brother Abel is a goody-two-shoes. And Cain thought that he just intolerant of other ways of coming to God. And so he killed him.

He did not understand that all that Abel was doing is that he was taking God at His word. All that Abel was doing is obeying God. All that Abel was doing is trusting in the word of God. All that Abel was doing, he believed God. But this is an important reminder for all of us who are redeemed. It really is. I'm constantly having to remind myself because it's very hard to imagine how we come across to a non-believing person.

We've been falsely maligned and therefore the average non-believer really thinks that we are self-righteous. They think we're better than them. We're not. That we're more intelligent, that we know more. We don't. We just took God at His word. And they can too if they want to escape the judgment. And that is the only message we have.

Let me remind you again that we're all, every one of us, born with a debt of sin hanging around our necks. And the difference is that we have accepted that payment on the cross to be a payment for us. And we need to tell them that they need to come to the only one who can pay their debt. Now I was thinking about this message this week and my mind harked back to a story that I have read long, long time ago.

True story about Lord Collington of Dublin. It was during one of those tough economic times that Ireland really was renowned for and all kinds of famines and all kinds of economic distress until recent times. And so Lord Collington devised a plan in order to teach his tenants who owed him a lot of money in back rent. He wanted to teach them how faith and trust in God's word brings joy and release from guilt and sin and forgiveness and eternal life, and how insistence on one's own way will keep people in a debtors' prison.

He devised this incredible plan. He told all of his tenants who owed him a lot of money—many of them were huge amounts and no way they can pay it—he said, "I will forgive your debt if you come to my office on a certain day prior to 12 noon." On a designated day, he sat in his office and he opened the office door. It was right open on the street.

And in the morning time, a lot of the tenants came and they crowded the little street. They stood outside. They were milling about and they were talking and they think he's really going to mean this or do you think he will do this? And they start talking, whole crowd of them. But they wouldn't go in.

There was a man who was coming running late for some reason and about five minutes to 12, he comes running in there, didn't ask any question, walked straight through the door and he said, "Sir, can you give me my receipt?" Lord Collington asked him, he said, "Do you really expect me to forgive you your debt?"

And the man said, "Yes, sir, because that's what you promised. And do you believe me?" The man said, "Yes, sir, I believe you. You're a man who keeps his word. That's your reputation." And so he asked the man, he said, "Are you a good man? Are you industrious? Are you hard-working?" And the man said, "The notice said nothing about that, sir. So you just believe what I said and you're here for your receipt?"

He said, "Indeed I am, sir." Lord Collington wrote, "Paid in full" on the receipt and handed it to him. And right at that moment, 12 noon struck. And the man ran into the street where all the debtors were standing there milling around and he cried out, he said, "I've got it! I've got it! I've got it! I'm free!"

And when the others saw this, they ran to the office door, but it was after 12 o'clock noon and the door was shut. Beloved, the Bible said now is the acceptable time. Now is the hour of the open door. The day will come when the door will be shut, never to be opened again. I have one verse that motivates everything that I am, motivates my goals, my life, everything that I do.

And it was about the time when Noah entered the ark. For 120 years, he preached and he called people to come and enter the ark. They wouldn't. Then he entered with his family. And the Bible said, "And God shut the door." And I figure that Noah being a man and emotional and if he sees his neighbor suffering in the flood, that he would have felt compassion and want to go and open the door.

But you see, God is the one who shut the door. And if we have a message that we take to every person that we come in contact with: Come to God before He shuts the door.

Guest (Male): Dr. Michael Youssef passionately proclaims uncompromising truth each day on Leading The Way. Thank you for listening in on this episode called The Temporary Solution. Would you like to speak to a pastor or a counselor about a relationship with Jesus or ways to grow deeper? Well, submit a contact form at ltw.org/jesus.

Dr. Michael Youssef: Hello friends. You have seen the waves of extremism on college campus, in conversation with some young people in your life, even in many churches. Two radical ideologies, once enemies, now they're marching together. They shut down debate, excuse violence, and they target biblical truth. That alliance is real, and it is deliberate.

In my new book, An Unholy Alliance, I explain what these two radical opposed forces are, why they are working together, and I also give you the 1,400-year backstory many people are entirely ignorant about that is shaping today's headlines. Get my new book, An Unholy Alliance. It's going to open your eyes and give you practical ways to make a difference for Christ.

Guest (Male): Pre-order your copy of An Unholy Alliance today when you give a gift of any amount to Leading The Way. That'll guarantee that you're one of the first to get a copy shipped when the release date comes. The number to call: 866-626-4356. And online at ltw.org. This program is brought to you by Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef.