Calvary Road Baptist Church
“WHAT MANY PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW”
A study conducted almost fifty years ago, analyzing thousands of personal letters, newspaper articles, diaries, and other means of evaluating people’s knowledge, concluded that, among those who could read, Americans have never been as well-educated as a nation as we were in 1776. What an astonishing revelation. Do you question that? It would be reasonable to wonder about that. Verify it yourself.
Seeming to verify that declining trend, comedian Jay Leno used to interview people in a segment of his Tonight Show titled “Jay Walking,” in which tourists walking on Hollywood Boulevard or in Universal Studios could not tell Jay what country was to our immediate North, what country was to our nation’s immediate South, what two parties fought in the American civil war, and the name of the nation we fought to gain our independence. And it was Americans who did not know these things.
Several YouTube channels currently produce videos asking the same kinds of questions with the same types of results, with those interviewed not knowing how many stars are on the flag of the United States, whether the Atlantic Ocean is off the East or West coast of our country, or what nation attacked our country on December 7, 1941, to drag us into World War Two. Frequently, these interviews are conducted on college campuses.
The perplexing problem I face is that we are intelligent people, knowing a great deal about many things people were unaware of a century ago but not knowing other things that are important to our eternal well-being. And if I do not know you (or know you well), I do not know what you do and do not know, and you do not know what I do and do not know.
Since this is Friends Day, and we are gathered here to be friendly and make new friends, I have a proposal as we anticipate a great meal together before going our separate ways. First, I have a brochure I have prepared that puts into words what many of you already embrace as true, and because I have been engaged in ministry for more years than most of you have been alive, perhaps some truths you already know can be brought into a somewhat sharper focus. The ushers are passing those brochures out now for you to set aside and look at later.
You might want to read it to your kids. After all, a friend is much more than someone you like or who likes you. I have known killers and thieves I liked but would never have as friends. I have also had so-called friends who have dropped me like a hot rock, people into whom I have invested years of my life and prayers. I think you will want your kids to understand better what a friend is than some people I have known.
Second, so that I might be a friend to you and perhaps help you to be an even better friend to your friends than you presently are, I would like to briefly address several matters I have discovered over almost a half-century to be necessary to people’s lives. I seek to jam nothing down your throat, but I want to suggest several things your friends might conclude are essential to their well-being.
But before I pass from my introductory remarks to my sermon for this morning, let me relate an actual conversation I had with my mom before she died. I was at her apartment to take her grocery shopping, and she commented on how unreliable the Bible is and how much it has changed over the years. She said this to her Bible preacher son. I might have given her this book, Alleged Discrepancies Of The Bible, but I knew she wouldn’t read it.
She said, “There was this program on television calling into question the reliability of the Bible.” I said, “Mom, this is what I do.” I reminded her, “Besides being enrolled in eight colleges and seminaries beginning in high school, I have been to Israel ten times. Every time I go to Israel, I visit the Shrine of the Book, Israel’s top museum, wherein is the Isaiah scroll found in the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea. It is the most important of the Dead Sea scrolls, shown to have been placed in the cave where it was found before the time of Christ. And guess what, Mom? The book of Isaiah on that scroll found in 1947 after being hidden for 2000 years, is exactly the same book of Isaiah we have today. No changes!”
I could spend hours on the subject, but that is only one piece of evidence showing the Bible can be trusted and is accurate. Without apology, I believe the Bible; that is where I am coming from this morning. I thought you ought to know.
That said, I would like to rehearse seven things you might already be familiar with, might already have settled in your mind, and might already own as a personal conviction. But because I cannot be sure, let me cover this for your benefit, or perhaps for the benefit of your friends, because friends don’t let friends go to Hell.
First, YOUR FRIENDS MIGHT NOT KNOW THEY ARE GOD’S ENEMIES
The Apostle Paul wrote the majority of the New Testament. Before he became a Christian, he was a devoutly religious Jewish scholar named Saul, born in the ancient city of Tarsus. He was so vehemently opposed to the Christian faith that he vigorously persecuted his fellow Jews who turned to Christ. He also described himself as the chiefest of sinners in First Timothy 1.15. He was a bad boy even though he was very religious.
But God had other plans for him than to live the life of a religious scholar who persecuted Jews who disagreed with him about Christ. He was miraculously confronted by the risen from the dead Jesus Christ and was transformed from Christianity’s greatest enemy to the greatest of Christians. But what was he before he became a Christian? What is anyone before becoming a Christian?
An enemy of God. That’s right. Though he was a very devout Jewish man, he described himself after becoming a Christian as an enemy of God before becoming a Christian! And the same is true for anyone who is not a Christian, according to the Bible.[1]
A friend can disagree with me and still be a friend, but it is not my opinion. Instead, it is the Bible. And for over a century, a cash reward of one hundred thousand dollars was offered in major metropolitan newspapers around the United States to anyone who could disprove the Bible, with no one ever taking up the challenge.
Next, YOUR FRIENDS MIGHT NOT KNOW HOW TO LISTEN TO A SERMON
Back in the days before the printing press, even those few who knew how to read did not usually have much to read. Every culture was what anthropologists identify as oral culture, with history and tradition passed down from the old to the young via the repeated telling of tales and triumphs, and poems. When you grow up listening and listening and listening, you learn how to listen, and you develop a long attention span to go with your good memory.
No longer the case today, especially since television, the average person’s attention span is studied and measured.[2] I once read that movies, television, computer games, etc., use visual ways of recapturing wandering attention every seven seconds. Is that why so many churches resort to visual methods of grabbing and holding attention, with big screens and impressive musical productions, usually to the detriment of Bible preaching?
I am persuaded important truths require a longer attention span. Therefore, the solution is not to entertain or dazzle people with lights and sounds but to try to persuade them to work on stretching out their attention spans. Important truths require longer attention spans. After all, these issues are related to heaven and Hell, and eternity is a long time to be wrong.
To help our friends, I have prepared a brochure for anyone interested titled “How To Listen To A Sermon.” In the brochure, I show readers how a man named Cornelius stated his time-tested approach to listening to a sermon. In the back of the pamphlet, I offer advice to help parents prepare their children for the preaching of God’s Word.
If you know someone who wants to leave the auditorium after hearing a sermon and getting as much out of that experience as possible, reach out to me, and I will get you a copy to pass along.
Third, YOUR FRIENDS MIGHT NOT KNOW HOW TO READ THE BIBLE
There is a big difference between knowing how to read and learning how to read the Bible for the first time. The Bible is a large, very challenging book and is filled with material unfamiliar to most people. Not growing up in a Christian home, that was my experience with the Bible. It was all new to me.
Therefore, I have prepared another brochure titled How To Read The Bible Through For The First Time. It is very simple, relatively straightforward, and requires a minimal investment of time to read the Bible through for the first time over the course of a year. And with each subsequent reading of the Bible, your understanding and interest will increase.
Why is this a very big deal? Here are a couple of reasons for reading the Bible: First, God wrote it using human instruments and gave it to us as a love letter.[3] Next, the Bible is true and unchangeable.[4] Third, when God saves a sinner from his sins, He does so using the Word of God.[5] Fourth, God instructs us how to live and prepare for eternity as believers using the Bible.[6] Fifth, as the Lord Jesus Christ is God’s living Word, the Bible is God’s written Word. Learn Jesus by learning the Bible.[7] Sixth, you read the Bible to know God better, an essential reason since God is so different from us and everyone will have to deal with God someday.[8]
Fourth, YOUR FRIENDS MIGHT NOT KNOW HOW TO FIND GOD
We have all heard of celebrities or famous athletes who were said to have found God or claimed they found God. In a sense, it is possible for someone to seek after God and to find Him. But if you step back and look at the big picture described in the Bible, that is not the whole story when all the facts are considered.
Granted, there are twenty-seven verses in the Old and New Testaments where the phrase “seek the LORD” is found. Sometimes individuals are directed by God or by the prophets to seek the LORD. In other passages, a blessing is pronounced on those who seek the LORD.
But the Apostle Paul declared in Romans 3.11, from Psalm 14.1-3 in the Old Testament, that no one seeks after God. And the Lord Jesus Christ described His mission in Luke 19.10 with these words:
“For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
What is the story, then? Is there a conflict? No. When a person comes to Christ and becomes a real Christian that individual was sought and saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. But how did the Savior go about accomplishing that? In several ways, the Bible reveals this to us. Sometimes a God-consciousness results from the influence of nature. You look into the night sky or through a microscope at the living critters in a drop of pond water, and you behold the handiwork of God. His fingerprints are everywhere, Psalm 19.1-6. So, you look for more. At other times God presses on a person through the difficult circumstances of life so that they come to the end of themselves and cry out to God for deliverance or relief. And in other ways, the goodness of God leads to repentance, Romans 2.4. So, you look for more. On the human level, it frequently appears that the sinner is seeking God through prayer, Bible reading, Church attendance, and hearing the Gospel. In the back of that, however, and frequently unrealized by the sinner until after they have turned to Christ for salvation full and free, it was the Savior working behind the scenes to gently persuade them to consider the claims of Christ, Who said,
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”[9]
I came to Christ and then came to Church. Others come to Church and then come to Christ. Whatever the sequence, God’s plan for His children culminates in that person now a Christian settling in a Gospel-preaching Church home to be baptized, to be equipped for the spiritual warfare that is a fundamental part of every Christian’s life, and to be equipped for service by a pastor-teacher. What is not seen in the New Testament are those who have found God (rightly understood to have been found by God through faith in Christ) who are unaffiliated and uninvolved in a home Church where they serve and grow and collaborate with others in the congregation to make Christ’s name known to the nations. The modern notion of freelance, unaffiliated believers in Christ who go it alone, uninvolved, uncommitted, and unaccountable to any Church is a concept foreign to the New Testament faith.
Fifth, YOUR FRIENDS MIGHT NOT KNOW HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN
Almost everyone thinks that the way you get to heaven is by being good. So, if I know a guy who was just as dirty a dog as I was, but suddenly he is confident that he is a Christian on his way to heaven, I am likely to think my friend now imagines he is better than me. After all, I think the way to get to heaven is by being good, so he must think he is now better than me. Only no one gets to heaven by being good.
You can see a great deal of overlap between these points. Someone who has found God, or been found by God through faith in Christ, is heaven-bound. But perhaps it is time to be a bit more specific regarding how that takes place.
Have you ever noticed that not once in the Bible is the exact moment someone passes from spiritual death to life witnessed, seen, observed? Great detail is found in the Bible leading to the conversion of a sinner, as well as leading from the conversion of the sinner. But no one’s conversion experience is explicitly recorded for us to read.
Why is that? I suspect so that those pretending to be Christians will find faking it more difficult. As it is, there is an ongoing problem that I label false hopes. The Lord Jesus Christ pointed out the problem at the beginning of His earthly ministry when He said, in Matthew 7.21-23,
21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
This is a serious problem among professing Christians since so many people who claim to be Christians, who may even think they are Christians, are not truly believers at all. Christ is supposed to make a difference, yet there is no difference to be detected in the lives of so many. Each of us knows people who claim to be born again, but if that is what born again is we want no part of it.
In reality, to become a Christian a miracle must occur, a real miracle. Jesus once told the religious leader, Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again,” and that old scholar had no idea what He meant, even though it was taught in the Old Testament that Nicodemus was so familiar with. Thank God nasty people like me can become Christians! My friend Kenneth Connolly’s dad, Peter Connolly, was a London, England head of an Irish gang who trusted the Savior. Think of it. A gang banger who sliced people with a straight razor became a believer in Jesus Christ, and a preacher. That kind of miracle makes a Christian.
The best Biblical example of a sinner being saved that comes to my mind is that of a Roman soldier who asked Paul and Silas,
“Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved....”[10]
They might have said any number of things. “Pray five ‘Hail Marys.’” “Promise to be good from now on.” “Get baptized.” But instead they stuck with the Gospel and said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” Simple. Transformative. And the person who does that is on his way to heaven.
The problem, of course, is that it is easy to say you are a Christian. Part of a congregation’s ministry is to provide real Christians with a platform for showing they are real Christians. It is a war zone, to be sure. The Devil is a real foe; sometimes we take casualties, Christians wounded in action.
But even a superficial reading of the New Testament shows that Church is where God wants His people to be as we live, love, and serve God on our way to heaven. We want to take our kids to heaven with us. We want to take our friends to heaven with us. But that is a matter between each person and the Savior to finally resolve, while we pray and encourage and seek to gently persuade.
Sixth, YOUR FRIENDS MIGHT NOT KNOW CHRIST’S RESURRECTION IS HISTORICALLY PROVEN.
I find it amazing that so many people buy into the propaganda that is so easily disproven. My mom bought into the fiction that the Bible could easily be disproven, yet I have been a Christian and student of the Bible, history, and archaeology for approaching fifty years and have never been more convinced the Bible is true than I am now.
The same is true of Christ’s resurrection, so much so that Gary Habermas proved the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to a board of non-Christian professors at Michigan State University with his Ph.D. dissertation in 1976. Do you know how valid your proofs have to be to convince university professors who are not Christians that Jesus Christ rose from the dead?
There is too much in this dissertation to present at this time, but I do have time to mention five facts establishing outside the Bible the historical proof Jesus Christ rose from the dead.[11] First, no credible historian doubts the Romans crucified a man named Jesus. Second, no credible historian doubts early believers in Christ were so convinced they had seen the resurrected Christ they were willing to die for their faith, and no one dies for a lie. Third, no credible historian denies that Christianity’s greatest enemy, the Apostle Paul, became the greatest of Christians because he believed he encountered the resurrected Jesus Christ. Why would a well-known and reputable scholar like Paul give it all up to endure a lifetime of suffering and persecution ending in martyrdom unless Christ’s resurrection was true? Fourth, no credible historian denies that the greatest skeptic of all, the Savior’s own half-brother, James, who had not believed in his brother before, became a Christian and the pastor of the most prominent Church in the world, the Church at Jerusalem, after seeing his risen from the dead brother, Jesus Christ. Fifth, the evidence of the empty tomb where Christ’s body had been placed and guarded under penalty of death. Admittedly, some historians have issues with the empty tomb, but even those opposed to Christ at the time admitted the tomb where He was buried was empty three days later, and tried to cover it up.[12] No wonder early Christians greeted each other with the words, “He is risen!”
The Christian faith rises and falls on the resurrection of Christ, and we fear no investigation of the evidence that He lives.
Finally, YOUR FRIENDS MIGHT NOT KNOW HOW TO ORDER THEIR PRIORITIES
We all know people who live by the motto, “I try to do what I think is right.” That sounds good, as far as it goes, but it runs into the infallible Word of God, that reads in two identical verses,
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”[13]
Life seems like it ought to be lived according to common sense and one’s own intuition, but God’s Word points out in no uncertain terms that life is very much counterintuitive. One illustration of this principle is the notion of self-promotion. Not to be confused with the principle of good, hard work, which the Bible everywhere advocates, we all know people who are committed to bolstering their image, inflating their importance, gaining recognition, and making sure they get recognized and are given credit for what they do. People do this because everyone wants to be honored. In itself, desiring honor is not wrong, as long as you go about getting it properly. And how does God direct us to go about being honored? James 4.10:
“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.”
Notice how contrary this is to focusing on yourself, bragging on yourself, calling attention to yourself, and ensuring you get credit for what you have done. God’s way for us is humility. That way, when we are elevated, we will give the glory to God and not take credit for ourselves.
How should a person order the priorities of his life, generally speaking? Some people imagine God has no plan, but they are mistaken. The Lord’s directive in Matthew 6.33, set in the context of concern for food and clothing, is most instructive. Jesus said,
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
That is the plan. It has always been the plan, and it will always be the plan. And the problems in life are most usually the result of ignoring the plan God has designed for us and designed us for.
I hope I haven’t exhausted your patience with these recommendations for friends. I maintained contact with friends from my high school days, beginning in 1965. Most are not Christians; I do not press them on these issues. But I do care, I do pray, and I am concerned about their soul’s welfare.
One of my friends is ninety-six years old that I have known for 72 years. She was my first babysitter. Thankfully, she is a wonderful Christian. What do I do with my non-Christian friends?
I present truths to them. I pray for them. I listen to them. I learn from them and about them. I love them. And I know that, insofar as possible, my hopes of reaching them with the truth that Jesus saves require that I be their friend to the end.
Thank you for coming to our Friend Day. We want to be a blessing. Those of you who used the Shuttle Service will understand that our Shuttle drivers will commence taking people back to your cars in thirty minutes, giving them a chance to eat with their families and friends on Friends Day.
__________
[1] John 5.26; 14.19; Romans 5.10; 8.32; 2 Corinthians 4.10-11; 5.18-19; Ephesians 2.16; Colossians 1.20-21
[2] https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00109.2016
[3] 2 Timothy 3.16-17; 2 Peter 1.20-21
[4] Psalm 119.89; John 17.17
[5] James 1.18
[6] 2 Timothy 3.16
[7] John 1.1-14
[8] Psalm 145.17; Romans 11.33; Hebrews 4.13
[9] Matthew 11.28
[10] Acts 16.30-31
[11] Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case For The Resurrection Of Jesus, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2004), pages 43-77.
[12] Matthew 28.11-15
[13] Proverbs 14.12; 16.25
Question? Comment?
Would you like to contact Dr. Waldrip about this sermon? Fill out the form below to send him an email. Thank you.