Message Description

Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the message series Reasonable Faith teaching out of the book of Acts to discuss the inclusivity and universal access people have to God through the sacrifice of Jesus.

Message Transcript

Good morning Orchard Hill in Butler, Strip District, Wexford, and Online. It's great to be here together with you. Just before we jump into the teaching, I want to highlight just a couple things. You heard about the Easter Good Friday schedule, do make sure to register. There's a variety of mask options and different things that are available. If you look online, you can see that. Unique services on Good Friday in all three locations, and then lots of options in Wexford, and at the campuses in Butler and Strip District in the days ahead. 

Also, I want to tell you that Butler Campus is going to be moving into their new facility next Sunday morning. And so, that is really a fun thing. And thank you for just the giving, and participation, and the many people at the Butler Campus who have worked hard to get that facility ready. So, thank you to Butler. That's going to expand their capacity by about three times and so we're excited about what will happen there. It'll be a 24/7 facility, and that's something just in this last year that as a church, we were able to buy and upfit that building and get it ready to go. And so, really a great thing. 

So, let's take a moment and pray, and we'll jump into our teaching. Father thank you for a chance to be together. Thank you for what you are doing and will do at our Butler Campus. We just pray that many people there would come to find and follow you because of what happens in that space. And Father, we pray for this moment for those of us gathered that you would help each one of us just to encounter you in some way. And Lord, I pray that my words would reflect your word in content, and in tone, and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. 

Well, you just saw a video of a simple question asked on a university campus here locally about what happens with this belief in Jesus. And we started a series last week, Mike, Josiah, and Brady did a great job kicking us off, called Reasonable Faith. And we're looking at Acts 17 where the apostle Paul interacted with two different cities, one Thessalonica and the other in Athens. 

And we're mostly focusing on his speeches in Athens because there he reasoned with the people about the reasonableness of faith. And you see this in the very beginning of the chapter when he was in Thessalonica where it says, "That he reasoned with the people." And the word reasoned according to Cleon Rogers, who is a commentator with a little lexicon, that that word actually had the idea of question-answer. In other words, this wasn't Paul just coming into a city and saying, "Here, I'm going to tell you how it is." 

This was Paul interacting, going question by question, line by line with people to work through the reasonableness of faith. And then in verse three, it says, "That he was and proving these things to the people." Now here's my guess, and you see it a little bit with this video. And I know this is true generally, and that is for many people we didn't wake up this morning thinking is Christ really God? Is he really the Savior of the world? 

Most people woke up saying, "Wow, the time changed, I need coffee," Or something like that. And their real question about faith isn't is it true? It's does it work? Now, I'm not saying that it doesn't matter if it's true, I think it matters immensely. But what I'm saying is for most people that what really drives their faith decision is how does this work in reality for me. Does this help me in my life? Or is this something that doesn't really move or change the way that I live? 

I read a book several years ago by a man named Paul David Tripp, it was called Dangerous Calling. And it was a book about pastors and ministry. And at one point he talks about the task of teaching to a congregation week after week. And the people that he would always think were present when he went to teach. And this is what he said. 

He said, "I know that I am addressing the single lady who has set her heart on the affection of a certain young man whom she thinks will deliver her happiness that she's been craving. Sitting before me is a teenager who can't think beyond the glories of his or her social media feed or the Portal 2 video game that they just got. In the congregation is a middle-aged man, whose heart is captured by the glory of somehow some way recapturing his youth. 

A wife is sitting there wondering if she'll ever experience the glory of a kind of marriage she's dreamt about, the kind she knows others have. A man sits in the crowd knowing that he feeds his soul almost daily on the dark and distorted glories of pornography and has become a master at shifting spiritual gears. Some listening are more excited about a new outfit, or a new home, a new shotgun, a newly sodded lawn, the opening of a new restaurant, a new vacation site, or a new promotion, than they are about the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Of those who gathered for worship, there are those distracted by grief, anger, discouragement, loneliness, envy, frustration, despair, or hopelessness because the glories that they've looked for, for their meaning, purpose, and inner happiness have failed them once again. These glories have proven to be more temporary than they thought they would ever be. They have been more elusive than they seemed at a distance. They've blown up in their faces or dripped like sand through their fingers." And then he says this, "And even when they are wonderful to experience, they didn't in fact leave their hearts satisfied. The buzz was short, and the satisfaction elusive. So, they sit there empty, hurt, angry, and confused." 

Now, I don't know if that describes any of us here today, but when I first read that, I remembered just thinking that a lot of times what people who do what I do, is we ask questions that aren't the questions that are driving the decisions of life. So even when we come to a series like this, where we're saying, "Is it reasonable to believe the Christian faith?" 

Sometimes we end up not tying it to the questions that we're really asking. And here's what Paul did. When he came into Athens in Acts 17:22, he says something about the people in Athens to them. And here's what he basically does. In Acts 17:22, he tells them how religious they are. "Paul stood up at a meeting in the area of the Areopagus and said, 'People of Athens, I see that you are very religious.'" 

Now, when you hear that, you might think, well, religious, does that mean that people are doing all religious rituals. But what was going on in Athens is the people were actually very sophisticated. And a lot of times in our day, we tend to think people from another era weren't all that sophisticated, but the people of Athens were very sophisticated, they were intellectual, they were international in the way that they live because it was a hub city where so many things came together. And so, what you have here is a very cosmopolitan city, and Paul comes in and he says, "Listen, you guys are practicing religion and you're very religious." 

And a little later he says, "You even have a statute to an unknown god." In other words, you're covering all your bases. And religion in many ways is a quick answer to a big question. In fact, I have a definition for religion, and this is my definition, I haven't seen this anywhere else, but this is what I think religion really is. Religion is a set of beliefs that's reinforced by community that determines our directions. 

Religion is a set of beliefs reinforced by community that determines direction. But here's what I want to say to you, and this is what I believe Paul is saying in Acts 17, and that is, Jesus isn't really religion. What we do a lot of times is we tend to think Jesus is just one of the options of religion, which is why a lot of times when people are asked the question is it exclusive to say that Jesus is the only way to God? And they're like, "Yes." Because all the religions, Jesus is just one option. 

But Jesus ultimately isn't religion, He's apart from religion. And it's actually much more inclusive to say that Jesus is the only way to God than it is exclusive. And I'll come back to that in a few minutes and tell you why I believe that's true. But Jesus comes to earth and when He comes, what He does is He basically forces people to choose religion or Jesus. 

I remember years ago, I was in a crowded public place like a festival and people were together, long before we knew what social distancing was. The kind of place where you're so packed in it's uncomfortable. And we're in a street, and this ambulance came and clearly, they needed to get to the other side of the street, and the guy turned his siren on. And there was not enough room for people to really get out of the way easily. And so, as this ambulance came down, you had to make a choice, which way you were going to go, how you were going to get out of the way. But the one thing you couldn't do was just stand there. You had to move one way or the other. 

And Jesus in a sense forces you if you come in contact with who Jesus really is to say either, "I believe in His message and it is good news," or "I choose the path of religion". And I think this is part of what Paul is driving at in Acts 17:18. This is what it says about halfway through the verse, talking about Jesus and what He did. And it says, "They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection." And this idea of preaching the good news was a word that meant he was proclaiming the victory that comes because Jesus came to earth and He Rose back to life. 

Now when you and I think about religion, what we tend to do is we tend to say, "Well, there's the classical religions. There's Judaism, there's Christianity, there's Islam, there's Hinduism. Like these are the big world religions, but we don't tend to do is we don't tend to think about the more cultural religions. And what I mean by that is there's a cultural religion which is basically moralism. 

And what moralism is, is this idea that says, "I'm moral, people like me are moral. We get it, whatever God is like, we're going to be fine. And everybody else, well, they have to at least worry about it a little bit, but we're good." And then there's another evolution of that in our day and age where we have influencers who tell us what it is to be okay. Remember the definition that I gave of religion, that it's a set of beliefs reinforced by community. 

And so even if you're not technically religious, because you don't adhere to one of the big faces, you don't attend a church, you don't burn incense, you don't do anything that seems religious. Religion is actually the beliefs that you have that are reinforced by the people around you about the big questions. That's what religion is. And so, you don't even have to be part of a church, or a mosque, or a synagogue to be religious. 

And I saw this in an article somebody sent me a week or so ago, this is by a lady named Lee Stein. And she had an article that she called the Empty Religions of Instagram. And she was talking about one of the women that she follows, a woman named Glennon Doyle, who wrote a book last year that became a New York Times Bestseller. I think I talked about it last summer, it's called Untamed. And it was a book about how she left her marriage and her kids to follow her true life. And it became celebrated by all kinds of people because they're like, "That's awesome, you're true to yourself. 

And she writes about all her followers on Instagram. And she says, "We found a different kind of clergy," talking about Ms. Doyle here. Personal growth influencers. Women like Ms. Doyle, who offer none’s like us permission, validation, and community on demand at a time when it's nearly impossible to share communion in person. We don't even have to put down our phones. I've hardly prayed to God since I was a teenager, but the pandemic has cracked open inside of me a profound yearning for reverence, humility, and awe. 

I have an overdraft on my outrage account. I want moral authority from someone who isn't shilling a memoir or calling out her enemies on social media for clout. Left-wing secular millennials may follow politics devoutly, but the women they've chosen as their moral leaders aren't challenging us to ask fundamental questions that leaders of faith have been wrestling with for thousands of years. Questions like, why are we here? Why do we suffer? What should we believe in beyond the limits of our puny selfhood? 

And what she's pointing to is this idea that our culture has basically said we're going to take our influence from anybody who reinforces what it is that we want rather than asking the ultimate question. So, if somebody helps us feel good about what we already believe, already want to do, then that becomes our influencer rather than saying, is this reality? Is this reality? 

One author and professor at Harvard put it this way, this is Steven Pinker. He said, "People are embraced or condemned according to their beliefs. So, one function of the mind maybe to hold beliefs that bring the belief holder, the greatest number of allies, protectors and disciples rather than beliefs that are most likely to be true." 

And here's what he's saying. He's saying that what's happening in our culture is that we choose our beliefs by and large based on who it is that affirms that belief because they become our allies, our defenders, our disciples with us rather than saying, "Is this ultimately true?" 

So, here's what I'd like to do this morning with you for just a few moments. I'd like to point out why Jesus and the good news that Jesus came is so different than religion. In order to do this, I want to look at one of the stories Jesus told, this is found in Luke 18:9-14. And it's a well-known story about the Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple. 

And here's how it begins, "To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else." Jesus told this parable, so it's set up by saying there's some who were sitting here who were confident that they were good, that they were right, and they look down on everybody else. And so, Jesus comes, and He tells this story. And here's what it says. 

"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee." Now you have to understand when we read Pharisee today, if you've been around church you know it'd be like Pharisees, they're the shaky characters. But when Jesus told this story, they wouldn't have thought, "Oh, the Pharisees are the shaky characters." They would have said, "No, the Pharisees are the really good people. These are the pillars of society. These are the people who always do the right thing." 

And so here He says, "Here's the Pharisee and this one went and stood by himself and prayed, 'God, I thank you that I'm not like other people: robbers, evil doers, adulterers or even like this tax collector." And again, tax collectors aren't popular in our day, but they were really unpopular back then, because they would have taken money and cheated their own people in order to get wealthy basically. 

And so, he says, "I think I'm not like this guy." And then he adds this, "I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of all that I get." And then Jesus said this, "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He wouldn't even look up to heaven, but he beat his breast and said, 'God have mercy on me, a sinner.' I tell you this man, rather than the other went home justified before God, for all those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.'" 

And what Jesus does is He takes and drives this comparison. He takes somebody that most of the people would have said, "That's the good guy, that's the religious guy, that's the person that we all want to be like." And then here He takes the person that everyone despises, and He says, "I want to tell you, they came up to the temple to pray and one said things that were probably technically true, and yet he didn't go home justified. The person who came up and simply said, 'God have mercy on me a sinner," is the one who went home justified. 

So, what's the difference between religion and the good news? Let me give you five differences, here's the first. Religion divides people into good and bad. But if you believe in the good news, you recognize that all people are sinners and in need of grace. 

When you practice religion and again, my definition of religion broadly speaking means not just the actual practice, but when you're into religion, rather than Jesus, what you'll do is you'll say, "I've got a group that I know is good. I know is right. And then there's a group that's wrong and bad. And I'm part of the good group, other people are part of the bad group." Rather than saying, "We're all sinners in need of grace." 

There's a man who has been a pastor for years, his name's Tullian Tchividjian, and he's a pastor now of a church he just started in Florida. And he had been at a large church, he had multiple affairs and was rightly disciplined, put out of the church, and has since repented and come back. Although some don't think he should, but here's what he said recently. He said, "Christianity," and the reason I tell you his backstory is I think it helps to appreciate this statement. 

He said, "Christianity is for sinners. It's for sex addicts, shopaholics, control freaks, adulterers, blame shifters, gossips, alcoholics, liars, narcissists, worrywarts. The selfish, the angry, the arrogant, it's for you, it's for me." And then he said this, "Jesus came for fallen people because fallen people who fail are all that there are. So often, we don't like that kind of a quote if we're religious, because we say, "Wait a second, wait a second. That's too broad, that's too easy." 

But what we need to see is what Jesus did, even in this parable was He said, "Listen this Pharisee said I'm good, he's bad, and he didn't go home justified. The one who went home justified was the person who said, 'God have mercy on me a sinner. I know that I'm in need.'" 

Here's a second thing and actually just before I come to the second thing, let me just say this. One of the things I've noticed, and I've been a pastor for about 30 years now, I started when I was 12, I like to point that out, but one of the things that I've seen is for most of the years that I've been a pastor, the predominant view in the world has been you do you, I do me. Don't tell me what to do, I won't tell you what to do. We all do our own thing. And if it works for you, it's good. 

But you know what's happened in the last probably two or three years? Things have shifted and they shifted drastically to now there's moral outrage in our country where people are constantly shouting people down on social media and saying, "You're part of the bad group because you didn't post about this, or you didn't say this, or you didn't have the right take on this." And so, all of a sudden there are all of these little micro religion ideas out there where people are saying, "If you're not like us, you're not one of the good people. You're one of the bad people." Do you know what I'm talking about? 

And so now, instead of people just saying, "Hey, you believe whatever you want to believe. I'll believe whatever I want to believe." What's changed is people are saying, "No, you better believe what I believe or you're wrong. You're bad, I'm good." But the message of Jesus isn't, "I'm good, you're bad." It's we're all sinners in need of a savior. 

Here's a second thing, and that is religion makes people proud and self-righteous. But the good news produces humility. And again, you see this where it says, "To some who were confident in their own righteousness and look down on everybody else." This text couldn't be clearer. That the result of our goodness is not greater acceptance with God, but greater pride and greater self-righteousness. Unless we understand that it isn't our righteousness that somehow commends us to God. 

What we tend to do is we tend to think that the better I behave, the more God likes me. The better my belief system, the more God likes me. When the message of Christianity isn't the better that I behave, the more God likes me. It's the more that I understand that it's Jesus who's done for me that I can't do, then I have an unconditional acceptance with God. 

Sometimes people don't like the word sinner. I've had people say to me, "You talk about sin a lot, like too much. Can we just be more positive and talk about human potential?" But here's the thing and this is why I say, I actually think it's more inclusive to say that Jesus is the answer because when I say Jesus is the answer, what I'm saying is I'm sinful, you're sinful, we're all sinful. And anybody can get in on this. We all mess up and anybody can get in on it. But do you know what religion says? It says, you've got to believe like me and behave like me. And even the worldview that you saw in the video, which is what all religions have their path is a very Western in our social moment belief that says, "I somehow know that all religions of the world are partially right, partially wrong." 

And at 22 years old, sitting here on a college campus, having taken two philosophy classes, I'm enlightened enough to tell everybody how it works. And that is it's a way of saying, "I don't want anybody to be a sinner." But what the scriptures do very clearly is they say, "All of us have sinned and come short of God's glory." And the people who are humbled by that come to Jesus and say, "God have mercy on me a sinner and they're accepted." It's way more inclusive than saying you have to have the right belief system. 

Here's the third thing. And that is religion is ultimately defensive and critical. But the good news when it's embraced allows us to show weakness. The way that you see this is that if you find yourself always responding when somebody believes differently, behaves differently, sees things differently, and you feel the need to defend yourself. Or if somebody is critical of you, you get amped up and irritated. What that means is instead of understanding and believing the gospel, that you're actually trusting a little bit in your religion. 

Have you ever had somebody say to you that you always have to be right? That's not a compliment. Because what that means is that you're trying to always say, "My way is right, I get it." And you're defensive and critical because you don't want any other ways of seeing the world. But when you understand the message of the good news, what Jesus has offered in coming to this earth, dying on a cross, then you're able to show weakness and you're able to build your identity, not on being right but instead to say, "I can let you see my failures and my blunders along the way because God is the one through what Jesus Christ has done who's accepted me." 

But when we practice religion, what we have to do is we have to conceal our weaknesses and our failures so nobody else sees them. I believe that the church, the global church, should be the most welcoming place on earth. But sometimes sadly, church is a place where people feel they have to pretend because they feel they have to keep things a certain way. Instead of being able to say, "This is where I can come and take off the mask," and say, "Here's what I really struggle with. Here's what's really hard for me. Here's what I really need." 

Sometimes we do a call to worship here that I just love. We do it often in our chapel, which is a little more liturgical, but the call to worship goes like this. It says to all who are weary and need rest, to all who mourn and long for comfort, to all who feel worthless and wonder if God cares, to all who fail and desire strength, to all who sin and need a savior, this church opens wide her doors with a welcome from Jesus Christ. The ally of his enemies, the defender of the guilty, the justifier of the inexcusable and the friend of sinners, welcome. 

And I think I like that so much because the words here at the end almost strike me in a sense of saying, that's too radical. The ally of his enemies, the defender of the guilty, the justifier of the inexcusable. But what that reminds us is that God's message is that I am the one who justifies the inexcusable because of Jesus. That the Pharisee who goes up and says, "God, I thank you that I'm not like those people, those adulterers, those evil doers, or like that tax collector, that I'm not like that," doesn't go home justified. Who goes home justified? The person who goes up and says, "God have mercy on me, a sinner." Radically different takes. 

And when you understand and embrace the good news, you can admit when you're wrong. When you fail, you can share it freely because you're not dependent on what other people think. You're not looking to defend something because Jesus is the one defending for you. 

There's a fourth thing and that is religion obeys to get things from God. But when we embrace the good news, we obey out of gratitude and hope. Now this is hinted at in Luke 18. Because what you see is that the Pharisee is there saying, "God here's my resume." And what that is in a sense is a way of saying, "God, here's all the things that I've done for you." And here's how you know that maybe you practice a little bit of religion with this. And that is when you have lived your life in a certain way and then something doesn't go well, do you turn around and say, "God, why didn't this go right for me?" 

Because if that's what happens, what that means is that there's a little piece of you that has said, "Well, as long as I do my part, and I do it right, and I do it the best way, then God will bless me. I've obeyed to get something." It's an implied contract, rather than saying, "What Jesus has done for me, I bring nothing. But because of what He's given me, there's nothing I wouldn't do for Him. I see His goodness, His love. That it's not putting restrictions and to-dos on me." 

It's almost there's this comparison between a to-do list faith, which says, "In order to be accepted, here are all the things that I must do or become versus a faith that's a pure gift." And if you have kids, you understand something about this. Maybe if you are a kid, you don't understand this towards your parents because parents sometimes mess this up. In fact, most of us as parents have messed this up. 

But when you have kids, what do you do? You say, "Here are some things you must do, because I want you to grow up a certain way." But here's what's also true. If your kids fail to do what you ask them to do, you still love them and accept them. You still feed them. You still take care of them. You're like, "You're still my child. I'll do whatever I can for you." 

Here's the issue. Sometimes in religion, what we do is we think that I have to perform in order to get anything from God. Whereas God has said, "If you've come to me through Jesus Christ, then you are my child. You are loved and accepted, and I want your best." And what happens then is when we understand that and embrace that, then obedience is a joyful response because we say, "You really do want my best. And so, I'm going to seek to give that to you." 

Here's one last thing. And that is religion ultimately trusts in ourselves. Whereas when we understand the good news we trust in Jesus, and what this means is we come to a place where we understand that this is a true gift. It's not a wage that we are in, there's no strings attached. And that we come and present our weakness and our hopelessness. And when we do that, that's where we ultimately experience freedom. Because we're not saying, "It's about me and it's about what I do." But we're saying, "I'm free because it's about what Jesus Christ has done on my behalf." 

Now, I don't know how this strikes you today. I'm guessing for some of us, this has made us uncomfortable because we're saying, "Yeah, but I still need to perform." And I would just say to you, that's a vestige of the Pharisee in you. If God really is the creator, which is what we talked about last week, then He has the right to demand that we're perfect. And if we understand God's law, then we'll understand that we're imperfect. We'll see ourselves as imperfect. And we'll see that Jesus came to be perfect on our behalf and that's what frees us. And here's the invitation of what this message really is. And that is to say, celebrate and savor what Jesus Christ has done for you. And this will give you the freedom to say, "Now I can really live." 

Some of us who are here, we may have come here thinking that we do our religious duty where we just come and we say, "Okay God, would you bless me for doing my duty?" And maybe today you have heard or understood maybe for the first time that it's about what Jesus has done, not what you do. And you can do what this tax collector did. Just simply say, "God have mercy on me, a sinner. God, I believe that Jesus has paid for me." And you can enter into the good news of Jesus Christ rather than the exercise of religion. 

Maybe you're here and you say, "I believe that intellectually for a long time, it's been true for me." But the truth is you keep going back to religious performance. And maybe today is just a day to say once again, "God, I want to live in a place where I live from a place of understanding and embracing the good news of Jesus Christ, His victory on my behalf, rather than always going back to religion." 

That's what will bring joy and freedom to us as a group of people and will produce a ripple in the communities in which we live and move, because everybody's religious in one way or another. That's why people are dividing into good and bad and prideful and self-righteous. And when you or I live in a different sphere and say, "I don't have to play these identity politic games in order to feel good about myself or moralistic games to feel good about myself," then there's something refreshing and vibrant about the way that we live. And that's what I believe the church is called to be, this church is called to be. And it happens as all of us say, "I live more in the good news than in religion." And that's the invitation. 

God, we thank you today for the good news of Jesus and Lord I pray that you would help each one of us who's a part of Orchard Hill today to embrace the good news that Jesus died for us. Some for the first time by saying, "God have mercy on me, a sinner." And God others maybe for the hundredth time, not because we need to do it over and over again for it to have affect but because we need to keep affirming that it's what you have done through Jesus Christ rather than what we do so that we can live in the freedom and the joy that comes from that knowledge. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.