Today, we will look at the second conversation that is going on.  This is the conversation of the church and Christian thinkers.  This group is asking questions like:

• What does it mean to be a Christian today?
• What is the gospel?
• What does it look like to impact the world around us?
• What is the church’s role in society?

These are questions that all different corners of Christianity are trying to answer.  From Joel Osteen to Rob Bell to John Piper, all of these leaders have insight and ideas that fuel this discussion.

This discussion focuses around the church. not the church as in your church or your denominational affiliation.  This is a discussion for the global Body of Christ.  This means that we should be willing to listen to people’s perspectives that are different than ours to gain further insight into what outreach and evangelism looks like in a post-modern and post-Christian culture.

An unaware and disconnected church is limited in its impact for the gospel and glory of Jesus Christ in all nations.  We need to not limit ourselves but rather open our ears to the conversation at hand.

We live in a world of conversations that circulate around us.  There are two primary types of conversations that we need to seek to engage in as Christians.  Failure to engage in these conversations is something that leads Christians to becoming disconnected with the issues and questions that are being raised by many different people who are longing to have these questions addressed.

The first discussion that is going on is one of the culture.  This is a discussion that comes out a lot in politics and news.  These are conversations that have been sparked by everyone from political candidates to scientists to other news makers.  These are conversations that revolve around the following questions:

• What is wrong with the world?
• What can we do about it?
• What role, if any, does religion have in society?

These are the questions that we see being asked by people like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain.  They are looking to see how the role of a president looks in addressing these big questions from a national standpoint of America as a world power. 

The religion question is being asked by radical atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, but the discussion does not stop with just the academic individuals that write New York Time’s bestsellers.  It goes on to include fictional books such as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. 

We as Christians need to be reading these books and listening to the ideas of these politicians in order that we may be culturally aware of what the world around us is listening to.  This helps us to be able to more clearly speak the Gospel and the Christian world view into the culture around us.  The answer to all of the world’s questions is Jesus Christ.  We have the answer to the hurts of the world.  We need to be actively engaged in conversations to talk Jesus into the culture around us. 

We will look at the second question tomorrow.

I have spent most of the day today working on a message that I am going to be preaching tomorrow.  This has been one of the hardest and most weightiest messages that I have ever felt led to preach.  It focuses on the question:

If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you have ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Jesus Christ was not there?

This is a very tough question that each one of us needs to evaluate.  This gets to the very heart of our gospel: Is the gospel the gifts and blessings of Jesus or Jesus Christ Himself? 

My hope and prayer is that God will use this message through the power of the Holy Spirit to open hearts, minds, and lives to the relational nature of Jesus Christ who is the gospel!

I heard a very interesting insight yesterday in an Easter sermon by my pastor, Dr. David Platt, that I wanted to pass along.  He was talking about how people can get upset and consider Christians close-minded when we say that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven and not a way in a list of potential options.  The interesting insight that Dr. Platt noted was that even if there were 1,000 ways to get to God people would still be mad and want there to be 1,001 ways to get to God.  The issue here is not that Jesus is the only way.  The issue is, as Dr. Platt noted, an issue of autonomy.  It does not matter to people how many ways there are as long as that number can not be a set number, but rather it is a number to which one can be added so that the person’s individual way which they have chosen to get to God will be included in the list of acceptable ways to reach God.  This is very interesting.  The issue is that we as people in the midst of a highly individualistic society do not want to have to depend on anyone but ourselves.  We want to achieve success and popularity, and when we take a look at out spiritual lives, we want to achieve acceptability and salvation before God.  The gospel calls us to desperate dependence on Jesus Christ.  It is not the one way that bothers people as much as the desperate dependence that the one way implies.

This Easter as I reflect on the great love and grace that Jesus Christ displayed for me on the cross, I am amazed.  I want to share something that was very moving and a great reminder of the message of Easter that I experienced this morning at my church (the Church at Brook Hills).  The pastor, Dr. David Platt, was preaching out of Galatians 3: 13.  He showed us through the Word a picture of the curse of the law.  This is the curse under which we are all born.  We are sinners under the wrath of a Holy God.  He then went on to paint a picture of how Jesus Christ through the cross has taken upon Himself the wrath of God on our behalf.  God used David to present a clear picture of the gospel.  He gave everyone there three options of how to respond to the curse of sin:

• Option 1: Ignore the curse. - This means that we continue on with our lives and pretend like sin is not an issue and God does not exist.
• Option 2: Work to overcome the curse. - We can try to be a good person and reform our lives so that we no longer have a problem with sin.  We can have a little Jesus to go along with our own church attendance, prayer, and Bible reading so that maybe we have a chance to work our way to righteousness before God.  This is a false system and does not work because salvation is by grace ALONE through faith ALONE in Christ ALONE.  If grace becomes Christ plus anything, it is no longer grace.
• Option 3: Embrace the curse and run to the cross. - We can embrace the fact that we are utterly hopeless and in desperate need of Jesus Christ.  We can run to Jesus because He alone can save us.

This was a very clear picture of how we need to respond to the gospel.  The service ended with a song about how the devil likes to condemn us for our sin.  Satan tells us that we are hopeless, helpless, and dirty.  But as the song said, the devil may have gotten the verse right, but he has missed the refrain - JESUS SAVES!  As these powerful words were being sung over the church, the banners that had been the backdrop of the stage which said things like guilt, shame, and despair began to fall down.  One by one as the words of victory - Jesus Saves - were proclaimed the words which represented the stains of sin were falling down.  These all fell down to reveal a cross.  The cross which was a symbol of defeat has become a picture of victory. 

“‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?’  The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” - 1 Corinthians 15: 54b-57 NKJV

As I continue to reflect on the cross and passion of Jesus Christ, I am trying to imagine what all of the people who were involved were thinking. 

I can imagine the religious leaders thinking that they had crushed this Jesus for good and that their problems were over, but yet in the back of their minds lurks the thought of “What if the things that Jesus had said regarding His resurrection were really true?”  Then they quickly tried to justify in their minds that Jesus was crazy and said a lot of crazy things so they shouldn’t let this get to them.  But just in case, they made sure that there were guards at the tomb.  These guards they told everyone were being put there to make sure that Jesus’s followers did not steal His body to make it look like He had risen in three days like He had said because how bad does it look for them to believe that this Jesus was more than the heretic that they had crucified. 

The disciples are really confused.  They have followed this Jesus around for about three years hearing Him talk about the kingdom of God which was to come.  “What kind of King and kingdom is this?’ they were all asking.  This Jesus who had been their mentor and dearest friend for these few years has been murdered by the religious leaders that He spoke out against.  The whole plan of the kingdom is not happening in a way that any of the disciples would have expected and desired.  Jesus is dead, and all they can do is wait and hold on to the promise that He said He would rise again in three days.

The stage is set, and everyone is waiting.  The religious leaders are claiming victory while praying that the victory will last.  The disciples are waiting and holding onto the promise of Jesus.  Today, we wait, but Sunday is on the way!

“He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” - Isaiah 53: 5 KJV

This verse always leaves me in awe and worship.  As I look at my own depravity and sin and how deserving I am of the righteous wrath of a Holy God, I am overwhelmed by a Savior who was willing to bear that wrath and judgment on my behalf.  His wounds should have been my wounds.  His bruises should have been my bruises.  His chastisement should have been my chastisement.  His stripes should have been my stripes.  But instead of letting me bear the punishment that was my just due, Jesus Christ took my place.  This is the great exchange.  The One who new know sin became sin so that the one who was full of sin could become righteous.  The grace that we see in the glorious exchange of the cross is incomprehensible.  All that we can do is bow down at the feet of Jesus and worship!

“All unannounced and mostly undetected there has come in modern times a new cross into popular evangelical circles.  It is like the old cross, but different: the likeness are superficial; the differences are fundamental…This new evangelism employs the same as the old, but its content is not the same and its emphasis is not as before.”  “The cross in the new evangelism “does not slay the sinner; it redirects him.  It gears him into a cleaner and jollier way of living and saves his self-respect.  To the self-assertive it says, ‘Come and assert yourself for Christ.’ To the egotist it says, ‘Come and do your boasting in the Lord.’ To the thrill seeker it says, ‘Come and enjoy the thrill of an abundant Christian life.’ The idea behind this kind of thing may be sincere, but its sincerity does not save it from being false.  It misses completely the whole meaning of the cross.  The cross is a symbol of death.  It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a person.  God salvages the individual by liquidating him and then raising him in newness of life.  The corn of wheat must fall to the ground and die.  God then bestows life, but not an improved old life.  Whoever would possess it must pass under the rod.  He must repudiate himself and concur in God’s just sentence against him.  How can this theology be translated into life?  Simply, the non-Christian must repent and believe.  He must forsake his sins and then go on to forsake himself.  Let him cover nothing, defend nothing, excuse nothing.  Let him not seek to make terms with God, but let him bow his head before the stroke of God’s stern displeasure and acknowledge himself worthy to die.” – A. W. Tozer

“Leave out the cross, and you have killed the religion of Jesus.  Atonement by the blood of Jesus is not an arm of Christian truth; it is the heart of it.” - Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Through a tree we were made debtors to God; so through a tree we have our debt canceled.” - Irenaeus