Pentecost Sunday Part One - Not Ashamed

 Next week is Pentecost Sunday. The festival of Pentecost did not originate in the first century, but rather it dates to the Exodus of the Jews from Egyptian bondage. The festival is known in the Old Testament by several synonymous titles: The Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Harvest, and also the Feast of the First Fruits (Exodus 23:15-17; Leviticus 23:10-16; Numbers 28:26; Deuteronomy 16:16). In Hebrew, Pentecost is known as Shavuot (meaning, ‘Weeks’).

 

The word ‘Pentecost’ comes from the Greek word meaning ‘fifty,’ and so, in Scripture, Pentecost occurs fifty days each year after the first day of Passover when the Passover lamb was slain. Of course, Christians today recognize the fulfillment of the picture God began to paint in the Books of Moses and which would eventually be finished fifty days after the Passover Lamb of God was slain on Calvary. As the former Pharisaical rabbi Saul – better known as the apostle Paul – wrote to the Christians at Colossae:

 

(Colossians 2:16-17) “Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”

 

And I hope you can already see the connection between the crucifixion of God's Lamb and the feast of the ‘First Fruits’ of the Church on Pentecost Sunday as it occurred in the second chapter of Acts. But more on that in part two of this message.

It was on that first Pentecost after the Lamb of God's crucifixion that Peter, along with the other apostles and disciples stood on the Temple grounds proclaiming the Christ and His resurrection to the thousands of Jews gathered from across the land. Luke records it this way:

“Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit . . . And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” Acts 2:36-38, 40)

So, this week before Pentecost Sunday, I want to begin a short series on the messages exploring how Pentecost can – and should – apply to the Christian’s life in 2024. To do that, I will draw attention from time to time to Peter’s words as he spoke to those thousands of Jews gathered in Jerusalem. But for the most part I want to focus today on the letter the former Pharisee wrote to the Christians at Rome. We focus there because what Paul wrote about the gospel is simply an extension of what Peter preached to the crowd in Jerusalem on Pentecost.

 

My text is a familiar one – nearly as familiar, I suspect, as John 3:16 - (Romans 1:16-17): “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”

 

Let’s look a moment at that first sentence: “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Now think for a moment again of Peter’s declaration to the crowd. He made it not very long after he and the rest of the apostles and disciples cowered in that small room in desperate fear for their lives. Their hopes which centered around Jesus as their Messiah lay buried in that borrowed tomb.

 

But on that first Pentecost Peter and the others fearlessly trumpeted the news – the good news – which we know as ‘the gospel.’ And it should be clear to us that something very odd had happened to them. And what happened to them is precisely what happened to the former religious terrorist who wrote to the Christians at Rome: “I am not ashamed of the gospel.”

 

As many of you know, Saul (later known as Paul) went out of his way – quite literally – to find Christians. When he found them . . . well, hear it in his own words: (Acts 26:10-11) “Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death, I cast my vote against them. And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities.”

 

But just as something stunningly incredible happened to Peter and the others, something happened to Saul on that road to the city of Damascus that changed his trajectory forever. He’d met the risen Jesus. If you don’t know the story, you can find it easily enough in Acts chapter 9. And so, the religious terrorist who made it his all-consuming ambition to murder Christians now proclaimed the One whose very name he hated. He was not ‘ashamed’ of the gospel message. Some modern synonyms of the word are ‘embarrassed’; ‘apologetic’; and ‘shy.’

 

Are we embarrassed by the gospel message? And why might a person be ashamed of that message?  

 

Well, for one thing the gospel declares itself to be exclusive of all other messages related to salvation and eternal life. The gospel message declares unequivocally that obedient faith in Jesus Christ alone is the Creator’s inflexible requirement for eternal life. Jesus alone is the only door for the remission – the erasing – of our confessed sins.

 

Paul’s text here in Romans chapter one cuts to the heart of a growing problem facing many of today’s Christians in America who are increasingly ashamed or apologetic or shy about the gospel message. The media, our educational systems, the courts, the marketplace, Hollywood, and even many churches (of all places!) have been slowly squeezing Christians into the mold called ‘religious pluralism.’ That ought to frighten us because that mold has the inevitable effect of reducing Jesus the Christ to just one of many religious teachers and prophets.

 

The mold called Religious Pluralism promotes the devilish lie that different religious worldviews are equally valid, equally true, and equally acceptable to God. Therefore, all religious roads lead to God.

 

But when anyone thinks that thought through, he or she will realize that philosophy doesn’t make sense on any level. There can only be one truth, not a half-dozen. The claims of Christianity and every other religious belief are not only diverse in their views of sin, righteousness, and judgment, but they are wildly diverse in their understanding of the nature of Jesus the Christ.

 

Either Islamic faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith is true. Either Hindu faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith is true. Either Buddhist faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith is true. Either Jewish faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith is true.

 

To say EACH can be true would be like saying 2+2 does not always equal four. Can you imagine architects using 2+2=4 on Monday, and 2+2 = 3 on Tuesday?

Is it not utterly tragic that a growing number of today’s Christians in the pews, in pulpits, and in seminaries are becoming increasingly reluctant to draw a proverbial line in the sand, and unapologetically declare what Peter and Paul declared to be ‘truth’ about Jesus, about sin, judgment, and eternal life? Is it not heart-rending to know how quickly even those in churches are moving away from God's infallible definition of Truth?

 

God has never been one to mince words. He has never been one to equivocate or be ambiguous. And neither should you or I, His servants, when people ask us the reason for our hope of eternal life.

Listen to God speak through Jeremiah (23:8b-30): “But let him who has My word speak My word in truth. What does straw have in common with grain?” declares the Lord. “Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock? Therefore behold, I am against the prophets,” declares the Lord, “who steal My words from each other.”

And hear God speak through the apostle Paul: (1 Thessalonians 2:3-4) “For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit; but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts.”

 

Or again in Galatians 1:(8-10) “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.”

 

Only TRUE Christianity – which is synonymous to Bible-based Christianity – only true Christianity holds the definitive answer to the question about the Person of Jesus, and of sin, eternal judgment, and eternal life.

 

Let me repeat that for emphasis. There are not multiple truths about these eternally central questions. There is only ONE truth. And that truth is rooted in God’s love for all of humanity AND is evidenced by His sacrificial offering of His Son Jesus as substitutionary payment for our sins. No other religion portrays the Creator taking on human flesh, living life as a real man, dying as a real man for our sins, and being raised from the dead for our justification.

 

And that means ALL other religions, when held up to the light of the Creator’s truth, ALL other religious are false, and their satanic origin becomes clear as glass.

 

I don’t know how to be more clear.

 

The former Jewish pharisee was not ashamed of the gospel. As many of you remember from my earlier sermons and Bible studies, the word ‘gospel’ means in Greek: “Good news.” So, what is the good news of which the apostle was not ashamed? To better understand what is the ‘good news’ – let’s first look at the ‘bad news’ – which makes the good news all that much ‘gooder.’

 

The bad news is this – Almighty Holy God has inflexibly deemed, “All have sin and fallen short of the glory of God. He has declared, “There is none righteous, no, not one.” (see Romans 3:10-12 and Romans 3:23).

 

The ‘all have sinned’ and fallen short of God's required holiness applies to every one of the 8 billion people on this planet in 2024 – including the hundred or so in this building right now.

 

Of course, and not surprisingly, most men and women scoff at the idea that they are sinners who justly and rightly deserve eternal punishment. Many of us think of ourselves as not-so-bad, especially when we compare ourselves with sinners like rapists and murderers. But when we compare ourselves with others, we demonstrate our total ignorance of the infinite holiness of God. The sun itself, in all its noonday brilliance, is as dark as night when placed next to God’s holiness. And because God demands our holiness be as HIS holiness – without His intervention, we all are lost. Listen: Jesus was not speaking in hyperbole when He commanded us, “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48).

And listen: God's word tells us there is nothing ANYONE can do to fix our terrible dilemma. Not our parents, not our pastors . . . no one.

 

Well . . . no one but the One who set the standard for salvation in the first place. Listen to Paul again as he writes to the Christians at Ephesus:

 

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins . . . But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.  For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:1,4-5, 8-9)

The bad news is that without Christ we live helpless and hopeless. And without Christ we die helpless and hopeless. Were it not for the merciful and gracious intervention of God Himself, we are all under the horrible condemnation of a just and holy Creator God.

 

That’s the bad news. But the ‘good news’ – the gospel which Peter preached on that first Pentecost and of which Paul was not ashamed – and of which neither should we be ashamed – is this: “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:4-7) 

 

Oh, may God bury this good news deep in our souls. When we were helpless and hopeless, God did what no one in the universe could do. He opened our blind eyes so that we could turn “from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that [we] may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in [Christ].’ (See Acts 26:18).

 

It was the gracious and merciful intervention of the Creator God who ‘rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:13-14)

 

How – why – is anyone ashamed of THAT good news? That GREAT news? That unparalleled, incomparable news? We can be born again, receive a clean slate – and not just once in our lifetime when we come to Jesus as our savior – but every day, every day, when we confess our newly committed sins, we find His forgiveness such that He chooses to no longer remember those sins! Surely, as Jeremiah told it: “The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23, NASB)

 

Oh! Be not ashamed of the gospel. Call its truths what they are: Absolute and unchangeable. Not surprisingly, then, the first recorded words of Jesus in Mark’s gospel are these: “Repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)

 

It’s what Peter told the assembled crowd in that second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles: “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit . . .”

 

And it is the message of repentance that forms the basis of Paul’s words to the Christians at Rome: “I am not ashamed of the gospel.”

 

Please, do not fall for Satan’s deceptions spread by men and women of high titles and degrees and popularity. God's truth remains: Unless a person repents of their sins and receives by faith God's promise of the remission of those sins through the sacrificial blood of Christ, that person cannot ever, throughout eternity, ever enter heaven.

 

An absolute truth? And unchangeable truth?  Yes. It is and forever will be.

 

We will come back to this text in Romans next week as we celebrate Pentecost Sunday 2024.

 

Why Bother with the Bible - Part Two

 

Last week I began a short series titled, “Why Bother with the Bible?”  The question is relevant for everyone in 2024, even though it was written thousands of years ago and to a people living very different lives than we live. But as I said last week, and I hope you all agreed, the ancient texts of Scripture are, indeed, applicable to us today because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever – and therefore His word is applicable to humanity regardless of the age in which they live.

 

As Isaiah (40:8) wrote: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.” And the Lord Jesus told us: (Matthew 24:35) “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.”

 

Last week I shared with you only one reason of many that God's word is so relevant to us in 2024 – that being the necessary reminder that He is with us. Always. Indeed, is that not what the prophet told us through Isaiah’s quill –(Isaiah 7:14) “Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.”

 

Immanuel. The name means, ‘God-with-us.”

 

But today I want to highlight yet another few reasons God's eternal and inerrant and infallible and inspired word is fully relevant to 2024. Those reasons are encapsulated in what St Paul wrote, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to his protégé, St Timothy (2 Timothy 3:13-17):

 

“But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. “You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”

 

There are three important points Paul makes in this short text – three points that will form the frame of my message today, all related to the question, “Why bother with the Bible?”

 

First: Satan has placed his children – yes, Satan has children just as God has children. God's children are those who follow Him through faith in Jesus the Messiah. Satan’s children are ALL those who have rejected Christ. Jesus said so in John 8:44, Paul said so in Acts 13:10, and St John said it in 1 John 3:10. We won’t turn there now, but you have the references so you can look at them later.

 

So, Satan has placed his children throughout our societies, in the church and outside the church – and even in some church pulpits. Paul warned the Ephesian elders about them, as did Jude and the other writers of the scriptures:

 

Jude 3-4 “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

 

Paul, warning the elders of the Ephesian church (Acts 20:29-30) said: “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.”

 

The devil’s children seduce the faithful – especially the biblically illiterate faithful – into believing dangerous ideas such as, “God wants you to be healthy and prosperous in this life. All you need is sufficient faith;” Or, “Hell doesn’t exist, or if it does, it’s empty;” Or, “A loving God would never send anyone to an eternity of torment.”

 

These false teachers and pastors vomit syrupy lies straight from hell, and at the same time dilute or sidestep God's commandments for holiness and righteousness. It’s no wonder so many churches support – either by their silence, or by actively promoting politicians who support damnable sins such as fornication, adultery, and homosexuality. No wonder so many in the pews and pulpits support – either by their silence, or by actively promoting politicians who support murderous policies of abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.

 

Why bother with the Bible? Because those lying teachers and pastors seem to be multiplying across the face of the church. And unless you and I know – and obey – what Scripture says in context with the rest of Holy Scripture then we will likely succumb to the sweet-sounding seductions of Satan’s children, just as Eve succumbed to the devil’s insinuations in the Garden.

 

But God warns us: (Jeremiah 23:28-29) “Let him who has My word speak My word in truth. What does straw have in common with grain?” declares the Lord. “Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock?” 

 

And Isaiah warns: (Isaiah 8:20) “To the law and to the testimony of instruction! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no light.”  (My paraphrase)

 

That was the first point we can glean from today’s text. And here is the second point focusing on the question, “Why bother with the Bible?” Paul continues his guidance to Timothy: “You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them.”

 

Christian! Pay attention to this, please. The Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write what he did here for a very good reason. It was the Scriptures that would help Timothy to CONTINUE on the path toward the celestial kingdom. And it is the Scriptures that would enable him to guide others along that same path. The ONLY way anyone will keep on keeping on for Christ is to remain faithful to the things God has told us in His word.

 

Listen. It’s easy to DISCONTINUE with Christ. It happens a lot. We all know of Christians who started well but ended poorly. And I suspect they ended poorly because they discontinued reading the scriptures AND letting the Scriptures speak to them.

 

It happened to the disciple, Demas. Paul tells us Demas shared with him in ministry. You’ll find that in Colossians 4:14 and Philemon 1:24. But something happened to him along the way, and he discontinued his walk with Christ. Paul tells us this in 2 Timothy 4:10 “Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.”

 

And it is good that we also remember the warning Jesus gave us in the parable of the Sower. Speaking of the seed that had fallen on the rocky soil (Mark 4:16-17), the Lord said: “When they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; and they have no firm root in themselves, but are only temporary; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away.”

 

Did you catch that? They had no ‘firm root in themselves.” Said another way, as St Paul warned the Christians at Colossae (Colossians 2:6-8), “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”

 

What roots us to Christ if not our faith in Christ as informed by His Scriptures?  Listen again now to John’s words of encouragement to his readers – which includes us in 2024 who might wonder why bother with the Bible: (1 John 2:14) “I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”

 

And yet there is more. Here again is our text from 2 Timothy: “From childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

 

Why bother with the Bible? The third reason we glean from this text is because it alone gives us wisdom to salvation which is through faith in Jesus Christ.

 

I’ll say that again for emphasis, especially in our pluralistic culture in which it is widely accepted – even in many churches – that Jesus the Christ is NOT the only doorway to eternal life.

 

Let me give you only one of a multitude of examples I can bring to my recent memory. Not long ago, someone on Facebook asked this question: “If you had three children and one became a Muslim, one a Christian, and one a Hindu – would you love any of them more than the other? And could you send any one of them to hell?”

 

In other words, she was trying to make what she thought was a rational reason to believe all people on this planet are God's children, and therefore ALL people are saved. And such is the devilishly fatal error that sweeps across the landscape of the biblically illiterate and across the lives of those who dispute what God has written us through the pages of holy Scriptures.

 

When we judge God's decisions by human reason and human experience, we doom ourselves to complete failure before we even begin. Why is that?  Because every part of our lives and our thoughts and our ability to reason properly is corrupted by sin. We do not like to think of ourselves that way, but sin has so corrupted our souls and our minds that we cannot ever hope to fathom the mind of God or His utter purity. Listen to what He tells us through Jeremiah 17:9 - “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?”

 

Job 11:7-9 is another: “Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty? “They are high as the heavens, what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know? “Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea.”

 

We could not in a thousand lifetimes understand why God does what He does or does not do what He does not do. Nor could we – and THIS is critical – nor could we know what He wants of us UNLESS He tells us. The best we could do would be to make guesses – and they’d all be wrong to one degree or another.

 

Isn’t that, though, the history of religion? Man striving to reach God. And it is that blind striving which gave birth to EVERY pagan religion since the Garden of Eden, complete with their various sacrifices – including human sacrifices – all intended to please their god or gods.

 

But the Creator’s words to humanity on the pages of Scripture tell a very different story. They tell us it was GOD who sought Man. It was God who made the ultimate sacrifice – to reach US, to purify US, to bring US to Himself.

 

As the Creator tells us in Hebrews 2:17 – “Therefore, He [i.e. ‘God’] had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

 

And 1 John 4:10 – “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation [covering atonement] for our sins.”

 

And so, when we reason with ourselves and with others the ‘whys’ and the ‘hows’ of eternally important questions such as how one can be saved, or what is God's requirement for eternal life, we inevitably travel the path that inevitably leads to our eternal destruction – because we assume God's standards are the same as our standards.

 

And so, back to that question earlier about the parent of the three children who’ve adopted different faiths: What does God do with them?

 

The answer, if we base our response squarely on God's inerrant, infallible, and fully inspired word will NOT satisfy most people. I’ll repeat that for emphasis: Our answer, if it is based unwaveringly on God's word, will NOT satisfy most people because most people prefer to think of God in their own terms and by their own standards.

 

But God's word makes the answer to that question quite simple: When Jesus said of Himself (John 14:6): “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me” – He was declaring an unchangeable and INFLEXIBLE truth. And let him or her who has ears – let them hear: No one comes to the Father in heaven by ANY OTHER door.

 

Listen, it is not our job to persuade others to believe or to obey Christ. We don’t have to – nor CAN WE – convince people that God is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His deeds. The overwhelming majority of those with whom we speak will never accept the truth that God’s judgments – ALL of them – are righteous and without fault. Get used to that sad reality, if you are not yet convinced of it.

 

But our job is to simply tell others what the Bible says. And we do not need to apologize for God. It is humanity that needs to apologize to him. Never forget that.

Why bother with the Bible? You and I meet people who have embraced false notions of God and who love to comfort themselves with those false notions. Why? Because false notions of God comfort those who prefer to create God in their own image.

 

Our merciful, tender, and affectionate Creator gave us His written communique – we call it the Bible, and I like to call it His anthology of love letters – He gave it to us because of His immeasurable love for us. He gave it to us – as Paul tells us in the last part of today’s text in 2 Timothy, because:  All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man [or woman] of God may be adequate, [thoroughly] equipped for every good work.

 

Oh, please hear this one last word as I bring this message to a close: Please: I hope you will make the time to bother with the Bible – the ENTIRE Bible; To read it, study it, memorize it . . .  and above all, obey it.