Reliable Truth

Easter weekend is really different from all other weekends and holidays on the calendar. Because if you think about it, we’re commemorating two of the most significant events in all of human history. And of course, Easter weekend, I guess some would say, started last night on Maundy Thursday, but really, it starts in my mind today, on Good Friday, that somber day where we reflect on the Crucifixion and then leads on to Sunday when we celebrate joyfully Resurrection.Today I want to share with you some thoughts on both of these events, and then I’m going to, at the end, bridge them together, really pull it together into a central theme.I want to read to you two verses out of the book of Acts. It’s Acts chapter 17, and it’s where Paul gives his famous sermon at Mars Hill in Athens, Greece. You know, Paul goes into Athens, that was the center of learning and scholarship where all the Greek philosophers were, and as you’re reading, Paul interacts with some of the stoics who were a certain school of philosophers there, and they are so fascinated by him, they take him to the Ariopagus which is this place where he can stand and speak to a big group of people and have discussion, kind of like Hyde Park in London. And Paul gives this brilliant talk, and he quotes their philosophers. He quotes their poets, and then he gets right down to the end of his sermon. And this is the way he closes it. He says, “Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent because He’s fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness, through a man who He has appointed having furnished proof to all men, by raising Him from the dead.”Now, one of the first things that strikes me about these words is that Paul says that God has fixed a day out in the future when He’s going to judge the world. And he says, “He will judge the world justly and in righteousness.”So, as we think about this judgment, we have to ask the question. But when you think of any kind of judgment, what is the criteria? What is the scale that’s going to be used to judge us by?

How can we find real peace? Physician, futurist and author Richard Swenson's work focuses on what he calls, “cultural medicine.” I’d never heard of that. He researches the intersection of health and culture. He looks at how culture impacts our mental, emotional, our psychological, and even our physical health. Interestingly, he wrote these words well before this current pandemic came along. Listen to what he says,“People have always been stressed.” He said, “It’s simply part of living this life.” He says, “There’s always been change to cope with. There have always been economic problems, and people have always battled depression. It’s the nature of life to have its ups and downs. So, why all the fuss?” He said, “I’m not the one making the fuss. I’m only writing about it. I’m only being honest about what I see all around me. I sit in my examining room and I listen to people. Then I report what I hear. And, I can tell you,” he says. “Something is wrong. People are tired and frazzled. People are anxious. People are depressed. People don’t have time to heal anymore.” This is interesting. He says,“There’s a psychic instability in our day that prevents peace from implanting itself very firmly in the human spirit. And, despite the skeptics,” he says, “this instability is not the same old nemesis recast in a modern role.” He says, “Something has changed.”And, I find that phrase, psychic instability, to be a good term for what’s going on in people’s lives. I’ve heard from two different news sources that at least a third of the people in our country, right now, are having real mental health issues. And, you know, I believe that that’s true.So, what I’d like to do is drill down and get to the heart of this issue. Because it strikes me that this Coronavirus has really shattered our assumptions that our world is safe and it’s well under control, that we have things under control. This is one of the reasons I believe that nations, particularly our nation, has drifted away from God; we feel secure. We don’t really need Him. But when we do this without recognizing it, we are throwing open the door for fear to infiltrate our lives. Why is that? Watch on YouTube

A couple of years ago, I noticed something in the Bible that I had never recognized, and in the book of John, whether you are aware of this or not, there are 21 chapters, and it dawned on me that the last 11 chapters, over 50 percent of the book of John, deals with really the last week of Jesus’ life. And then you have the Resurrection. I share that because in John chapter 11, we read of an incredible event that ultimately led to the crucifixion, which is what we reflect on Good Friday. What happened was that this event pushed the religious leaders to the edge. They finally realized, we have got to get rid of this guy. And the event that I am speaking of, which you may or may not be familiar with, is when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.John 11:19 says, “There were many, there were many Jews present who had come to console Martha and Mary.” In other words, Jesus performed this incredible miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead in front of a crowd of people. He didn’t do it in a vacuum. Think about what, I mean, imagine if you were there! But there was a crowd, and, as word gets out in this Jewish community, just think of kind of the explosion that probably took place. And the talk that went around. But what you notice is that there were three basic ways that people responded to this incredible event, and I want to talk about those this morning with you a few minutes and look at these responses. Then I would ask you to look at your own life and ask, "How is this pertinent to me in my own response to this man Jesus?"

Why did Jesus’ death change everything forever? What did He mean when He said, “It is finished?”Well, the answer glimmers all through scripture, but it’s packaged precisely in Romans 1:17, where the apostle Paul writes, “For in the Gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed. A righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, 'the righteous will live by faith.' For in the Gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed.”Well, from the outside, it doesn’t seem like much, that a Man died on a cross. I’ve heard the Gospel likened to a jalapeño pepper; it looks cold on the outside but when you bite into it, it will burn like no tomorrow. Ingest the Gospel, understand it down to the core of your being and it will burn its way down to every fiber of your being and have an impact on everything that you do and every decision that you make. How you spend your money. How you treat your wife. How you treat your ex-wife. How you discipline your children. Everything you do, this Man’s death on the cross wants to touch. Why? How?If you understand the Gospel, and you really absorb it and you are taken to the emotional and psychological, the ontological cleaners with it, you can’t help but come away from this message and be changed by it.There’s nothing more important than Jesus’ crying from the cross, “It is finished.”Today's talk is by my friend Paul Walker, who spoke at our Good Friday Mens' Breakfast several years ago. I pray that it blesses your life!

When Jesus speaks, everything He says that’s recorded in the Gospels is significant. Some of the things he says are parables, or stories with symbolic meaning. I am intrigued by these parables. Today I will dig into one of these parables, taken from Matthew 13:44-46. This message is from a weekly Bible study that I teach at The Center for Executive Leadership in Birmingham, Alabama. Some of my Bible studies right now are hosted via Zoom. If you are interested in attending one, please email me at richard@thecenterbham.org. Be sure to tell me that you heard about it here on my podcast. Best regards, Richard

Today I'd like to share a message by Dr. Tim Keller, which he gave at The Center's Mens Breakfast in November 2019 here in Birmingham, Alabama.Tim's message draws some lessons from the early Church for us today and what we’re facing in our own culture, as the Christian church is declining. Increasingly, you have people out there who not only don’t believe in God or don’t believe in Christianity, but actually think Christianity is bad for people. And say that religion is bad for people. And religious people are a threat to our democracy and a threat to our social order. We’ve never faced anything like that, but the early Christians certainly did.So, then the real question is why did so many people become Christians then in the first three centuries when Christianity was so persecuted? Why would anybody want to become a Christian? Keller ends the talk with a special time of Q and A. I hope you enjoy it! - RichardTim Keller is the Chairman and co-Founder of Redeemer City to City, which trains pastors for ministry in global cities. He is also the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and the author of New York Times bestselling books The Reason for God, The Prodigal God, and Prayer.

Why is our world so broken? I believe the world is broken because of the spiritual condition of man. The Bible describes our natural condition as being in spiritual darkness. Tim Keller says spiritual darkness comes when we turn away from God as our true light and make something else as the center of our lives.In John 8:12 Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me will not walk in the darkness but will have the light of life." In Luke 11:34-35  “The eye is the lamp of your body and when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light, but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness." He’s warning us to watch out and make sure that the light that you think you have is not actually darkness. This was written 2000 years ago and unbelievably pertinent to our lives today.So how do we find our way out of the darkness? Well, your eye, or perspective, is the lens through which you see life. It’s your perception of reality. Stephen Covey calls it a paradigm. We see life through various paradigms. The academic world and the political world use a word that I like. It is the word “worldview”. What Jesus is saying is, your perspective, your worldview, your perception of reality can be rooted in the truth or it can be rooted in falsehood. And He’s saying if it is rooted in the truth, your life will be full of light, and you’ll be healthy, and have vitality to your life. He says if it is rooted in falsehood, your life will be full of darkness.

Throughout history, one of the intellectual debates that seems to come and go is this question, “Is mankind intrinsically good or is he intrinsically evil or depraved?” In fact, I think it would be interesting to hear the diversity of opinions then we might get from all those listening to this podcast.As we are experiencing many changes in our world today, I think it’s important to understand why our world is so broken. So, I want us to consider this: What is the true condition of man, and is there any hope, particularly for our kids’ generations as we look out into the future?

Was Jesus more than a man in history? Was he just a great moral teacher? Great moral teachers don't make the kind of claims that Jesus made. Was he the Son of God? He claimed to be, so if he isn't actually the Son of God, then he was lying. Whether we believe Christ was the Son of God or whether we don't, or whether we're not sure, I personally believe that every one of us should ask the question, "What is the evidence that would lead me to believe that Christ is the Son of the living God?" Consider that question - is it reasonable? Is it rational for an educated man or woman living in the 21st century to believe a claim such as this? In this talk I will point to four different parts of evidence for you to consider. This is a follow up to last week's podcast episode "The Bible: Truth or Fiction?"

Back around 1984, I came to the conclusion that I had committed my life to a religious faith that had as it's source, a book. The Bible. A book that claimed in fact to be God's divinely inspired revelation to mankind. And though I had discovered personally that it was experientially true. I had to admit that the primary reason I believe that the Bible was God's Word is that, that I'd been told that all my life.Maybe you've experienced that as well. But for me personally, I needed to go deeper. I needed more of an intellectual foundation on why Christians throughout the centuries have staked so much there - even their very lives on the words from a book that claimed to be God's Word. And that's the basis of this message this morning. It is a work in progress because I'm continually refining it.For more on this topic, check out my apologetics book Reliable Truth.