Nov. 21st - Harvest Gospel Night
November 18, 2008 8:04 pm Blogs
This Friday Pastor Duane Smets will be speaking at the “Fall Quarter Gospel Night” event of Harvest Christian Fellowship at UCSD. The title of his sermon “Religion and the Good News”. All are welcome. For more information go to http://www.harvestsd.com
WHAT: “Religion and the Good News” - Harvest Gospel Night
WHEN: Friday, Nov 21st, 7:15PM
WHERE: Center 119
What makes the Christian Gospel so different from other religions? What makes any news good and why we need good news in a world full of bad news? What makes bad news bad and are we just doomed to bad news and how can we be saved from it? Can the power of God given through belief in Jesus really be the answer to everything? These questions and more will be addressed this Friday!
from Romans 1:16
Religion and the Good News
Romans 1:16
Harvest Gospel Night
November 21st, 2008
Introduction
Good evening. Thanks for having me here. I’m here tonight to speak on the topic of religion and the good news. I’d like to begin by reading a verse from the Bible which in a very succinct way addresses this issue, Romans 1:16 “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.”
Now since I just sort of ripped that verse out of the Bible like it was a special prize in a cereal box…let me back up for a second and briefly mention to you the story of this verse. It is sort of the thesis line for a treatise in the Bible regarding Christianity and this book or letter was sent to the city of Rome, which in many ways is like our city, San Diego is today.
Ancient and Present Religion
Ancient Rome was a very beautiful city. Located in the midst of seven hills, it had a water aqueduct running through it providing numerous drinking fountains. It had sublime architectures like the Coliseum and the Pantheon. Rome was the military base of the republic. It had the best universities and the best shopping of any place in the world at the time.
On top of it all, running through the life and culture of Rome was sort of a melting pot of different religions. Some people were into worshipping Juventas, the goddess of youth. Others were into Diana, the goddess of the hunt, or Mars, the god of war. One of the most popular was the sex god Artemis who was supposedly the daughter of Zeus and sister of Apollo. Then there were the Jews living in Rome, who worshipped Yahweh, the God of a book called the Torah.
Like Rome, our city here, San Diego is a very beautiful and diverse city. We have some of the world’s nicest beaches, zoos, parks, and museums. Our whether is perfect 364 days of the year. We have a huge navy, marine, and coast guard military presence. We have four major universities: UCSD, USD, SDSU, and PLNU. And we are one of the top vacation spots in the country.
And like Rome, San Diego is a melting pot of religions. There are several Jewish synagogues, Islamic worship centers, a bunch of Catholic and protestant churches, a major Bahá’í center, a Taoist sanctuary, a brilliantly white Mormon temple, we’ve got Hare Krishna temples, Buddhist temples, and we’ve even got a new age self-realization temple up in Encinitas. Those are just the official religions, without even considering all the fringe spiritualists around from Tarot Card readers to Psychics to crystal channelers…who get together for readings, séances and special book readings.
Considering this strong religious presence combined with the very outdoorsy nature of most the people who live in San Diego makes it a very spiritually minded and spiritually conscious city. It is no wonder that the most popular idea around about religion here is that each one is sort of touching one part of an elephant…some have a got a leg, some a trunk, some a tail…we all got a piece of the elephant its just that most of us don’t know we’re holding on to an elephant.
Now because of that I think today we have a situation here in San Diego, which is really the situation of California and the west in general, but a situation where we are faced with a dilemma when it comes to religion. It is into such a setting that the words of Romans 1:16 comes to life, “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation.”
Here is the question, what is this thing called “the gospel”? Is it another religion being introduced and considered among the rest? Or is the gospel something different? Is “the gospel” simply another form of spiritual belief like the others but this one works better for some? Or is the gospel something different? Is the Bible, or Paul, the guy who wrote this book to Rome simply introducing a new philosophy and merely saying this one is superior and makes more sense? Or is the gospel something different?
Let me try and answer that question or those question in two ways. I want to talk to you about the word gospel and then talk about the nature of religion itself and if there is actually any merit to the claim of Mahatma Gandhi that, “all religions are fundamentally equal.”
The Word Gospel
So first the word gospel. The word gospel is a funny word, usually only used by Christians. Until two weeks ago I don’t think I had ever heard it used outside of a Christian context. But the cover of the magazine Rolling Stone had the band AC/DC on the cover for their new album and the title of the article about it was, “The Gospel of Rock & Roll.”
The English word “gospel” is an English Anglo-Saxon word, that developed sometime before the printing of the first English Bible in 1535. It was most likely a very common word by that time…but here is where the word “gospel” came from.
Before the word “gospel” when a person would give a speech it was often called a spell if the speech was good. It was deemed a “good speech” when it had a certain kind of effect on the people listening…most likely penitence, jubilee, or being mesmerized. Apparently leading up to the time of the Protestant Reformation and during it, this is exactly what happened much of the time when preachers would give speeches about Jesus from the Bible.
So what was normally called a good speech began to be referred to as a god-speech or god-spell when the speaker was talking about Jesus. Saying god-spell was either apparently too much work or just freaked people out…so they eventually just shortened it to the word, “gospel.” This still happens all the time today, this shortening of words or phrases. Think of the word, giterdon, short for “get her done.” Or ya’ll, you all. Thus, by the time an English Bible was made, the translators, whenever they saw the one Greek word “good-news,” they just translated it gospel because that is what everyone had been saying for awhile.
Now maybe that is little super nerdy for you all…but here is the point. The word behind gospel, what the word gospel really means is “good news.” That is important. Here’s why.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is by definition an announcement. It is news. Like the announcement of the birth of a baby, or the headline of a war ending, it is a message of news that is good! You hear it and/or read it and there is excitement and joy, and awe.
So let me catch us up here. This thesis statement at the beginning of this letter to Rome, the center of religious diversity, is made. Good News. And it is not just good news like another message…not “a good news.” It gets called here, “The” Good News. The one final and ultimate news or message that we have been wanting and waiting for has arrived.
It would be like this. I have a newspaper from today here. Can you imagine if the headline of all the major papers in the country read something like this: “All Religions Done”? Everyone has closed the doors. Every institution and system across the world has quit. There is no longer any need. Everything has been revealed and uncovered plainly and religion is done. It no longer works and is useful for anything. Can you imagine that?
It is not totally unlike the plea of Richard Dawkins. Perhaps some of you are familiar with his most famous best seller, “The God Delusion”? In it he writes, ” We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” He calls for the whole concept of God to be just simply done away with and wishes all gods and religion would just take there place along side the dead Greco Roman religions and gods who no one any longer believes in.
The Religion of Religion
Are you beginning to feel the weight of the claim of the Bible here in regards to religion? Maybe. But what is religion anyway? How is this verse saying anything about religion? If it is then, what is the religion of religion? Is there a common principle of religion? An elephant or a fundamental equalness? If so, is that present within Christianity?
Religion. What is it? Richard Dawkins says it is a delusional cop out. Sigmund Freud said it is an illusion resulting from sexual frustration. Karl Marx said it is the opiate of oppressed people. Maybe they are all right?
Many religious people do seem to be religious just because their parents were. Religion is tradition and a cop out from wrestling with real things.
Most religions do seem to care about sex. You are either not having it as much as you want, with whomever you want, in whatever way you want…or you are having it too much, with the wrong people, in the wrong way and you ought to suppress it.
Most people are religious in some way, in fact the majority of the world considers themselves religious.
What about when you line the major religions up. Are there similarities? Seemingly so.
In orthodox Judaism, the Judaism most like the one during the times the book of Romans was written and the kind of Jew, it’s author Paul was….that Judaism is about being born a Jew and following and obeying the Torah perfectly, with a perfectly crossed “t” getting all the rules and regulations down just right. Then you’re saved.
In Islam it is all about your deeds. At the end of your life your good deeds are put on a scale on one side, your bad deeds on the other and they are weighed. And hopefully, there’s no guarantee, but hopefully your good deeds will outweigh your bad deeds and you’ll be saved.
In Buddhism and Hinduism it is about recognizing that you are one with the world, atman is brahman. You detach yourself from suffering, empty yourself, and become one with everything and you are saved.
In Taoism you must balance energies. In Confucianism you must make sacrifices to connect with your dead ancestors in order to reach harmony. In Shintoism you need a Kami Dama in your house, a little god shelf for incense and other offerings to ward off impurities.
Those are just some of the major ones…but what we begin to notice is a great and similar strain, that in every religion there is something, we as humans must do. There is a condition a problem and each of us is trying to work out somehow…in order to be or become a good person.
Even the person with no religion…the popular spiritualist who endeavor to simply do whatever makes them happy and be free, is still stuck in a rut of having to work for their salvation.
This seems to me to be the principle of religion, the religion of religion. The natural inborn quest of the human life which attempts to save itself. You see, you may be hearing me today talk about all these major religions and thinking that you are not wrapped up in any of that and so perhaps this has nothing to do with you.
But perhaps religion is not so far from you as you may think. Most of you are students here, so I ask the question, “Why are you here? Why have you chosen to come to this school? Why have you chosen to go to school at all? What are you seeking? What is your motive for being here? What really is the driving for behind your life, why you do what you do and make the decisions that you make?” Ahhh. This is where we begin to find religion. In the motives.
Maybe you are merely attempting to make your parents or someone else happy? So your salvation is found in meeting the expectations that are put on you? Maybe you are here because you have great aspirations to be successful in life and make money? Maybe you want to do something really great for people or for this world in someway? Why? What is the motive? Whose recognition are you looking for?
You see we cannot escape the desire and the craving for recognition from someone. We either want credit for what we do or acknowledgment that we are better for not bowing down to anyone’s demands. Tim Keller says religion is, “I obey therefore I am accepted.” It seems to me we are inescapably bound by this curse. The religious person connects this acceptance with God or with some nebulous force in the universe and the irreligious person flips it and tries to say I don’t need acceptance and therefore I don’t have to obey.
If we accept the religion principle then we try and try and try obey…whether it’s obeying the demands of some official religion or whether it is obeying the demands of a person, school, country, or some self-imposed expectation. Whatever it may be, the principle of religion which runs through everything.
If we don’t accept this religion principle, and instead reject the imposing demand for some obedience…then we become angry or at least think it is wrong that someone or something has put this stipulation on us.
Either way, whether through acceptance or rejection, through obedience or disobedience…what begins to rise to the surface is our deep seated sense of morality. From there, we either slip into pride thinking that we’ve done a decent job for our attempt to get the moral monkey off our back or we get mad at him and because we think everyone should have the freedom to determine their own right and wrong. We tend to either become prideful of moralistic achievements or of our moralistic autonomy…and still either way we are saying we out to be accepted because of it.
And if you think this doesn’t happen with people who are Christians you are wrong. Just yesterday, I was working at my other job. I’m a pastor half the time and I work at a group home for abused kids the other half the time. My boss came to see me and asked me to do something, but he didn’t ask nice. That made me mad. Why? Because I am stuck in religion, where I only accept people if they perform correctly for me…because deep down I am stuck thinking performance is what matters and that nothing will go my way unless I do the right things.
Let me just probe the Christians here and ask you some hard questions, because I’m afraid that many of today get sold a Christianity which is really an invitation to get more religious. Like you believe in Jesus for salvation at the end of your life but after you become a Christian your life becomes one where you are really saved by the good things you do.
So let me press those who are here who would consider themselves Christians. Do you think you are better than people who are not Christians? How about when you “do campus ministry?” Do you think you are better for reading your Bible? Going to church? Spending time praying? Do you think those things are what make you Christian, that you do those things? If so, I’m afraid you have slipped back into religion…the cycle where my acceptance is based on either how well I do or on how vehemently I reject doing anything.
I’ll give you another example using myself and why I am here tonight. I’ll be real honest with you for a minute. Tim asked me if I would come and speak tonight for you all. I started a church here in San Diego called The Resolved Church about 3.5 years ago. It’s been slow going. I thought we’d be up to a few thousand people in just a couple months when we first started, simply because I thought I was such an amazing speaker. J Here we are almost four years down the road and we’re barely 50 people.
So If I am honest with you, deep down I thing the strongest reason why I accepted the invitation primarily because I thought. Hey, maybe this will be a good thing for The Resolved Church. Maybe a few people will hear me there and become Christians or a few people will decide to come over and be a part of our church plant as a result.
There it is. Religion rearing it’s ugly head once again. Me trying to scheme and maneuver my way around in order to God to perform for me, rather than trust that Jesus is himself is enough for me. Deep down I have a religion problem because I want Jesus AND something else and I’ll try every trick in the book to get it. I’ll try every salvation project I can think of to get things to work…everything but trusting that Jesus alone is the savior and accepts me already even if The Resolved Church shuts down tomorrow.
You see, me coming to speak for you guys tonight is not a bad thing. But it becomes a bad thing when it is a part of my own self-salvation project, when it become religion.
The Bad News and the Need for Salvation
You see, what I need is something different. Something different than religion. That is the bad news. That everywhere we turn in religion we find a dead end. The principle of religion is bad news. If the gospel is good news, then what makes it so good is knowing that there is bad news first. You see there are two types of people in this room tonight.
There are those of you here, who know that there is something wrong with you deep down and you need a savior and you need one bad because you are stuck and the more you try to get unstuck the more you keep making a mess of your life.
The other type of people who are here are those who don’t think that there is anything really wrong with you. Yeah, maybe you haven’t been perfect and you’ve done some bad things here or there…but for the most part you consider yourself a good person.
I hope I can convince you otherwise. That your pride for thinking you are good is just as bad all the rest of us who know we’re screwed up…and that there is probably a lot more self-righteousness and self-centered badness in you than you ever dreamed. Now, I know that sounds pretty morbid.
What I am getting at is this. We started out tonight with this verse, the thesis this letter written to Rome, a city of many religions. The verse says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.
It is not just the historical context which tells me this has a lot to do with religion itself but this word salvation. We all know we need and want salvation. Maybe we call it different things…to be happy, to have freedom from guilt, known that we are loved, to be connected, to have security for the future…but we all need and want salvation.
We need salvation in two main ways:
One from ourselves, from thinking we could save ourselves and be our own personal messiah and to stop trying. We keep digging ourselves a deeper and deeper hole.
Two from God. Once we realize how corrupt we are deep down, we realize that is not okay and if there is a good God, he’s not good if he let’s me get away with it and just sweeps it under the rug, I need justice and punishment badly. An eternal one for messing with the God of eternity and morality itself.
The Supremacy of the Gospel
This is where the sublime supremacy and beauty of the gospel comes out and why Paul can and does talk about it like this when he says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.” The verse steps into the landscape of our conflicted and messed up hearts and says there is GOOD NEWS, there is something different, someone. Jesus.
In the first 6 verses of the book of Romans he outlines what this good news is. You can read ‘em but I’ll make it really simple and summarize it for you…the good news is Jesus, he is God’s Son. He lived the life you have failed at.
Where we attempted to obey but failed he succeeded.
Where we were tempted to give up and did, he did not. And what’s more is he suffered the penalty we incurred, so that justice could be served.
Where we have died internally and await an eternal death Jesus rose to life, give us his perfect life, and he lives today guaranteeing his promise.
That is good news in multiple ways. Because in Jesus, I get a way out of myself. I don’t have the power to do everything right all the time. But in the gospel, in Jesus, in the gift of his life to me, I receive his works in the place of mine.
Every step I have failed gets replaced with his success and not only that he empowers me for new life. I get to give up trying to be my own savior and let him be the savior. I get to give up trying control my life, which I do a lousy job of anyway and I get to entrust it to one who has the ability to change me and keep me safe for eternity. That is freeing. God does the work and I get the joy.
This is good news because it actually works and is the only way out of the trap of religion where there is a constant pressure on me to perform correctly and where I am constantly tempted to give up.
Here’s how it works. When I am faced with Jesus I realize that I am far worse than I ever thought but at the same time more loved and accepted than I ever dreamed possible. Life then becomes not a performance but an ever increasing love and trust and thanks toward him. And that changes me.
Here’s just a few ways…when we believe in the gospel that the power of God unto salvation works in us:
When I find myself attempting religion again…the gospel comes to life and it saves me and tells me that Jesus is enough. I don’t need Jesus plus anything else.
When I find myself at the end of my rope and I feel like giving up…the gospel comes to life and says Jesus love is better. In Jesus I have an infinite supply of comfort and peace.
When I find myself experiencing pain and suffering…the gospel comes to life and reminds me that in Jesus God suffered more than I can imagine for me. Jesus known and did something about it.
Without the gospel, we will constantly be comparing ourselves among to others, considering some among us better than others. With the gospel, we will constantly see ourselves as in need of and recipients of the grace of Jesus and all are welcome.
Without the gospel we will fall into some form of religion thinking life is all about doing everything just right. With the gospel we will bask in the joy of knowing that despite us being so wrong Jesus has given us himself in full so that we have every blessing from God.
Without the gospel, we will focus too much on ourselves and our own personal needs, wants, and desires. With the gospel we are enabled to turn our emphasis to care more about the social needs of the broader community, first in the church and then those in our city.
Conclusion
To conclude, I would like to say that the gospel of Jesus Christ is something entirely different than religion. I started out asking, What the religion behind religions is, the principle of religion? The principle of religion is the human desire and effort for our own salvation through some means we accomplish.
The gospel is something entirely different. In the gospel Jesus does something. In the gospel Jesus is something. In the gospel Jesus accomplishes everything and then gives it to us. That’s different. The gospel is a complete life of trust in Jesus in every area of life…whether it be discouragement, suffering, sex, family, identity, race, culture, the environment, authority, guilt, joy, truth…it all has to do with the gospel and gets touched by the gospel.
We’re here on the campus of UCSD. A place filled with some of the most intelligent people in the city. But no matter how intelligent you are you do not escape your humanity. And it is into our very nature as humans that the gospel speaks because only the gospel says that God became a man named Jesus in order to do everything for us that we can do so that we might have the benefit of everything we wish we could achieve.
This talk tonight would fall short of it’s mark if I did not make an appeal to you. Then it would be left solely as maybe an interesting lecture on religion or Christian spirituality. But the gospel is more than just a theory and it is more than just an idea. If it is true it is about a real person. The real and living God who offers his son Jesus to you.
So I conclude with the confident, secure, assured words of the time tested words that so many who have gone before you have embraced…”The gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes!” So believe. I beg you. Give up your vain efforts. Turn aside from thinking your morality either does not matter or that you are good enough and embrace something different than religion which can only offer you yourself as a savior. Turn to Jesus the one true savior who can actually change your heart and your life.
Let’s pray.