Foundations of our Faith

I want to be a member of the church that has the right Lord. I'm a member of the Church of Christ because we have the right book. I want to be part of the church that follows the Bible and only the Bible. Thirdly, I'm a member of the Church of Christ because we have the right approach to Christianity, which is restorationism. We seek to restore Christianity as it was practiced and taught by Jesus Christ and His apostles.

And as funny or strange as it may seem, the churches of Christ are really the only group that actually consciously seeks to do that in their theology, if you will. Now, I said that even though there are a lot of churches that claim Christ as Lord and the Bible as their guide, the churches of Christ have demonstrated that their approach to Bible study has produced a more biblically accurate form of Christianity. Now, of course, there are some who dispute this by pointing out our weaknesses. And even within the church, there are people who point out our weaknesses. You know, we tend to be legalistic at times.

It's true, we do. Some point to our immaturity. In other words, people say we ought not to be making claims like that: 'You're not so good yourselves.' They say, 'You don't have very dynamic benevolence programs that really impact the world. What hospitals have you built? What have you done?' And that's true. That's true.

That is an area of weakness in our service. Often, we tend to focus too much on ourselves. However, the claim of the Church of Christ is not that we are perfectly reproducing the ideal church described in the New Testament. We have never said that we have perfectly reproduced the church described in the New Testament.

Some might say, 'Oh no, we can't do that because we're sinners and we fall short of the glory of God' (Romans 3:23). But who ever said that? We are unique, however. That was the point I was trying to get across: we are unique. What makes us unique is this: we have recognized and described the pattern—or the blueprint, if you wish—found in the New Testament for the church that God has established through Jesus Christ and His apostles.

Now, this blueprint, this pattern, it was always there. We didn't invent it. It was always there in the New Testament and was originally used in the early years of the early church. But over time—and this is proven historically—it was discarded in favor of man-made religious rules and organizations. Our claim to fame is that we rediscovered this ideal. We wrote about it and turned it into a movement that swept America in the 19th and 20th centuries. That's the claim to fame, if you wish, that we have in the Churches of Christ. We rediscovered the idea of restorationism. It was always there in the Bible, but we rediscovered it. We preached about it, and we reestablished churches based on this biblical model—something that had not been done until that time. Another thing that we have done is establish thousands of congregations all over the world that use only the Bible as their guide for Christian life, that use only the Bible for church establishment and church function.

And we have promoted simple study techniques that allow every person to read and understand the Bible and apply it according to his or her conscience. In essence, this has freed millions of people from man-made religious authority, and I can say I'm one of those people. I'm eternally grateful to people like Campbell and Stone—you know, some of the originals.

But also to all those who have perpetuated the restoration ideal in the Churches of Christ, I'm eternally grateful because it freed me from man-made religious rules that I was a slave to when I was a Catholic. I'm eternally grateful for this. It has reestablished the Bible as God's sole authority over the church. You know, we think everybody—doesn't every church have only the Bible as authority?

We're in the minority when it comes to that. That's our claim to fame. Another claim to fame? We have clarified biblical teaching and separated it from false religious ideas that had prevailed for so long.

You know, people believed whatever their religious teachers said for centuries simply because they didn't have access to Bibles. And then once Bibles became truly accessible, there was much greater freedom. But that freedom was accompanied by a lot of confusion as well because people were not used to studying the Bible. They weren't used to drawing conclusions from the Bible. With our straightforward, concise method of interpretation, we have been able to clarify much of the confusion surrounding Bible doctrine. Well, this morning, I spoke of the fact that there are certain superficial similarities between ourselves and other groups.

You know, I talked about the differences between a lot of, you know, unbelievers and those who believe in a man made God, those who believe in a God that don't accept Jesus as the Son of God. You know, I showed the differences between them and us. Then I also showed some differences between, you know, churches that are a little closer to us superficially. And I said, yeah, you know, there are a lot of churches, our buildings are the same, our building's somewhat the same as the one across the street, same ideas as general meeting plays in their classrooms. You know, pretty much the same.

They have a kitchen, we have a kitchen, they have a pulpit area, we have pulpit area, you know, pretty much the same. And the worship styles are kind of the same. We use pretty much the same songs viewpoint on morality. And I say people across the street simply because those are our neighbors. But you know, our Baptist friends across the street have the same morals as we do.

They believe that it's wrong to have sex before marriage. They believe that abortion is a sin. You know, they hold pretty much the same moral views as we do. But you know what? I want to tell you something.

These things are the minor things in religion, not the major things. Those are the minor things in religion. The bible, for example, does not specify anything about buildings. It don't matter as far as the bible is concerned where you meet. You can meet under a tree, in a basement, somebody's house, in a big building.

Your bible doesn't mention anything specifically about building. So that our building is the same as somebody else's building is not biblically important. Much of the American religious music is shared by all churches. Did you know that? I mean, let's face it.

Our music and our songbooks comes from people a 100 years ago, 50 years ago, 200 years ago that everyone uses. You know, when we sing, rock of ages, they sing rock of ages. We sing, all to Jesus, I surrender. Well, they sing all to Jesus, I surrender. Why is that?

It's not a point of doctrine. Our musical heritage is similar in America. You know, I'll give you a kind of a small aside. The funniest I have to admit, you know, I try to keep a sense of humor. The funniest thing that I ever seen, I was in Montreal and I was preaching for a Chinese congregation.

And I had a translator and he was translating into Chinese and they had established the small New Testament church right there in Chinatown. So they asked me to come and preach and then they got up to sing. And they were singing what a friend we have in Jesus in Cantonese. Now, if you've ever heard Chinese you ever heard Chinese music? You know, tang ting ting ting ting.

You know, that's what it sounds like. That's their music. But here, you had all these Chinese people trying to be Americanized in Montreal, Canada, think singing in Chinese. It was so because that music is kind of country and western, isn't it? It's kind of country and western beat.

You had these Chinese people in Montreal singing country and western music to words that were written by an Englishman. You know what I mean? Really strange. Those are minor things. In the Bible, aside from the idea that we must sing when we offer musical worship, there is no information about the songs themselves or half tone or 4 part harmony, 2 part you know, there there isn't other than we must sing when we worship God, there isn't any other information.

It's a minor thing. And, as far as morality goes, everybody has a conscience. And even those people who don't believe in God or don't believe in Jesus Christ, many of them live moral lives. I have known many people who have no faith in God whatsoever, and yet they personally live good lives. Well, the bible teaches that everybody is a sinner to a greater or lesser degree.

So our level of morality is not a basis for religious unity. It don't matter if they are moral like we are moral or we are moral like Catholics are moral. Morality is not a basis for religious unity. Atheists are moral. Does that mean that we're united to the atheists?

Because Mormons believe in the same family values as we do doesn't mean that they are the same church as we are, does it? Well, of course not. What I'm trying to say is buildings, music, even level of morality, these are not the major issues. These are not issues that unite us. No.

The church of Christ differs with others on major issues. The major doctrines that may not be visible on the surface, but like great icebergs, you know, the movie Titanic, the big iceberg. We differ with others based on major doctrines that are not very visible on the surface but run very deep. And so for the next week or so, I'd like to show you the differences between ourselves and other religious groups through the studies that we have. That's why I've entitled this, The Foundations of Our Faith.

What is our faith based on? So tonight, we're gonna start with something fairly obvious. Obvious things. But in the weeks to come, we're going to go on with some of the real differences between ourselves as I mentioned often, our if I was in Canada, I'd be talking a lot more about Roman Catholicism and United Church and and those you know, those type of, those type of groups. But here in the United States, obviously, the larger religious groups are, Baptists and Pentecostals and Methodists, so and so.

I'm gonna show you the real difference between us and these other groups. Now tonight, as I say, I'm gonna talk some very general differences. We'll start general, and then we'll work specific as time goes on. First thing I wanna mention is this. The difference between the church of Christ and non believers.

The difference between church of Christ and non believers. Now, of course, the largest portion of the population that I mentioned this morning in this world either don't believe in god or they believe in a higher power that isn't god. That's the majority of the world. Do you realize that? Most of the people in this world do not believe in god.

That's the biggest chunk. And then the next biggest chunk is the people who believe in a man made god. In other words, a god that they created out of their own imaginations. That's the next biggest chunk. Well, we are very different from those people.

We, in the church of Christ, believe in an all powerful, all knowing, all loving, all personal being as God. We are monotheists. That's what we are. One God. Monotheists.

Again, we believe this because the bible teaches that this is the character of the being that we call God. Now, where do we get our picture of this God that we believe in? Well, we get it from the bible. I'll give you an example. In Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, it says, in the beginning, God, you get a whole lot of information out of those 4 words.

In the beginning, God. It means that God was before there was time because it says, In the beginning, there was God. That means God was before time. That's just another way of saying that God is eternal. It's interesting in French, in Quebec, in our bibles, the translation for God, like in the old testament, Yahweh, when they translate that Hebrew word into French, the word is which means the eternal one.

Which is exactly what that means in the Hebrew. The name of God is the eternal one. Now, this passage in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 shows that there was nothing else before creation. There was God at the beginning and that's it. Therefore, there aren't a lot of gods.

It doesn't say, in the beginning, there were gods. Just one god. And there were no level of deities. It doesn't say, in the beginning, there was god at the top and he was the head god. Doesn't say that.

It just says there was one god. Only one god and he always was and he always will be. I mean, we get all of that just out of the first four words of the bible. Can you imagine how deep the bible is if you can get all of that out of the first four words? Then in Genesis 1, verse 1, it says, in the beginning God created.

There's the verb created. Now to create in this sense, meaning to create before there was time means to make something out of nothing. Well, who's the only one that can make something out of nothing? Well, only an all powerful being can truly create something out of nothing. And to create something requires a will.

You gotta have a will and a mind. So God is not an impersonal force. God is a being with will and with imagination. And then in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1c, it says, in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth. The creation is a reflection of the creator's ingenuity and skill.

You know that. You go to somebody's house and say, let me show you my garden. And they show you a lovely garden and beautiful tomatoes and cucumbers and green peppers that are lush and ripe and full. What do you do? Do you compliment the tomato?

Hello tomato. You're very lovely tomato. Is that what you do? Of course not. Who do you compliment?

You compliment the gardener, not the garden. Because the garden is a reflection of the gardener skill and his love or her love for for the garden. You see someone who has a dress that they made themselves. Do you compliment the dress? Not really.

You're you're complimenting the designer. You know the argument. I'm not telling you anything new. The design is always a reflection of the designer. Imagine the intelligence and the power and the skill, and the love of 1 that created the universe and ourselves.

Imagine the designer of all of this. How wonderful and how powerful he must be. Well, the Bible goes on to describe God's personal care of human beings, and his plan to save them from their sins through Jesus Christ. And his promise to transform them into mighty spiritual beings themselves one day. And all of which shows purpose and compassion and understanding.

That's what we believe. That's the God we believe in. Non believers. You know what they believe in? They either believe in themselves.

You know, man is at the center of the universe. That's what they believe. Or they believe in philosophies. They try to explain the world without God. Or they believe in the eternity of matter.

They believe, well, the world was always here and the law would be here. It just keeps going round and round and round. Or they believe in nothing. You know, nihilists. They believe in nothing.

And pagans. What do they believe in? Well, they believe in gods that they've invented themselves that resemble the world, the god of the sun and the river god and the tree god, whatever. That's what they believe in. Or they accept as god some impersonal or mysterious power that feels nothing and promises them that their highest attainments after much struggle and suffering in this life is that they will also feel nothing and be nothing when they arrive at the end of their life and struggle.

Buddhists, for example, in Hindu. I would never understand never understand why someone would want to become a I could understand somebody, you know, growing up in a country and being trained as a child, as a Buddhist, or a Hindu. I could understand that. To make it right means we have to go and evangelize. But I could never understand someone in this country wanting, actually wanting to be a Buddhist or a Hindu.

Imagine, your life is condemned to struggle and struggle and denial so that you will achieve nothing. No feeling. 0. You will disappear. Imagine.

Your goal in life is to make yourself disappear. In the church of Christ, we believe in a God who created this world and who created us with a benevolent purpose. So that we can consciously know him and be with him forever in a dimension that is full of light and full of joy and full of wisdom and full of peace. If you wanted to know what's the difference between us and them, that's the difference. This is how we differ from the majority of this world, as far as our belief in God is concerned.

The Church of Christ believes in a personal, all powerful God that loves us and that wants us to be with him forever. And the majority of the world does not believe that. That's how we differ. Secondly, tonight, I wanna tell you about another difference. The way that we are different.

The way the church of Christ is different from non Christian religions. Not only have unbelievers and pagans, you also have other religious groups that are non Christian. And that's the next largest group. Those who believe in a personal god who created the world, but they reject Jesus Christ as Lord. That's the next biggest group in this world.

Now the two main groups here are Jews and Muslims. They believe in a, you know, single God who is a good God and who created everything, but they do not accept that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Let's look at the Jews for a second. We're familiar with the Jews. We're familiar with their history and their religion because until Jesus, we share exactly the same history.

Now, the main difference between us and the Jews is the following. We believe that the Jewish nation was expressly created to bring Jesus Christ, the divine son of god and savior, onto this earth in human form. That's what we believe. I mean, I'm I'm I'm summarizing it here. I remember when I was in Canada, they invited me to do a television series.

While I was doing a television series, they invited me to put it on a religious network. And this religious network was coast to coast, right across Canada. It had 500 affiliates, you know, it was huge. And they had seen the program, they said, we want you to be part of our religious network. And I said, well, great.

Could you send us a video of your program so we can make sure that it is technically, you know, it meets our standards and all that kind of stuff? I said, sure. So I sent them the number one edition of the program. The program was called bible talk, and the number one program was called who is this Jesus? And I figured start with the beginning.

And, in this program, I simply said, who is this Jesus? Well, I said, Jesus is the Messiah, son of God. You know, and I said, well, the the purpose of the Jewish nation was to establish a stage, a historical stage upon which god could put Jesus Christ. That was their purpose. That's all I said.

Well, I sent them to tape these people, and they sent me back the tape and said they couldn't use our program. And I said, why? He said, well, you will, you will offend some of our Jewish, Jewish listeners. And I said, how so? Well, you you you said that the only reason that God created them was to bring Jesus Christ to earth.

And I said, that's a bad thing? And they said, well, you know, we don't want to offend them. Can't you talk about abortion that, you know, it's good to not abort? Or can't you talk about, you know, young people staying away from drugs? That's biblical.

And I said it was a woman and I said to her, I said, madam, you're saying to me that you're a religious network and you're broadcasting the material from different religions? And you're telling me that I cannot preach on this religious network that Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Messiah? Yep. I said, then forget it. If I can't preach Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, then I'm wasting my time and my money and your airwaves with my material.

The Jews believe that Jesus lived. They believe he was a teacher. They believe that he died at the hands of the Romans, but they do not accept that he was the messiah. The Jews believe that either the Jewish nation itself or or they believe that they, the nation itself, they're the messiah to the world. Did you know that?

They believe they are the messiah to the world or that certain parts of them believe that one day the messiah will still come in the future. You know, there's this organization. You know, it's called, I think, the organization of Jews and Christians. And it promotes cooperation between Jews and Christians. And there are luncheons and meetings and rallies, you know, let's bring Jews and Christians together.

Let's find out the things that we share in common. I get letters to join that. I never go. I never go. What's the point?

If they don't accept Jesus Christ as the messiah, it don't matter what we agree on. It doesn't matter what we agree on. I wish them no harm. Certainly never support any antisemitism. But the truth of the matter is the difference between us and them is they reject Christ as lord.

Period. Another group that has the same attitude are Muslim people. Now the Muslims are a newer phenomenon having begun in the 6th century, with a religious teacher called Mohammed. Now Mohammed's big beef was not necessarily with Christians, but with Jews. He accused the Jews of abandoning the religion of Abraham.

And he taught that Jesus was a prophet, but he was a prophet who failed in his mission to restore Judaism. That's that was his point. You know, Jesus was a prophet and he was sent by God, but he was sent by God to restore Judaism. And he failed. They killed him.

And, he taught that Christianity was a perversion of God's will. And he also taught that he himself was God's latest and truest prophet. And that the Quran, those are the holy writings of the Muslims, were actually the writings of God. And Islam, the Muslim religion, is, of course, was created from that, began from that teaching, and now is established in the Middle East, we know that, and in Africa, especially in Europe and other parts of the world. Now, Muslims do not seek cooperation there's no such thing as organization of Muslims and Christians, because they don't seek cooperation with anyone.

Their goal is to maintain their religion and convert others to this religion, and they're willing to use political or military means to do so. I mean, the thing that's amazing is as a Canadian living here, I see, you know, I see Muslims coming to the United States and, being allowed to set up mosques and teach and do all that kind of stuff. But heaven help you if you ever went to Saudi Arabia and tried to teach Christianity. You'd be in jail in a hurry. You cannot even send religious material to Saudi Arabia or any Muslim country.

Now we in the churches of Christ, we believe that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the divine son of God. The savior of mankind. We believe he was the Messiah that the Jewish prophets spoke of because he fulfilled all of their prophecies about the messiah. The new testament is a record of all of the things that he did to fulfill all of the prophecies about the messiah in the old testament. A good example of that is in the book of Acts chapter 2 verse 29 to 32 where Peter is quoting David.

And he says David was a prophet and he prophesied that the Messiah would raise from the dead. And they said, this Jesus Christ here, this the Lord and Christ, and he is the messiah because he has demonstrated that he has risen from the dead. We are witnesses. One more prophecy that he has fulfilled. We believe that there are no other prophets after Jesus and there never will I'm never afraid that god will send another prophet.

Never afraid. I'm never gonna be duped. No matter what. No matter if some guy comes along or some gal comes along and does tremendous things. I'm never going to be duped because the bible says there are no more prophets.

You know, in Galatians chapter 1 verse 68, Paul warns us, warns us against anyone perverting, changing, twisting, adding, subtracting from the gospel of Jesus Christ. You know, an interesting historical fact is that, Muhammad never passed the test for a true prophet because no miracles were done by him or by any of his disciples. And the Quran is filled with historical and theological errors that have been proven over and over and over again. For almost 2000 years, the life and the words of Jesus have been examined. And no one has ever found a lie.

No one has ever found an error in thinking. No one has ever found a contradiction in anything that he has ever said. His miracles have never been disputed. And his church has grown and continues to grow, not through revolution, not through coercion, but through faith, working in love, and through the preaching of the gospel. Just like he said it would.

We are different from the Jews. We are different from Muslims because our faith and our hope and our very lives are based squarely on the fact that Jesus Christ is god. You know, these sermons that I'm preaching, you know, this morning, tonight, maybe next Sunday night, They're difficult because it's easy for someone to say, man, those people in the Church of Christ, they're so accusing. You know, the it's these kinds of lessons that draw the accusation that we think we're the only ones going to heaven. When we point out the things that we may be doing right, the things that we've nailed down.

I think one of our problems is that we haven't preached this for a while because we've been afraid. We've become gun shy. We have given in to the pressure of those who talk about political correctness. It's not politically correct anymore to say, we're right, you're wrong, you have to change. We've never said, we're right, you're wrong.

We've said, this is right. This is right. And we've given our heart and soul to making sure that we are right with this. Won't you become right with this too? And if you and I are both right according to this, then you and I have fellowship.

We mustn't be afraid to do that. We mustn't be afraid to do that. So, when we are establishing the foundations of our faith, the building blocks of our church, the very first two blocks are these. Number 1. We believe in God, creator of heaven and earth.

That's what we believe. And number 2, we believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God sent to earth as a man to save us. Those are the 2 foundational blocks upon which our faith is built. Now, there are a lot of details surrounding these two fundamental truths. But in the churches of Christ, these are the beliefs that separate us from much of the world's population.

Not everybody. I could go across the street or I could go into Choctaw, into the Methodist Church, or I could go to a Pentecostal church tonight, and I could preach exactly the same thing. And people would say, Amen. Well, I I I haven't gotten to the point where we're different from everybody. Tonight, I'm just talking about our difference between those who don't believe in God and those who don't believe in Jesus Christ.

We do. With all our heart, with all our soul, we believe in God and we believe in Christ. Next week, we'll talk about our differences, as I said, with groups who are closer to home, as we continue this series. Now, another thing that we believe, and this is something that we do, is we believe in offering an opportunity for everyone to become a Christian. Isn't that a biblical idea?

Seems to me whenever the apostles got up to preach, people responded. People confessed Christ. People abandoned their sins. People were baptized. You ever wonder why is he offered the invitation?

Well, because it seems that every time the apostles got up to preach, they offered the invitation. And so in the like manner, tonight as we do every time we gather together, we offer the invitation. Whoever wants to become and needs to become a Christian, whoever needs to be restored as a Christian, or whoever needs the prayers of the church, or whoever wishes to identify with us, that they are ready to be part of this church family. Whatever your needs, we offer the opportunity to have them filled now as we stand and as we sing.