What went wrong? - “Know where you stand with God ...” Part 2 of 2 - Session 16 of 18 - 4Salvation.org - The Living Word

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Transcript

• 0:03 Jesus was a Jew. The apostles were Jews. 
• 0:07 The writers of the New Testament were 
• 0:09 Jews. The early church was made up 
• 0:12 entirely of Jewish believers in Jesus. 
• 0:16 They were a minority of all Jews. Most 
• 0:19 Jews refused to accept that Jesus was 
• 0:22 the Messiah. 
• 0:23 Most of the sons of Israel were looking 
• 0:26 for a conquering King, to deliver them 
• 0:29 from the rule of the Romans. A suffering 
• 0:32 servant who came to die on a cross 
• 0:34 wasn't acceptable. They couldn't get past 
• 0:38 the thinking that He was cursed, to die 
• 0:41 on a cross. Their minds couldn't make the 
• 0:44 leap to where they saw that He was 
• 0:46 bearing the curse that was on them for 
• 0:49 failing to obey all the Law, the Law that 
• 0:53 they had obligated themselves to obey in 
• 0:57 full. The Hebrew Scriptures foretold a 
• 1:01 suffering servant, but the Hebrew 
• 1:04 Scriptures also speak of a conquering 
• 1:06 king. When Jesus returns, He's coming as a 
• 1:11 king to reign. First the cross, then the 
• 1:15 crown. First the thorns, then the throne. 
• 1:20 This thinking is not appealing to fallen 
• 1:23 man. Man, without the help of the Spirit, 
• 1:27 wants the reward before the work, the 
• 1:30 victory without the sacrifice. Most Jews 
• 1:35 missed seeing Jesus as the promised 
• 1:37 Messiah. The Jews who first came to faith 
• 1:41 in Jesus faced hostility from the 
• 1:43 majority of Israel. They also faced 
• 1:46 persecution from the pagan world. They 
• 1:49 were outcasts from society. 60 years 
• 1:54 after Jesus death and resurrection, the 
• 1:57 last of the Jewish apostles who had been 
• 1:59 with Jesus had died. Now the church had 
• 2:03 become a predominantly Gentile affair. 
• 2:05 Non-Jews took charge. 
• 2:08 The first mistake they made was to get 
• 2:11 organized. They didn't want the wind of 
• 2:14 the Holy Spirit to blow them 
• 2:15 wherever He chose. They wanted man, men, to 
• 2:20 take charge. When Israel had demanded a 
• 2:23 king back in the days of Saul and David, 
• 2:26 God said "they are rejecting Me". Give them 
• 2:31 a king, but it will hurt them. And it did 
• 2:34 hurt Israel. There's a lesson in that. The 
• 2:39 second mistake was to point a finger, to 
• 2:41 blame others, to see themselves as more 
• 2:45 worthy. Among the so-called "church 
• 2:48 fathers" in the first few hundred years 
• 2:50 of church history, men blamed the Jews 
• 2:53 for killing Jesus. Around three hundred 
• 2:57 years after Jesus, church councils at 
• 2:59 Nicaea and Antioch decided to reject 
• 3:03 Jewish influences, even the Jewish roots 
• 3:06 of the faith. Augustine, writing about 
• 3:10 four hundred years after Jesus, 
• 3:12 formalized the thinking that the 
• 3:14 church was now triumphant. "Jews deserved 
• 3:19 death", he wrote, but they were destined to 
• 3:22 wander the earth as a testimony of the 
• 3:25 victory of the church over the synagogue." 
• 3:28 About five hundred years ago, 
• 3:31 Martin Luther became one of the most 
• 3:33 bitter anti-Semites in history. He 
• 3:36 described Jews as "worse than devils, 
• 3:38 poisoners, ritual murderers, parasites." 
• 3:42 He said that Jews should be expelled 
• 3:44 from Germany, and synagogues should be 
• 3:46 burned to the ground. During World War 
• 3:50 Two, Adolf Hitler told the German people 
• 3:52 that, in his final solution and the 
• 3:55 slaughter of six million Jews in the 
• 3:57 concentration camps, he was simply 
• 3:59 completing the work that Martin Luther 
• 4:02 began. Did Jews bring all this on their 
• 4:06 own heads? Did the Jews kill Jesus? Well, 
• 4:11 if you read the Bible and you pick out 
• 4:14 certain passages and you don't get the 
• 4:17 whole story, then yes, you can say that 
• 4:21 the Jews killed Jesus. The Apostle Peter, 
• 4:24 a Jew, accused his own people of 
• 4:27 condemning Jesus to death. 
• 4:30 However, it's a mistake to draw attention 
• 4:33 to Jewish responsibility for the death 
• 4:35 of Jesus, without also noting that it was 
• 4:39 Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of 
• 4:41 Israel, who passed sentence of death on 
• 4:44 Jesus. And it was Roman soldiers who 
• 4:48 carried out the execution. However, we 
• 4:52 must now go beyond what the Bible says 
• 4:54 about who did the deed, and look at the 
• 4:58 theology of the cross. The Bible says 
• 5:01 that it was the will of God the Father 
• 5:03 that Jesus pay the price for the sin of 
• 5:06 the world. Also, the Bible makes it clear, 
• 5:10 Jesus was not a helpless victim. He 
• 5:14 willingly laid down His life. Jesus paid 
• 5:18 the price for the sin of the whole world. 
• 5:21 Everyone has sinned. Everyone is guilty. 
• 5:25 Jesus' death on the cross provides 
• 5:27 atonement for sin for anyone and 
• 5:30 everyone who believes in Him. However, 
• 5:34 each of us has to learn to go beyond the 
• 5:39 observation of who did the deed, and 
• 5:41 beyond the theology, and take personal 
• 5:45 responsibility for their sin. The truth 
• 5:49 of the matter is that I crucified Jesus. 
• 5:53 It was my sin that put Jesus on the 
• 5:57 cross. I am guilty. Jesus was paying for 
• 6:02 my sin. The Lord has to bring each of us 
• 6:05 to the place where we accept full moral 
• 6:08 responsibility for our behavior, and 
• 6:11 confess our need for the mercy of God. 
• 6:15 When we do so, we gain a full 
• 6:18 appreciation of what Jesus accomplished 
• 6:21 for us, and a revelation of His love. This 
• 6:26 brings us to the matter of man's free 
• 6:29 will. 
• 6:30 Remarkably, many Christians have been 
• 6:33 influenced by a theology that denies 
• 6:36 free will and eliminates moral 
• 6:40 responsibility. 
• 6:42 This is something we have to understand 
• 6:44 properly. Go now to the next session: 
• 6:47 "God's choice, man's choice"