Dr. Michael Youssef: By buying the world,
Jesus is saying that "the Muslim and the Hindu
and the Buddhist and the atheist and the nonreligious
and the agnostic, everyone,
all can come to me and receive salvation from my hands."
Dr. Youssef: You know, my friends,
for the past 30 years,
I have been urging my partners to understand the danger
of radical Islam, not only over there,
but here in our nation.
As you know, my heart is to reach all peoples
whose eyes are blind to the gospel.
Right now, "Leading the Way" is actively reaching Muslims,
not only in the Middle East, but here in the United States.
With your giving and partnership with "Leading the Way,"
you are helping us reach them with the good news of Jesus.
Will you join me in obeying the command of Jesus
and taking the gospel to all creation?
In appreciation of your giving to "Leading the Way,"
this month, I will send you a copy
of our "Insight into Islam" guide
so that you can witness to others.
I know you would want to partner with me
and request your copy today.
announcer: It might surprise you to know
that this is not the Middle East.
This is America.
From New York City to Houston, Washington, D.C. to Chicago,
the Muslim population is growing.
Today, there are more than 3 million Muslims in America,
and Arabic is now the fastest-growing language
in the US.
Who will reach this growing mission field for Christ?
The answer is Dr. Michael Youssef
and "Leading the Way."
From Arabic radio programs
to on-the-ground discipleship teams,
"Leading the Way" is uniquely equipped
to penetrate cultural barriers to share the love of Jesus.
Give a generous gift to "Leading the Way" today,
and request your copy of our "Insights into Islam" guide,
a practical resource that will help you share the gospel
with your Muslim friends and neighbors.
Call or visit us online at ltw.org.
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
Dr. Youssef: Tolerance, have you heard of tolerance?
Well, on the surface,
it sounds like a wonderful word, and it is.
But in reality, now, it's a new religion.
It really is, a new religion that is sweeping across
the Western world.
Tolerance is the most intolerant religion,
and woe unto the person
who refuses to embrace its tenets.
The high priests of this new religion
would preach freedom of choice.
You're free to choose your car.
You're free to choose your house.
You're free to choose your mate.
You're free to kill a baby in a mother's womb.
You're free, except you're not free
to choose to believe
that there's only one way to heaven and salvation.
You're not free to publicly speak
about the truth
and that Jesus is the only truth.
At that moment, those ministers
of this new religion of tolerance
can cause you the loss of your job.
They can throw you out of school or university campus.
They can discriminate against you.
They can ostracize you.
They can alienate you.
Above all, they will label you as "intolerant."
And, beloved, this is the unpardonable sin
in the religion of tolerance.
This epistle of Peter, as I told you
in the very beginning, I'm calling it,
"It's Never Too Late," because it is seldom preached
from in many a pulpit, and seldom quoted.
And yet, it is as relevant to the believers,
the ones who love the Lord Jesus,
as relevant today to strengthen us
to stand up and stand up than even in the time
when it was written.
In the last message, from 2 Peter,
we saw Peter not only assailing the false teaching,
but he was denouncing the false teachers.
This is the battle of the Christian believers
in this generation because eternity is at stake,
nothing short of eternity that's at stake.
Falsifying or modifying the gospel
just to fill in the pews is a serious offense to God.
But, beloved, here's what Peter tells us.
He's saying, "This is not new."
Because wherever the Word of God is preached,
Satan is always behind with his falsehood.
John 8:44:
"Satan is the father of all lies."
He is the inventor, he is the promoter,
he is the preacher of all lies,
and he uses false teachers in the church to do it,
to promote this lie.
But Peter said something else here again,
and look at with me, please.
This is not new, because even in the Old Testament,
he's talking about the people of God,
back in the Old Testament, there were false prophets.
Even back then, just as there are false teachers today,
his day, our day.
"But there were also false prophets,"
talking about the Old Testament, "among the people,
just as there were false teachers among you."
Beloved,
we have tolerated false teaching for too long, amen.
So much so, today, today, I have known
and you have known Bible-believing Christians,
and I'm not talking about professing Christians,
I'm talking about Bible-believing Christians,
Evangelicals who are embarrassed about biblical absolutes.
They're embarrassed about it.
Will say, "Well, I believe it, but you don't have to."
That's how they kinda couch it.
You can always discern a false teacher
by how easily he or she embrace the worldly culture.
Did you get that?
You can always discern a false teacher or preacher
by how easily they embrace worldly culture
and popular culture.
When that happens, a congregation that was once
on fire for God slowly but surely
no longer endure sound doctrine.
They no longer endure sound teaching.
Congregations that once was Christ centered,
had Christ-centered worship and preaching,
they give way to manmade antics and entertainment.
The Bible emphasis that was once preached about sin
and repentance and the holiness of God
become replaced by emphasis on self-esteem and felt needs.
These false teachers will never come out and say,
"I don't believe the Bible anymore.
I really never believed the Bible.
I don't believe the Bible is inspired Word of God.
I don't believe in inerrancy of the Scripture."
No, no, no, no, they're too clever for that.
They'll couch it with a disclaimer.
Why?
Because, for example, the virgin birth,
when they say, "You don't have to,
but you come to Jesus,"
how you come to a Jesus who is not divine?
If he's not divine and he's born just like all of us,
of the will of man, or the seed of man,
then he's a sinner.
How can a sinner bear the sins of sinners?
You see, the very core of the gospel
is at the stake here.
When they say, "Well, you know, you don't have to believe
in the sanctity of marriage," what they're doing?
They are destroying the very purpose
of God in Creation.
What are these false teachers doing?
According to the Word of God, "They are exchanging the truth
of God's words for their own self-styled opinion."
And Peter is saying, "These false teachers have been,
are, and always will be around."
They will always be around.
Peter is giving us a number of ways to spot
a false teacher and a false preacher.
2 Peter chapter 2, verse 1:
"They will subtly introduce
destructive heresies."
They are very subtle. They're too slick.
They're very sneaky.
Sometimes they'll use word like "love."
But really, they meant something else.
In reality, they want you to love them,
not love the truth.
The word "destructive heresies" here,
it means "the doctrine that contains some truth,
but cleverly blended with error."
It's like a glass of water with few drops of hemlock
or cyanide.
One word, in one word, Peter is telling us,
"These false teachers are the masters of deception."
They're brilliant communicators.
They just have enough of the truth there
to make the unsuspecting keep on coming to them,
keep on coming to them while they are slowly,
but surely, they are poisoning the water.
And Peter is saying, "These people deny the Lord."
Who on God's earth can know what it means
to deny the Lord like Peter?
He knew what it means to deny his Lord, and yet,
he also knows how welcoming the Lord is
to every repentant person, even the one who deny him,
just like the difference between him and Judas.
Peter turned to the Lord and he was renewed
and given a great ministry.
Judas hung himself.
That is my prayer, that if you are tempted, Pastor,
to go down that road
that you will turn back to the Lord
before it's too late.
In fact, the Greek word for "deny" means "contradict"
or "reject" or "disavow."
They deny the Lord who bought them.
I want you to say those words with me: "They--"
Some of you are saying, "Now, wait a minute.
Wait a minute. He bought them?"
And the reason I'm gonna dwell in this for a minute
is because people fought over this for 2,000 years.
I want to clarify it for you so you will never miss it.
Deny the Lord who bought them.
What does it mean, "The Lord who bought them"?
Beloved, when our Lord Jesus Christ hung on that cross,
and his blood kept on dripping, kept on dripping,
until he died on that cross, by this very gracious act,
Jesus bought the whole world, the whole world.
When Adam fell in the garden of Eden,
he handed the deeds of planet Earth to Satan.
But on the cross, Jesus arrested the planet
Earth's deeds from Satan's hand.
And so he bought the whole world.
It means that redemption is possible for everyone,
every human being
on the face of the earth.
By buying the whole world,
Jesus's redemption now
is possible for whomsoever, whomsoever, whomsoever.
By buying the whole world, does not mean that he redeemed
the whole world, as some of these false teachers
are teaching.
By buying the world, Jesus is giving everyone
an opportunity to come to him and be redeemed.
By buying the world, Jesus is saying that
"the Muslim and the Hindu and the Buddhist and the atheist
and the nonreligious and the agnostic,
everyone, all can come to me and receive salvation
from my hands."
That's what "buying the world" means.
He bought it all, but he did not redeem it all.
This is vitally important, beloved, because every statistic
show 64% of so-called "Evangelical Christians"
believe that there are many ways to God.
I told you, this is the battle of our time.
On the cross, Jesus redeemed whomsoever comes to him
to be saved, not redeemed the whole world,
like so many of these Universalists are saying.
In reality, redemption is only for those
who have received Jesus Christ
as their only Savior and Lord.
Redemption is only for those who have availed themselves
to the value of that shed blood on Calvary.
And even Jesus himself tells us in Matthew 13:44,
Jesus pictures himself as the man who sold everything.
He gave up everything.
He gave up his glory in heaven.
He gave up the splendor of heaven.
"He gave his all to buy a field."
And the Bible said, "The field is the world."
Verse 2, these false teachers
who are lowering biblical standards of morality,
these false teachers who are encouraging
self-indulgence and sexual perversions,
they will be swiftly judged.
They will be swiftly judged.
Verse 3, those who wink at wickedness and immorality
for personal gain,
those who have chosen the ministry
not because God's call on their life,
but because it's a lucrative profession,
those who have chosen to be ministers
not because they care for the people's eternity,
but for their own self-aggrandizement,
they may become accepted and loved by the sinful culture.
They may receive the applause and the accolades
and the approval of the sinful culture.
And yet, in reality,
they are digging their own eternal grave.
Doesn't give me any joy saying this.
Someone may be asking, and I know somebody
asked me that several months ago,
"If that is the case,
why these people are so successful?"
Now, listen to me very careful. I'm gonna give you the answer.
It has nothing to do with them. It has to do with God.
God is very, very, very, very--how many verys are these?
Very patient.
God is longsuffering.
God gives them ample opportunity to turn to him and repent,
just as he gave an opportunity to Peter, who denied him.
But in the end, please, "Do not judge things by appearances."
The last chapter has not been written yet.
And then, in verses 4 to 11, Peter gives us
specific biblical evidence of how God is gonna deal
with the wicked, how God is gonna,
sooner or later, gonna judge them.
They will not get away with it.
Verse 4: "God judged angels, and he kicked them out
of heaven when they sinned."
When Lucifer and 1/3 of the angelic being
rebelled against a holy God,
they were thrown out of heaven
into the very pit of hell,
and they will be eventually thrown into the lake of fire
when Jesus comes back in power and great glory.
And so he sent these fallen angels to utter doom,
and he will do the same with false preachers and teachers.
But not only fallen angels were severely judged.
The ancient world, when they turned their backs
on the truths of God,
they suffered doom and destruction.
In fact, the book of Genesis chapter 6, verse 5
gives us a description of the culture at that time.
I'll read it to you, and see if that picture
does not fit our time.
"When every imagination of thoughts of their heart
were only evil continuously."
Only Noah and his family were righteous, and they were saved.
Let me ask you this.
Do you know how long it took God to preach righteousness
through Noah to his generation?
Do you know how often he pleaded with them,
"Escape, escape, escape while escaping is good"?
Do you know how many years?
Hundred and twenty years.
Our God is longsuffering,
he's patient.
Now, fast forward 450 years from the time
when the Flood came and covered the whole earth.
We even have archaeological evidence,
450 years after the flood, the twin cities,
the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah
turned their back on the witness of a righteous man
by the name of Lot, and God judged them severely.
Now, I don't know about you, but I think some of you,
if you are like me, when you looked at this verse 7
and says, "A righteous man like Lot."
Now, wait a minute. We know that guy.
He was righteous?
I preached on Lot many years ago.
But how can the Bible calls him "righteous"?
Listen carefully, please.
Verse 8 tells you the answer: "(For by what the righteous man
saw and heard, as he lived among them,
he was tormented)."
The old translation said, "He was vexed."
Literally, it means he was tortured.
He was being tortured.
Hear me right, please.
What I'm gonna say to you is gonna surprise some of you.
Not all of you.
It's gonna surprise some of you, but I hope you understand me,
and not misunderstand me.
The mark of righteousness, and we in the New Testament
believers only have the righteousness of Jesus Christ,
not our own, but the mark of righteousness
of how you react to the sinful culture
in which we live.
The false preachers and teachers say, "Let's accommodate to it."
Under the guise of engaging the culture,
they're swimming in the murky water
of the culture, but the righteous,
the righteous weeps over the sinful culture.
The righteous soul is distressed over it.
The righteous heart breaks in two.
And the righteous hearts long for them to come,
pray for them to come and do what they can
to introduce them to the saving knowledge
of Jesus Christ.
So the question is, when you come into direct contact
with evil culture in which we all live,
how do you react?
How do you react? How do you react?
Do you want to accommodate to it?
Do you wanna go along with it?
Do you wanna accept it as an inevitable progress?
Or do you weep over it?
Or do you seek with all your heart
to light a candle in that dark place?
Does it drive you on your knees
to pray for them
and witness to them?
Like Noah 450 years before Sodom and Gomorrah,
Lot stood against the sin of his day.
And then, in verse 9, Peter assures us that:
"God is able to deliver the righteous
and judge the deceiver."
He's able to do it, and he'll do it.
Beloved, listen to me.
I'm about to close.
Of these false teachers and false preachers,
they are misleading untold number of people.
They are telling them that they can pick
and choose what they like and what they don't like
from the Word of God, that the Word of God
has never been inerrant, that the Word of God
has never been infallible, that the Word of God
was never God breathed.
In reality, these people are misled all the way
to a Christless eternity.
I don't know about you,
but I am willing to die on this hill.
I'm willing to die for this truth.
You who know the Lord Jesus Christ,
it's your decision whether you are willing to stand
for the truth or accommodate to our evil culture.
It's your decision whether you wanna be misled
by false teachers or get into the Word of God.
But there may be somebody here today,
and this stuff kind of new to them,
and never really given their life to Christ.
They never surrendered their life.
They never know what it means to come to Jesus
just as they are and say, "Lord, forgive me,"
and receive the forgiveness, the gift of forgiveness,
and the gift of eternal life.
Well, you can do that today.
♪♪♪
announcer: It might surprise you to know
that this is not the Middle East.
This is America.
From New York City to Houston, Washington, D.C. to Chicago,
the Muslim population is growing.
Today, there are more than 3 million Muslims
in America,
and Arabic is now the fastest-growing language
in the US.
Who will reach this growing mission field for Christ?
The answer is Dr. Michael Youssef and "Leading the Way."
From Arabic radio programs
to on-the-ground discipleship teams,
"Leading the Way" is uniquely equipped
to penetrate cultural barriers to share the love of Jesus.
Give a generous gift to "Leading the Way" today,
and request your copy of our "Insights into Islam" guide,
a practical resource that will help you share the gospel
with your Muslim friends and neighbors.
Call or visit us online at ltw.org.
announcer: Connect with us on social media,
like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter
and Instagram to receive daily updates
from Dr. Youssef and reports from the team on the ground.
"Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef,"
together, we are sharing the gospel around the world
through every available means.
Dr. Youssef: You will live in confidence,
knowing that "he who began a good work in you
is able to bring it to completion," amen?
Amen, give God glory. Give God glory.
Jonathan Youssef: The message has not changed.
It's the same message that was preached by Jesus.
We stand on one truth, that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.
You look at the remote regions of the world,
and how do you get a radio broadcast
to somebody that doesn't even have a radio,
or a television, or a satellite dish,
or whatever it is?
So, we have Navigator devices.
We have booklet material.
We're doing whatever it takes to get
that message to those people.
We're the group that's cutting the hole in the ceiling
and lowering their friend down to Jesus
because we're gonna find a way in
to get people the message of truth.
Nick Ayers: Dr. Youssef, and his background,
and where he's from, he really has the credibility
and the understanding in a way
that most other pastors in America don't have.
We've seen the effect firsthand of what his teachings are doing.
And what "Leading the Way" is doing is actually
bringing the gospel into these people's hearts.
Jim Caswell: I knew that where his heart was.
I knew what his passion was.
I wanted to be a part of that passion.
And it was so easy to see somebody so committed.
Dr. Youssef: Without the partners, we could not do this.
I am so grateful to them, and I pray for them.
Eric Graham: It's an incredible honor to be a part
of a ministry like "Leading the Way"
that is doing it, and is doing it correctly,
and Michael is the mouthpiece of it,
and it's amazing what they're doing.
Dr. Youssef: This is, beloved, the power of the gospel.
Not the proclaimers of the gospel, but the gospel.
The power is in the gospel itself,
and that power knows no geographical boundaries.
It knows no hindrance of language.
That power that has no distinction of culture.
That power is the power of the gospel
when it is faithfully proclaimed.
announcer: Passionately proclaiming
uncompromising truth,
"Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef"
thanks you for your faithful support
through your continued prayers and gifts.
Dr. Youssef: At the Church of the Apostles
in Atlanta, Georgia, every Sunday,
I meet people from all over the United States,
from Maine to California, and they love the experience.
They said, "For years, we've been wanting to come and visit."
And so if you're ever in Atlanta, Georgia,
I would love for you to come and visit, shake my hand.
And I wanna thank you in advance for making that to be a priority
in your life, visiting Apostles, God bless.
announcer: "Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef"
is a paid program sponsored by viewers like you.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét