male announcer: The following program
is paid for by the ministry partners
of the Hour of Power and viewers like you.
[congregation applauding]
Bobby Schuller: Well, today, we have such a joy to have John Ortberg
in the house.
Ladies and gentlemen, John Ortberg.
John, thank you. I love you.
[congregation applauding]
John Ortberg: For a whole bunch of reasons,
I'm just incredibly honored to be here.
I heard Robert Schuller preach when I was a student
at Wheaton College for the first time, long time ago.
Came out to California to go to Fuller Theological Seminary,
and went to this amazing place called the Crystal Cathedral,
and that was remarkable.
And then the chance to get to know Bobby.
Aren't you glad that God thought up Bobby Schuller?
And his heart and ministry and love for people?
And the opportunity to spread the good news about Jesus
all around the world.
And I wanna start with a question because it involves
a word, "gospel," that gets thrown around a lot.
I talk about this in that little book,
"Eternity is Now in Session."
But a lot of people haven't thought deeply
about what is the gospel.
So I wanna start with this question.
If somebody were to ask you,
"What's the gospel that Jesus came to preach?"
what would you say?
Not just what do you think of by the word "gospel,"
but if somebody were to ask you--now, Jesus had a gospel.
Somebody were to ask you,
"What gospel did Jesus come to proclaim?"
If you don't mind, for a moment, turn to the person next to you
and just take a shot at it.
If you're at home, you might just think about this
for a moment but for everybody who's here,
just turn to the person--
If somebody were to ask you,
"What's the gospel Jesus came to preach?"
what would you say?
Now this sounds like a terribly simple question but I can tell
you from quite a lot of experience, the vast majority
of people, not only outside but very often in churches,
do not give the same answer to this question
that Jesus himself gave.
And it matters immensely.
So Jesus had one message at the start of his ministry
and it's at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark,
the beginning of Luke, and beginning of Matthew
summarized his message almost in precisely the same way.
This is the summary of his message at the beginning
of his ministry: "After John," that's John the Baptist,
"was put into prison, Jesus went out into Galilee
proclaiming the good news of God.
'The time has come,' he said,
'the kingdom of God has come near.
Repent and believe the good news.'"
Now, the good news is where we get our word "gospel"
and what Jesus says constitutes it is that this thing
called the kingdom of God has come near.
Once he chose his disciples, Jesus adopted a strategy to
communicate his one message to everybody that he could.
We read about this in Luke chapter 8: "After this,"
after he chose his disciples, "Jesus traveled about
from one town to another, proclaiming the good news,"
the gospel, "of the kingdom of God."
That it's come near.
And then he sends his disciples out
'cause he's very passionate about this message.
And he instructs them to proclaim one message.
"When Jesus had called the 12 together, he gave them power
and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases,
and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God."
Then he's crucified and when he rose from the dead he gathered
his little group of now 11 disciples together
and he talked to them about one topic.
This is from the book of Acts: "Jesus appeared to them over
a period of 40 days and spoke about the kingdom of God."
And in the very last glimpse of the church that we get
in the book of Acts, the last verse in the last chapter,
it's Paul who's in chains now for the gospel and we're told,
Acts chapter 28: "Boldly and without hindrance
he preached the kingdom of God."
So if you were gonna say what Jesus's gospel is about
in one phrase what would that phrase be?
The kingdom of God.
The good news, the gospel, is simply this: the kingdom of God
has become available on earth for ordinary human beings
like you and me to live in.
It is here right now.
Eternity is now in session, and you can live in it
if you want to.
That's what Jesus came to proclaim.
And then he taught a lot about how to do that
but that was the news, see?
And here's what I believe to be terribly tragic.
In our day, for a variety of reasons, in thousands of
churches, millions of Christians have substituted another gospel
for Jesus's gospel and this is what I think is often
the substitute gospel.
People think of the gospel as here are the minimal entrance
requirements for getting into heaven when you die.
And we don't put it in exactly that language
but that's what people often think.
I'll give you a picture I sometimes use
for this not-the-real gospel.
There's a scene towards the end of a movie that all of you
are way too spiritual to ever have seen called
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
Oh, some of--this is my kind of crowd, is it?
So towards the end of that movie, Arthur and three
of his knights are trying to get into a castle
where the grail is but there's an abyss between them
and the castle and you gotta cross a bridge to get over
and there's this wizened old weird bridge keeper
and he only lets you cross the bridge
if you can answer three questions correctly.
If you get one wrong, you get cast down into the abyss.
That's the end of you.
So the first knight comes up and he's asked, "What's your name?
What's your quest?
And what's your favorite color?"
He answers that, he gets to cross the bridge.
Second knight's quite cocky and he's asked,
"State your name, state your quest," which he does.
And then he's asked some real obscure question like
who won the World Cup in 1948?
"I don't know. Aghhh!"
And he's cast down into the abyss.
So the third knight now is quite nervous.
"State your name, state your quest."
He does.
And then he's asked, "State your favorite color."
He says, "Red." "No, blue."
"Aghhh!"
And he's thrown down into the abyss.
So now there's just Arthur left.
Comes up and the bridge keeper asks him, "State your name."
"Arthur, King of the Britons."
"Quest?" "Search the Holy Grail."
And then he's asked a question that's kind of a running gag
through the whole movie: "What's the wing speed velocity
of a coconut laden swallow?"
And his answer's also part of that running gag: "That depends.
Is it an African swallow or a European swallow?"
And the bridge keeper says, "I don't know. Agh."
And the bridge keeper is cast down the abyss.
Now, for a variety of reasons we don't have time to get into many
people have reduced the gospel to this idea, that when you die
there will be the castle, there'll be the good place,
and then there's this abyss and then there's bridge
and the gospel is the correct answer to the secret questions
such that if you give it they have to let you cross.
The gospel is understood by many people outside the church
and in to be this quite exclusive, quite cognitive,
minimal entrance requirements for getting
allowed into heaven when you die.
A lot of people think of saving faith.
That's a phrase you might have heard of if you've been around
church very much.
They think of saving faith as what do you have to affirm
at minimum so they cannot keep you out of heaven.
Here's the problem.
Where in the New Testament if you've read it much, where does
Jesus ever say, "Now, I'm going to give you the minimal entrance
requirements for getting into heaven when you die?"
He never says anything like that.
And yet, tragically for millions of people, that's what they
think they've got--and then they have arguments over exactly
what are those requirements and so.
Jesus never says anything like that.
What he says is, "Now, all the preliminaries
have been taken care of.
And the kingdom of God is now accessible to every human being,
no matter what you have done, how irreligious you think
that you are, so review your plans for living
and base your strategy of life on this remarkable opportunity."
That's the gospel of Jesus. That's his call.
Now, of course, of course, of course,
it includes the promise of the forgiveness of our sins
purchased at the cost of his life on the cross
as a free gift of grace.
Of course it does.
Of course it includes the promise that death will not
interrupt eternal life but it will go on, of course,
as it would with our heavenly Father forever.
But it includes more than that.
Jesus came as the kingdom bringer.
Many people think the only real reason why Jesus came to earth
was to die on the cross to get us over to the other side.
The cross was fundamental, his death was fundamental.
But they were simply one part of his overall mission.
His great mission was to be the kingdom bringer.
It is now here.
He was speaking in the Sermon on the Mount, the most famous talk
ever given at one time to a group of people
and they believe in God but, like us, they tend to fritter
their lives away on concerns that don't really matter.
What am I gonna eat? What am I gonna wear?
How am I gonna look? How much money will I have?
Will I have a big enough house? Will my career look good?
Will I get in the right office?
And he says, "Don't waste your life running after those things
for the pagans run after all those things,
people who don't know God."
And your heavenly Father knows you need them.
"But seek first his kingdom.
Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness."
Now, righteousness is another one of those words
that's become badly misunderstood.
It's often thought to be kind of self-righteous
or holier than thou.
It is simply what it is that makes somebody good
from the inside.
We can never get away from that driving need to know,
"Am I a good person?"
And righteousness has a wonderful history behind it,
and Jesus uses it in deeply thoughtful ways.
To be a truly authentically good person, seek that and all these
things will be given to you.
One of the difficulties for us is we don't use
the word "kingdom" often.
We have a different form of government.
We don't have a king. So think about it like this.
Every human being has a kingdom in a biblical sense.
Your kingdom is that little sphere in which
what you say goes, okay?
Your kingdom is where you are in charge.
The technical language for this is your kingdom is the range
of your effective will where your will can rule.
And people very early on learn they were made
to have a kingdom, to reign.
Two and a half months ago, my wife and I
had our first grandchild.
His name is Chance and there's a long story behind him
that I won't tell you but I cannot describe to you the joy.
If I knew having grandchildren was this good,
I would have skipped having children, gone right to it.
And anybody knows when a little child is born and then they
begin to develop and they learn how to walk and they learn how
to talk and how to move their hands, that that's a miracle.
What's happening?
A little piece of matter, a little piece of atoms,
is being reigned by a will, see, by a personal will.
Our universe is subject to will, to personhood.
That's a remarkable thing.
That's a supernatural-- and we see it all the time.
We're just getting used to it.
And little kids grow up and they start being concerned
for their kingdom.
They get in the back seat of a car with each other
and they draw a line.
"You'd better not cross over this line,
'cause this is my kingdom."
And they start defending their kingdoms.
They have little kingdom wars in the back seat of the van.
And then dad starts turning around 'cause whose kingdom
does Dad think the car is?
He thinks it's his kingdom.
And he sends his hand back there like a snake, you know,
"You kids want me to come around?"
And the kids retreat to the corner of the van.
A friend of mine has advice on how to get kids
out of the unreachable safety zone.
A tap on the brakes brings them right into play.
Thy kingdom comes.
My kingdom is the range of my effective will.
It is where things go the way I want them to go, beginning
with my body, and this is why our bodies are so important.
Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, we're told: "Then God said,
'Let us make human beings in our own image,
according to our likeness, and let them have dominion,"
see, that's kingdom language.
God has dominion. God has a kingdom.
God speaks and it is so.
And then he makes these odd little human creatures and--
but we're in his image and we get to exercise dominion
in our own limited ways.
That's a real good thing.
It's part of being in the image of God.
But our kingdoms get all junked up by sins.
No! Mine!
No, on earth, all those little kingdoms intersect and merge
and they form larger kingdoms.
You think about it like this.
A kingdom is a system of personal power.
A kingdom in the biblical sense is a system of personal power.
And they come together and they form marriages
and then families and then neighborhoods and then schools
and companies and nations and cultures and civilizations,
and those are all kingdoms.
And all those together form what we might call the kingdom
of earth, if we were gonna use biblical language.
So let's do a little study in contrast for a moment.
Jesus says that there is an entity.
It is a reality that is called the kingdom of God.
Now, of course, that language had been used
for a long time in Israel, so Jesus is using language
that's very familiar to people.
But the idea, much of what Jesus did, was to try to correct
people's vision of what is life like in that kingdom.
And he says, "It is unspeakably good.
To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?
It's like a man who finds a treasure buried in the field
and in his great joy he sells everything he's got
'cause he says, 'I've got to have that treasure.'
To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?"
I met my wife many years ago now in Southern California.
We met on a blind date when I was working at a church
in La Crescenta, California.
And after the end of the date, the people who'd introduced us
lived 2,000 miles away.
This was before cell phones.
Didn't seem like a real suave thing to ask for her number so
the only thing that I knew about her, the only way I knew to get
in touch with her again was to call her church.
She attended a church at the time called
Whittier Area Baptist Fellowship.
And so I called that church and I said, "I'm a pastor.
I work at First Baptist Church at La Crescenta.
I need the phone number of one of your parishioners.
It's kind of a ministry thing.
Her name is Nancy Berg," and the receptionist put me on hold
for a long time.
Finally, came back on and gave me Nancy's phone number.
What I did not know then and didn't find out for another six
months, was the receptionist at that church
was Nancy's mother, Verna Berg.
And she actually put me on hold and called Nancy up and said,
"There's some guy and he wants your phone number.
Shall I give it to him?"
And--to what shall I compare the kingdom of God?
It is like a man who meets a woman and he wants her phone
number so desperately that he calls up a church
and semi-deceives them just to get it.
That's the kingdom of God.
Paul says to the church at Rome, "For the kingdom of God
is not a legalistic matter of eating or drinking rules, but
righteousness that is true inner goodness, joy, and peace," see?
The kingdom of God is where all is as God wants it to be.
Jesus says, "It's like a banquet where the lame and the blind
and the poor, people that normally get left out,
all get invited, all become guests of honor.
That's life in the kingdom of God."
The kingdom of God is like a little child who's just humble,
no big shots, no egos, no--
that's life in the kingdom of God.
It's going on right now.
The gospel of Jesus, the good news, is not that the kingdom
has come into existence.
It has always existed.
The good news is, through Jesus, it's now become available now.
And not just to Israel, but to anybody.
It's breaking its boundaries, okay?
That's the kingdom of God.
And then there is this other entity and if we were gonna
use biblical language for it, we would say it
is the kingdom of earth.
Every human life and all of our systems of power
and governments and politics.
How are things going on the kingdom of earth?
Not so good.
Tragedies, tens of thousands of little children die every day
of malnutrition when it's preventable and lots of us
have a lot of resources that could change that.
Abuse, corruption, misuse of power, #MeToo,
families breaking apart, people being neglected,
people not being loved because of the way they look
or the color of their skin,
politics in office places, just--it's a mess.
So Jesus has this plan, see?
Now, when I was growing up in church I always thought that the
idea was that we were gonna go up to heaven someday
and so we ought to just pray, it's such a mess down here,
"God, get me out of here and get me up to--"
There's a old TV show called "Star Trek"
and if somebody was in trouble, they would always pray
to the same guy named Scotty.
Anybody remember that? Remember what the prayer was?
"Beam me up." Get me outta here and let me go.
And I kind of thought that was the idea.
"God, it's a mess down here.
You're gonna come and torch this place."
Jesus has a real different idea and I don't know
why I didn't understand this.
The Lord's Prayer.
We said this a little while ago, these words that
are so familiar to so many people.
And yet, so often, we've never actually thought about them.
Guy named Ken Davis wrote about, back in the 1980s,
a chapel service for the Chicago Bears.
They had a Super Bowl team.
Mike Ditka was the coach and the guy leading the service wanted
them to pray the Lord's Prayer, and so he asked
Refrigerator Perry to pray the Lord's Prayer.
Some of you guys might remember the Fridge?
Jim McMahon was the quarterback
and he thought this was hilarious.
He said to the chaplain, "I will bet you 50 bucks
there's no way the Fridge knows the Lord's Prayer."
And the chaplain thought, "It's kind of odd to bet
on the Lord's Prayer but, you know,
it's a football team, okay."
Everybody bows their heads, close their eyes.
The Fridge begins to pray, "Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep."
Jim McMahon takes out 50 bucks, hands it over and says,
"I was sure he didn't know the Lord's Prayer."
You all know the words.
"Our Father who is in heaven."
Now, heaven is not some place way out there far away, see?
The kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God,
is the range of God's effective will.
Our Father who is closer than the air we breathe,
"hallowed be your name."
May people come to cherish and revere what a good God you are.
May you become famous and beloved.
"Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be your name,"
and then the next words that for some reason,
for so many years, I never really thought of.
"Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done on earth
as it is in heaven."
Here's Jesus's message.
Not, "I wanna tell you how to get from down there to up here,"
"I wanna tell you up here's coming down there."
Up here, O God, O God, O God,
O God, your kingdom come.
Your will be done.
In my body, in my mind, in my thoughts.
I surrender to you.
God, just take this body.
It's not worth much and it's getting older every day.
Take this body and make it radiant with your presence.
And then in my home.
God, where so often your will doesn't reign.
Where anger reigns or coldness reigns or apathy reigns
or selfishness reigns or deceits reign.
God, in my home may your kingdom come.
See, up there is coming down here.
This is the divine conspiracy and it's happening through Jesus
and very often it happens most in people who are least visible,
who look quite humble or unimportant but every time
somebody has some resources and they get generous with it
or every time somebody gets hurt
and they end up forgiving somebody.
Every time that happens, up there is coming down here.
And now, you are called to be not just somebody
who has satisfied the minimal entrance requirements
for getting into heaven when you die.
You are to be an agent of the kingdom.
So follow him. Follow him fully.
Love him. Learn what he taught.
Do what he said. Lean on his power.
Live in his love.
Be a part of the greatest movement in human history,
up there coming down here.
Would you pray together with me?
Now, heavenly Father, I pray for everybody listening to my voice
that they would come to know you,
not just believe certain things about you,
not just try to engage in a transaction
that will take care of them after they die.
To know you, to enter into eternity right now, right here.
We pray it again, our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.
Starting with us in Jesus's name, amen.
[congregation applauding]
announcer: Please stay tuned for the closing benediction.
Bobby: Thank you for joining us for "Hour of Power" today.
We hope that you found incredible hope and inspiration
from this program.
You know, oftentimes we think we need to have enormous faith
to do big things, but in reality,
we serve a God who only requires a faith
the size of a mustard seed
to do amazing things in your life
and in the lives of people around you.
Hannah: That's right.
Matthew 17:20 tells us: "If you have faith as small
as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain,
'Move from here to there,' and it will move.
Nothing will be impossible for you."
The Scriptures say that you only need a mustard seed-sized faith
to move mountains in your life.
That's only 1% of you.
Even if just 1% of you is faith,
your prayers will move mountains.
Bobby: That's right.
If 99% of you doubts everything but just 1% of you says,
"I trust God," he can use that percent to move mountains.
Friends, you don't need to have
a mountain-sized faith to move mountains.
You just need a tiny little bit,
because God's the one doing the moving, not you.
So you can relax.
If you have the faith, God has the power.
Let him move your mountains today.
announcer: Call, write, or go online today
and request your accent pillow imprinted with the words,
"Your prayers will move mountains."
Use this pillow at home, take it on your vacation,
or gift it to a loved one as they go back to school
to be reminded daily that God will move mountains
in their lives.
We're asking for a generous gift of any size,
so call, write, or go online today.
Thank you and remember always God loves you and so do we.
Bobby: Hannah and I want you to know
how much you are loved and valued by God.
He will never leave you or abandon you.
You are his child, and he loves you.
Hannah: That's right.
I want to encourage you today that if you've been praying
for something, maybe for years,
and you haven't seen a breakthrough,
don't give up.
Your prayers are powerful, and they will move mountains
in your life.
Bobby: Yeah, that's right.
My grandpa Schuller used to say God's delays
are not God's denials.
So don't give up.
In fact, we want to support you in your prayer life,
whether you're praying for healing, relationships,
or financial challenges.
We want to pray with you.
Matthew 18:20 says, "Where two or three gather in my name,
I am there."
Hannah: Take a moment today and write down
your prayer request and send it to us.
We want to pray for you.
It doesn't matter what kind of impossibilities you're facing
or how huge that mountain is in front of you,
you can put your hope in our powerful God.
Bobby: Yeah, Hannah and I consider you a part
of our church family.
We're here for you, and we would be honored
to keep you in our prayers.
Remember always, God loves you and so do we.
Bobby: Wasn't John great? Did you enjoy his sermon?
Look, he traveled a long way to preach
and bless us this morning, and he has this book coming out.
It just came out, like, this week so I know, as an author,
one of the best things people can do to show you that they
appreciate you is to simply buy your book.
And it's not because of money, truly, it's when you're
an author you put so much of your blood, sweat,
and tears into a manuscript, you really want people to read it,
to think about it, to get it.
And I know that's true for John and if you wanna say thank you
to him, make sure to go back there and spend the 20 bucks
or whatever it is to get a book.
He'll sign it for you. It'll mean the world to him.
And now the Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon you
and be gracious unto you.
The Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you his peace,
in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
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and viewers like you, and is accredited
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