the reason I believe in Jesus Christ is the incredible ethical teachings he gave Robert Coles professor emeritus at Harvard pointed out all the teachings on ethics over the past 2,000 years are simply footnotes to the Sermon on the Mount it's a genius that spoke the Sermon on the Mount but how much of that came from his Jewish teachings some of it so why didn't that just come from why it wasn't his moral belief just from the Torah and why didn't why did you have to write a separate book well obviously when you read the Sermon
on the Mount he's not just quoting the Torah he's interpreting it and he's contradicting with the religious teachers of the day the rabbi's taught so when you read the Sermon on the Mount you've got ethical brilliance well that demands respect for Christ secondly he lived up to that standard that amazingly high moral standard that he taught he lived up to why do you and I respect Gandhi dr. Martin Luther King Abraham Lincoln we respect these people because of the way they lived their life so when you read the Gospels and examine how Jesus lived his
life you can't help but say Wow incredible thirdly you read about how he died nailed to wooden cross beam instead of cursing his enemies the way I probably would have he prayed Father forgive them for they know not what they do that demands respect I'd have probably been cursing my enemies if I'd have been in that situation but not Christ [Music] so how do you think about Jesus have you put your faith in him or are you skeptical er I think it was a moral upstanding God right I don't think personally he was worthy of
worship just like I wouldn't wash him I'm okay but I do think certain heavies up my ass pecks are worthy of respect just because he was a nice guy okay now because you respect him how do you handle his claim to be God in human form doesn't that put him in the category of lunatic if he's just a man well there are many people that are that are worthy of respect that I put in the category of lunatic Plato Socrates Pythagoras many of them had Colts in their name because some of the lunatic things they
said right next to some of the many logical things they said so you always have to take people of great respect in history and pastimes with the grain of salt just because of what they knew at the time and their cultures and how they were raised right but in light of the fact that Christ taught that humility was a virtue and pride and arrogance were a sin and then he goes out and claims to be God in human form if he's not God in human form he is one arrogant twit I get that you you
look at the teachings of Christianity it's like yes this applies very well to like how logically life functions around me - the miracles what's to say that those miracles are more believable than for example some of the more fantastic things that happen in a Roman myth a Greek myth you know because they also teach lessons through their their myths about how you should behave in life oh yeah well it's real simple if an atheist says to me that was a miracle I'm gonna say you got to be kidding me if there is no God it's
impossible that miracles take place okay so I am NOT going but if someone tells me they're a theist and they tell me about a miracle I'm gonna say yeah that's possible if either you think God exists if God really does exist then miracles are not stupid they're not irrational a miracle is a supernatural being changing a natural law that that supernatural being created in the first place and performing which you and I call a miracle I just like to say that when atheists say oh that was a miracle they don't mean that literally they mean
it as a figure absolutely yes I understand it Yeah right hyperbole right but if if an atheist said that was a real miracle I would say my first comment would be wait a second it's impossible for miracles to happen according to your worldview because there's no supernatural God see if there's no supernatural God miracles do not happen but if there is a supernatural God then it's possible that miracles happen so when I'm confronted by a Hindu who says a miracle happened I say okay I respect you you think that God exists therefore you think there's
a miracle that happened okay maybe it did I'll have to check on the evidence I guess might want and obviously what I'm driving at although you might not know this is I have my atheist friends in a real bind intellectually because every one of my atheist friends is a really nice guy a really nice woman I have no bad atheist friends all of my atheist friends are great people in fact there's such great people that they really think that racism is really objectively wrong they really do my atheist friends really think that stealing is absolutely
wrong but you see my point to them is you're an intellectual hypocrite because if you say there is no God but there is an objective moral absolute you're contradicting yourself and the only reason I bring in the word hypocrite is because you know that those objective morals are real your experience of life teaches you that but with your head you're crossing God off which means morality really is relative it's not absolute oh yeah from there like from from miracles like he is saying that was a miracle to morality like IQ back about the morality part
yeah but you know I haven't heard any like I could imagine you would bring up the fact that you know people didn't believe in Christianity and then they saw like water could turn into wine or the Seas get split and then say that's a miracle as a good example of an atheist saying oh that was a miracle I don't know what that was the example you're gonna bring up or not but know what I'm simply driving at is if you believe something one of the ways to test your belief is to ask yourself can I
live this out consistently and if I can't if I believe something and I can't live it out consistently I better go back in question hey is my belief right or is it really wrong okay so like for you it's easier to live out christian beliefs and it would be a live out roman police sir yeah what have you and my point is every one of my atheist friends finds it much easier to live out the moral absolutes that Jesus taught then they find it easy to live out their moral relativism see I would encourage you
think very carefully on this campus how many professors and students believe everything is relative pretty good number right okay fine steal their backpack and see how they react have them get married have their spouse do something mean to them and then see if they can live out their moral relativism guys you can't do it you cannot live out moral relativism consistently it doesn't work everything in your experience of life shows you that was really wrong when you stole my backpack when you treated me that way honey that was really wrong right okay I get ya
today yeah a bunch of atheists can get together and say human beings have value but what those hey theists have to acknowledge is tomorrow if they take that value away from people that is just as true just as legitimate as when today they say human beings have value that's when AP has come together and say this person has value and when a society agrees that there is value in personhood yeah everyone's personhood is subject to their own life your your view of someone else's validity of their personhood is intrinsically bound to your own value of
your personhood so right that's the Golden Rule yes exactly to be able to say oh tomorrow I can deny him basic human rights and I could murder him if I wanted to and he has no intrinsic value that leaves us all subject to the same like being killed and dehumanized and it's exactly that and so as a social species that benefits when we work together and like finds value in our bonds with each other we don't do that we don't we don't before Christianity right so why would you say that that's a judeo-christian idea if
people treat each other that way before Christianity existed is it not possible that that's a almost like maybe even in a biological inherent idea that we all possess that we should treat each other in this way for the sake of our you know safety and for the sake of those that we love safety it better because that's the whole force of my argument with you guys see what I'm saying is exactly what you just said guess what guys God created all of us with a conscience so innately although we don't have to obey our conscience
we have a free will and we can violate our conscience innately we do understand Wow respecting another human being is the right way to live and when I don't respect another human being hopefully I'm gonna still experience guilt well why is the conscience a part of the human experience it doesn't come from matter and energy this matter and energy has no ability to make a distinction between right and wrong justice it injustice it takes a thinking mind to understand right and wrong and if there's no thinking mind prior to the human mind then it's the
human mind that creates right and wrong which means it's all relative and you see you can't live that relativism out consistently especially you with a sensitive his conscience this you have and is really good of mind as you have and you I think you're in that category as well thank you I respect your conscience I respect your rational mind you know that you cannot live out moral relativism you know that you cannot look in the face of the murderer and say from my perspective murder is wrong but I understand that's just relative from your perspective
obviously murder was right I'm not right you're not wrong so you murder and I don't murder but it's all relative you can't live that way it breaks down doesn't it that's why we have a justice system in America that's why America which is not a like does not explicitly sponsor Christianity as its religion and is therefore not by definition a Christian nation it still has a justice system to create accountability we're in a primitive society there wouldn't necessarily be all right I have an appetite for food if I don't eat I'm gonna starve to death
that's a physical fact and if I don't sleep I'm probably gonna die as well all right that's a physical drive in order to live right and wrong are not physical get that woman on your left it's my wife she's a crazy woman cuz she's loved me now for 37 years now if I took an x-ray of her heart could I locate her love for me no if I took a blood test could I locate her love for me though no love is not a physical thing like eating food to continue my life like getting sleep
in order to continue my life it is very ephemeral very theoretical I argue it it's not good I think you're right love is not just a crapshoot it's an incredible ability that we have to care for another person no I'm arguing that it is not some sort of spiritual phenomenon or anything I'm arguing that love can be explained through physical processes that it could be explained through looking at human hormones and chemicals in our flight but just because it's explained as a process doesn't get to the origin of it right I mean I like if
we can go through an entire neuroscience lecture about it when I explain how the brain is affected by different hormones and how dopamine makes you happy okay and serotonin and all that and through these various combinations of chemicals I begin to condition yourself to have certain biological responses whenever you see people that you love so wouldn't you say that though that's irreducibly complex that because of how complex it is that it probably points towards a designer but I think part of what Voltaire said right was the watch and the watchmaker if there's a watch there
that's that complex that it points to a design if you see intelligibility you're gonna look for some intelligence behind it right I would argue that Golden Rule helps us get past you till Emma's because I'm a collection of atoms I think therefore I am and you are there a similar collection of atoms that thinks so if I murder you if I steal from you and I think that is right who is to say that it is unjustifiable to murder me or to steal from me and Golden Rule Golden Rule does attack racism it attacks stealing
it attacks cannibalism I wouldn't want to be raped I wouldn't want to be catalyzed I wouldn't want to be stole from therefore I will not do those things to other people and it seems that whenever countries have defied the golden rule that that has changed right like the u.s. used to own slaves now we don't anymore because no one would want to be a slave we had and the Bible was used to justify slavery right what the Bible was used to justify slavery by some people groups right I mean yeah but it was also used
to say it as wrong right but I've gone I'm not going there but that's not part of the argument right then I'm making okay I would say that we've we've come to we come together we've taken this concept of the Golden Rule and we have applied it to our morality and the golden rule came from Greek philosophers Christianity was not around when these people philosophers came up with the golden rule the Bible does not claim the golden rule sure it is a Christian value but it does not owe the concept of the golden rule okay
if I'm saying though that the Bible is making a lot of truth claims than their true and then I go out besides they everything else is false is that kind of narrow-minded of me yeah yeah so I'm gonna look at the Greek philosophers and those who reason whether it's Aristotle or Plato whoever it is I'm gonna look and I'm gonna study what they wrote and say does that align with the logic of the golden rule and if it does that's great I mean Aristotle he came to the conclusion that there is some creator behind this
creation or behind this existence yeah right the homosexuality the bisexuality and the bestiality all of those are still technically wrong today yes okay because that's not just the Mosaic law you go right back to Genesis 1 and to the good creation and we read in Genesis 2:24 for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother be united to his wife and the two shall become one flesh but I think the real issue of homosexuality today has very little to do with sex it has everything to do with freedom love and tolerance but I
would plead with you guys remember we're freedom love and tolerance come from they come from a God who loves you a God who created you with a free will and a God was giving you rights because you're intrinsically valuable and a God who is tolerant as Jesus bled and died on a cross he prayed Father forgive them for they know not what they do so what's so paradoxical is I live in a culture we live in a culture where people are really getting upset about the homosexual issue that the Bible speaks to fairly clearly and
they're getting upset and I think a lot of the emotions that are driving that is don't take away my freedom don't take away my love and don't you dare be intolerant well where does your idea freedom come from where does your idea of love and experience of love come from where does your understanding of tolerance why should we be tolerant of those who disagree with us it comes from God see if there is no God you're not free there is no God your complex biochemical reaction you're not free no God says you are free because
you're more than just a complex biochemical reaction you're a human being created in His image with a free will if there is no God love is a sex drive and you think she loves you she doesn't love you she just wants to have sex with you that's all it is and baloney Christ says that's false we have an ability to love each other to really care for each other which doesn't necessarily mean I want to hop into bed with you it means I want to work for your well-being because I care about you and when
you talk about tolerance tolerance is not saying oh we all believe the same thing baloney we don't all believe the same thing it's haughty disrespectful if you're an atheist or an agnostic or a Buddhist or a Hindu for me to say oh you know we really believe the same thing no we don't well so what is tolerance tolerance is we disagree but in spite of the fact that we disagree we still love and respect each other that's what tolerance is I don't tolerate you because you give me a hundred bucks I tolerate you because you
disagree with me and tell me I'm an idiot and I still respect you because you're a human being creating image of God even though we disagree I see so when he gets into this homosexual issue and we all get honked off over freedom love and tolerance and if you tell me that homosexual sex is wrong you're but you're denying my freedom you're denying my ability to love and you're denying my you're denying tolerance that's wrong because freedom love and tolerance mean nothing ultimately objectively if there is no God if there is no God were just
complex chemical reactions you call certain things loving you call other things unloving totally arbitrary just your taste like you prefer broccoli or Brussels sprouts just a taste you like rape or you like respecting a woman just a taste you like to cheat you like to tell the truth just a taste you'd like to be racist you like to respect all people remember if morality is relative it's just a taste friends guess what guys you can't live out your moral relativism because you have a conscience you have a rational mind you have the innate ability to
love yeah why cuz you're matter and energy evolve to a higher order give me a break are you trying to kid me you're a human being creating the image of God that's why you have a conscience that's why you have the ability to love that's why you have a free will and that's why you can be tolerant of someone who disagrees with you one of the reasons I enjoy reading the Bible is because of the brutal honesty of the authors in Psalm 73 the psalmist is clearly struggling with doubt he writes but as for me
my feet had almost slipped I had nearly lost my foothold for I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked they have no struggles their bodies are healthy and strong and me I'm losing I'm getting beaten up I'm sick and so the psalmist talks about how he began to envy the arrogant and be the wicked because they have no problems no struggles it seems like the Sun just shines on them and they prosper and succeed then he entered the sanctuary of God which is just a poetic way of saying he entered the
presence of God and in the presence of God God gave him an eternal perspective and the psalmist began to realize that in the long run evil will ultimately lose because there will be a day of judgment and God will destroy evil and then at the end of Psalm 73 verses 23 through 26 he comes out with one of the most beautiful statements and the songs when he writes yet I am always with you you hold me by my right hand you guide me with your counsel and afterward you will take me into glory whom have
I in heaven but you and being with you I desire nothing on earth my flesh and my heart may fail but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever the psalmist understood regardless of how much the wicked prosper and succeed regardless of how many people who try and do good fail and get beaten God is with us when we trust in him the witness of God is crucial now what I like about the psalmist is the way he dealt with his doubts he talked to God about his doubts he didn't suppress his
doubts he didn't sweep him under the rug and deny them he talked to God about them he prayed through his doubts that is crucial for all of us in handling doubt pray through your doubts talk to God about your doubts secondly realize that when you doubt what is happening is there is a competing belief that you are seriously entertaining that's a challenge to realize too many people think I doubt and that means I'm just doubting what I believe no you're not just doubting what you believe there's a competitive streak to doubt there's a competing belief
that is wooing you that is seeking your allegiance so figure that out analyze what is the option that is so attractive to me that I'm beginning to doubt what I believe the next step in handling doubts is understand and analyze both what you believe and the competing belief looking for problems I is a follower of Christ along with the psalmist struggle with why do innocent people get hurt so deeply it's not right it's wrong I don't know how many people have said to me in an outrage if God was really good and if he really
was loving and powerful he would not have allowed that evil tragedy to occur here's the problem although that is a problem there's a bigger problem and the bigger problem is if there is no God there's no basis for outrage if you see if there is no God a bigger problem with evil evil doesn't exist because if there is no God there is no basis for the distinctiveness between good and evil if there is no God there's no mind prior to the human mind who defines what is good and what is evil which means if there
is no God morality is relative and yet you can't live that out I can't live that out nobody can why because when you get married and your spouse hurts you verbally or by something they do it really hurts and you look them in the face and say you should not you ought not to have done that that was wrong no there's no such thing is really wrong it's relatively wrong you can't live that out neither can i why because you have a conscience and you have a rational mind and your conscience and your rational mind
inform you that certain things are right and other things are wrong and guess what friends evil is real evil is not just the construction of the Enlightenment even as evil is not just the construction of an ethicist on an Ivy League campus every single human being on the planet has a conscience which means we all are able to understand the difference between justice and injustice right and wrong good and evil and the only reason that evil really exists and the only reason goodness really exists is because there is a God who has defined what good
is and what evil is and you and I by exercising our consciences and our rational minds can tie into reality you struggle with doubts I struggle with doubts what you and I ought to do is when we doubt is examine alternately in other words learn to doubt your doubts learn to hold on to an accurate picture of God there are so many faulty assumptions floating around about God many people think if God is really good I should have a red carpet ride through life if God is really fair then all wicked people should lose those
are false expectations why because the all-powerful God has chosen to partially limit his power by creating us with a free will why did he do that because He loves us and he wants us to love him and love in order to be real must be free it cannot be manipulated it cannot be coerced and that is what why the cross of Christ is so powerful Jesus Christ bled and died on a cross offering you and me an option a gift forgiveness reconciliation with God and eternal life you and I don't have to accept Christ we
don't have to respond to his love positively we can be apathetic we can ignore him we can outright reject him or we can choose to trust in him I'm asking you isn't it time for you to move beyond alternative options to Christ because there are really big problems with every one of those alternatives isn't it time for you to put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ because the evidence is he really does love you he really is a good God give him a chance read the Gospels examine him carefully and then based on the
evidence of his trustworthiness put your faith in Him god bless you as you make that most important decision I'm the pastor of Grace Community Church we meet every Sunday morning at 9:30 at Grace farms which is located at 365 Luke's Wood Road New Canaan Connecticut I'd love to invite you to join us this Sunday for our 9:30 service thanks for joining us for these few minutes have a great day [Music] you
