Jesus Loves Terrorists - Part A

We're not saying that Jesus loves terrorism. We're not declaring that Jesus loves crime or murder or prostitution. We are declaring that Jesus loves people who sin. Even if that sin is the worst kind of atrocity that you can imagine, God still wants to reach people and save them.

Terrorism is a very real threat in our world. And today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip considers how you can respond to it biblically. But first, we want to share about where you can hear even more biblically solid teachings from Skip. Watch Connect with Skip Heitzig on the Hillsong Channel on Saturdays at 4.30 p.m. Mountain Time.

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Now, we're in Acts Chapter 9 as we dive into the teaching with Skip Heitzig. In February, a man was shot in Syria. He was a 32-year-old member of the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State, ISIS.

It happened in Syria. He was riddled with bullets, shot and presumed to be dead. But Christian missionaries found his body and carried it about 15 miles to give him a decent burial. They thought he was dead.

He wasn't dead. This 32-year-old ISIS terrorist had always believed that if he died in the cause of jihad, he would have immediate entrance into heaven. But he said that in that state between unconsciousness and consciousness, during that time, he said he was carried off by the jinns.

Jinns are demons in Islamic theology. And the demons carried him to the brink of the fiery pits of hell and told him that he would have to relive all of the pain and all the atrocities he committed on people while he lived on the earth. He would have to relive the decapitations, the beheadings, the pain inflicted through the eyes of his victims. Just then he said in that same state, God spoke to him and told him that if you were to die right now, you would not enter my heaven. And if you choose to die, you will not go to heaven. But if you choose to live, he reports, God said, I will give you another chance to repent and follow my true way. He awoke from that state taken by Christian missionaries and he gave his life to Christ.

That happened in February of this year. I wanted to begin with that story because of the title of this message. What kind of a title is that? Jesus loves terrorists.

What kind of a topic is that? Most people, that's an abhorrent thought to them because terrorists have inflicted more damage on this planet and the inhabitants thereof than just about anything else. So where do we come off saying Jesus loves terrorists?

We need to make a distinction in this whole series but especially today. We're not saying that Jesus loves terrorism. We're not declaring that Jesus loves crime or murder or prostitution. We are declaring that Jesus loves people who sin. Even if that sin is the worst kind of atrocity that you can imagine, God still wants to reach people and save them. And we need to make that clear. Listen, I struggled with this. I was not looking forward to preaching a message on Jesus loves terrorists because when I hear these things that go on in our world overseas, my blood boils.

And I remember after the Twin Towers fell in New York City that I was on site for three weeks assisting on what they called the pile, pulling body parts out of the pile and going to the morgue in New York City, different morgues to be with family members identifying a victim as a relative. That does something to you. That tweaks with your mind. So as we turn to Acts chapter 9, we have to make the affirmation that nothing is too hard for God to do and no one is too lost for God to save. As Jesus put it, the things that are impossible with men are possible with God. We have in Acts chapter 9 the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. It's the conversion of a terrorist. He terrorized the early Christian church. But he became saved. He became converted. The radical became an apostle. The chief antagonist became the chief protagonist. The chief opponent became the main proponent for the gospel. The adversary became the advocate.

Saul of Tarsus will become Paul the apostle. It is one of the most monumental conversion stories in all of history and probably certainly the most dramatic in all of the Bible. It's so dramatic that even the apostle himself years later said, even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, yet I obtained mercy. This terrorist obtained mercy. We're about to read about it. Now as we do, as we come to Acts chapter 9, there are three discoveries we need to make about terrorism.

Three pieces to a very complicated puzzle. An issue that affects us today and affected the early church back then because what we have here in the story we're about to read is a terrorist who terrorizes in the name of religion against the Christian church. Does that sound familiar? Does that sound contemporary?

That's because it is. What happened then is being repeated today in so many places. So here's the first discovery.

Here's the first puzzle piece. Terrorism is a reality. It's the most obvious truth but it must be stated.

Terrorism is a reality and it is becoming a growing reality. In Acts chapter 9 verse 1, we read, All still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus so that if he found any who were of the way, that's what Christians were called then, believers were called the way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. So we open up the story and we discover this man named Saul of Tarsus who is absolutely obsessed with persecuting believers. It became the very air he breathed. He's breathing in and out murders and threats. He's fixated on it. He is preoccupied with it. And if you follow his story or if you know it, you discover that this man had a seed of hatred and anger that is fueled.

It seems to grow as the story goes on. We first really read about him a couple chapters back. In chapter 7 of Acts, you can look at it in verse 58. Stephen is being martyred. He's being stoned to death. And the perpetrators of the crime we are told in Acts 7 58 lay their clothes down at the feet of a young man named Saul. He watches it happen. He's on the scene as the first martyr is dying the death of stoning. Then we come to chapter 8 verse 1 and it says, And Saul was consenting to his death. So please get the picture. He's saying, Amen. Yes, this is right.

Do this. Throw another rock. Then the story goes on. Two verses later, Acts chapter 8 verse 3, Saul made havoc of the church, entering into every house and dragging off both men and women and committing them to prison. The word havoc is a very strong word. It was a word used to describe a wild boar trampling a vineyard.

Rampaging through a garden. It was the same word used of an army devastating a city laying it flat, laying it waste. Something has happened in the psyche of Saul of Tarsus where a seed of bitter anger grows and grows until we open up verse 1 of chapter 9. And Saul still breathing threats and murder. In other words, he's been doing it and he's still doing it.

Not only is he still doing it, he's obsessed with it. He's so obsessed with it that he's not content with just containing the terrorism to Jerusalem. He wants his murder show on the road. He wants to go on a mobile jihad. He asked for permission to travel 160 miles north of Jerusalem to the city of Damascus where there is a significant Jewish enclave of believers in Christ. He wants to strike while the iron is hot.

He's still breathing out this noxious air of terrorism. Saul reminds me of Mustafa from Yemen. As a young man, Mustafa became radicalized and subscribed to a very radical form of Islam. And as soon as he became radicalized, he immediately went out and burned a church down to the ground, a church in his village. And the Christians who attended that church, he stole what they had. His rationale was this, quote, I was filled with hatred for Christians.

Christians have no rights, end quote. Very similar mentality to what Saul of Tarsus was doing, though he was doing it with a Judaistic bent, seeing Christianity as a cult that needs to be stopped. So was Mustafa, but in a different religious framework. So terrorism in the ancient world was real. And you could go further back. You could go all the way to the Old Testament.

There are numerous atrocities that are written about in those eras. And some worse than others, one of the most notable were the Ninevites. You remember the city of Nineveh? Remember the prophets sent to Nineveh? Who was the reluctant prophet who didn't want to go to Nineveh? Jonah. God had to get his attention, right?

You know the fish story. Because he didn't want to go there, and he didn't want to go there for the very reason God wanted him to go there. He said, go to Nineveh and cry out against it, listen to what God said, for its wickedness has come up before me.

There is a level of atrocity and wickedness that God said, I notice and I want you to proclaim judgment. Here's what's interesting about Nineveh. Ancient Nineveh is modern day Mosul in modern Iraq. It is one of the centers of the Islamic State. In the last year they have taken over Mosul, Nineveh.

And it's almost ironic, it's almost perfectly fitting, because ancient Nineveh was known for its atrocities. Couple of Assyrian kings like Ashurbanipal or Tiglath police, both of them were known for doing things like pulling off the hands of their victims. Pulling them, yanking them off the arms of their victims. Pulling off the lips of their victims. Flaying them alive, that is skinning them alive. And then piling up great piles of their skulls in front of the gateways of Nineveh. Like trophies of those they had beheaded. So that was going on then and we move to the New Testament and we find that Jesus was put to death by Rome through crucifixion.

Which is nothing less than state sponsored terrorism. Crucifying victims to bring terror and fear to strike a shutter into the hearts of anybody who would see such a vicious act. Not only that, did you know that there was a movement in Judaism to counteract the Roman occupation. They were known as zealots. I know you read your New Testament but I wonder if you know what zealots are. They were first century political terrorists.

They were sworn to overthrow the Roman government in their region by violent means. What's fascinating about this is Jesus picks one of them to be on his staff. Simon the zealot became an apostle of Christ. So he brings one of them as one of his apostles. What's humorous about that is that another one of his apostles was Matthew the tax collector. And history tells us that zealots killed tax collectors because they worked for Rome.

So what a volatile staff combination. It's like Jesus had his own mini jihad wherever he went just in his apostles. And then we come to Saul of Tarsus who terrorized the early church breathing out threats and murders against them. So we know terrorism is a reality, always has been to some extent throughout history and it is today. However, we have only recently in this culture, in this country come to realize it. It really was September 11, 2001 that was a wake up call. It was for us the introduction to the knowledge of terrorism. It has become seared into the collective consciousness of America. We woke up that day to realize there's a lot of people that don't like us and have an agenda against us and our country, the West and even Christians in particular.

It was indeed a defining moment. And that form of terrorism is not subsiding, it is on the increase. You know in the last year, you know how many people were killed last year by terrorism alone?

Almost 18,000. The stats that I read 17,958 people killed by terrorists in one year. 82% of them happened in five countries and I'll give them by the list of frequency of atrocities. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Syria.

82%. In the last seven years from 2006 to 2013, 130,000 people were killed by terrorists. Now it does need to be said that not all terrorism is Islamic and not all Muslims are terrorists. There are moderate Muslims, there are peace loving Muslims. We would call them moderate, we would call them they are theological liberals in Islam. They don't really hold to the teachings, the traditional interpretations. We would see them on the liberal side of their theology and they would shun terrorism.

However, having said that, if you go to the literature of Islam itself, the Quran, the Hadith, Sunnah, you discover that it clearly states that heretics are to be killed. And that goes back 1400 years to its beginning with Muhammad the Prophet when Christians and Jews were seen as heretics and the way it was birthed, Islam spread largely accompanying the killing of both Jews and Muslims. In fact, it's interesting, I was in Iraq a couple months ago and I'm speaking with all sorts of people on this issue and a couple of them who are scholarly said, this is what we have noticed. Most of the people in our culture in Iraq, most of the Muslims are just cultural Muslims. They're Muslim because they were raised Muslim, sort of like people there, I'm Christian because I was raised Christian.

They're really not in their heart believers. But he said, these people in this country, they've never read the Quran, they're illiterate, they don't read. So when all these atrocities started happening with ISIS, they wanted to find out what do we believe in. So they would have people who could read, read the Quran to them. And he said, now what they're realizing is that Muhammad was Islam 1.0 and ISIS is Islam 2.0.

It's the same thing that 1.0 was just in a modern setting. And they're coming to grips with a belief system that having now understood it, a lot of them don't want to be a part of it. But ISIS in particular, the Islamic State, has a stated goal to annihilate Christians. We are standing in the way and the West is standing in the way to their objective of global conquest. Terrorism is a reality. Which brings us to the second component, the second puzzle piece, second discovery about terrorism. It demands a response. Terrorism demands a response. What is the response to terrorism?

It's a complicated question. What should our response be? It's the question right now being dialogued on news channels across this country every single day. What is your response to it? I wonder how you personally feel about it. I believe we need to differentiate between two different responses.

Hear me closely on this please. That is, we have to make the distinction between our individual response as a believer and our national response as a culture. Two different issues. Our individual response as a believer, our national response as a culture.

It is the job of the state to protect its citizens. It is the mandate of the Christian to love all people and forgive even our enemies. But both of them are reality. This is important because whenever this discussion is raised, someone will invariably take the pacifistic position, the total pacifistic position, and they'll quote the Sermon on the Mount. And the Sermon on the Mount quote is in Matthew chapter 5 verse 38.

Jesus said, You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you not to resist an evil person, but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. Now Jesus said that, and I believe that, and you believe that. But listen, that is not a foreign policy statement. That is a personal strategy statement.

That's not a national policy, that's a personal policy. He's speaking to kingdom dwellers and telling them how they are to respond to their world. Why is this important? Because a century and a half ago, a very famous book was written that still influences people today called War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist. And he read the Sermon on the Mount and those two verses that I just quoted became the seminal idea for the book War and Peace. And Tolstoy called for the elimination of military, the elimination of the police force, the elimination of courts, the elimination of judges.

Why? Because those are the people that resist evil in society. Again, however, Jesus wasn't giving a foreign policy statement, but a personal strategy statement. If we were to take that position that Tolstoy advocates, we are essentially giving a permission slip to every thug who walks the earth to do whatever they want. Go ahead, walk all over me.

I'm a doormat. Do whatever you want to our culture. That's why we need to make the distinction between the individual response as a believer and the national response as a culture. That's Skip Heitzig with a message from the series Jesus Loves People. Now we want to share about an exciting resource that helps you understand why Jesus' resurrection is so vital for your faith. The aftermath of 2020 has left so many of us wrestling with questions about the future and wondering, what's next?

Here's Skip Heitzig. That's a question, by the way, that people ask anytime there is a catastrophe, any kind of catastrophic event causes people to ask the question, what's next? If there's a car accident that happens, well, what's next? I'm going to be able to walk after this. If a disease strikes someone, what's next? Am I going to be cured? If somebody we love dies, we ask, what's next? Am I going to be able to go on? We want to help you live with confidence no matter what the future holds by sending you a powerful collection of Easter weekend messages from Skip Heitzig on the hope of the resurrection.

Anything's possible. If the one who said he's going to die and rise again died and rose again, that means all of the promises Jesus ever made are possible and can come true. That's why it's called The Living Hope. The Morning That Changed Everything with Skip Heitzig is a DVD collection of six life-changing Easter messages, and it's our thanks for your gift of $35 or more today to help connect more people to the living hope of Jesus Christ. To give online securely, visit connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. God is using the generosity of friends like you to reach people around the world with His love and truth. Listen to this letter one person sent in. I listen most mornings to Skip Heitzig. I love his messages. They always inspire me and are very clear and easy to understand. That is why I give.

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Thank you. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig examines the conversion of a terrorist, demonstrating the great love God has for all of us. It's not the church's job to stop oppression. It is not the church's job to stop persecution. It is not the church's job to stop terrorism. It is the church's job to preach the gospel and accept the consequences of preaching the gospel. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His Word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.