The Intolerance Of Tolerance, Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. We actually believe in absolute truth. We believe that there's a clear distinction between righteous acts and sinful acts. But that's not the way our culture sees it at all. Our culture says, and you hear this often, we are intolerant as people. Because if you were tolerant, you'd accept every form of behavior and every possible belief.

And because we are viewed as intolerant, the solution that the culture has used that prides itself on tolerance is we tolerate everybody but them. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. Last week, I spoke about how America has changed and that we now live in a post-Christian culture in America. And the reason for that, I went to Romans 1 and because, like almost any country, because America didn't acknowledge God at all, God gave him over.

And he actually just gives a country over to its own wishes. And there were three stages of that. But today, I want to talk about how does that show up in our lives and what's going to happen in the future to us in this country. And about five years ago, I read a book by D.A. Carson, a great book. The book is entitled The Intolerance of Tolerance.

And Carson does a masterful job in the book. And when I say tolerance, I mean tolerance in this way, to allow or permit or to respect someone else's belief. The postmodern America, post-Christian America, it prides itself in tolerance. That's probably the number one value that America holds as a country now.

I don't mean individually, but as a country. Tolerance. And so the whole idea is that we tolerate everything in our country. All opinions have equal value. All world views have equal worth. And all stances are equally valid. That's our culture.

Now, there's a problem with that. We're Christians. And so we don't share those values. We actually believe in absolute truth. And so because we believe in absolute truth, we believe, for example, that Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross is the only hope for mankind.

That's what we believe. We believe that there is a clear distinction between righteous acts and sinful acts. But that's not the way our culture sees it at all. Our culture says, and you hear this often, we are intolerant as people. Because if you were tolerant, you'd accept every form of behavior and every possible belief. And because we are viewed as intolerant, the solution that the culture has used that prides itself on tolerance is we tolerate everybody but them. We are intolerant of those who we say are intolerant. Now, that doesn't even make any sense.

But it doesn't have to, because that's the way our culture is. It's sort of like a college professor who's pounding the desk and saying, I'm telling you, there's no such thing as absolute truth. But isn't he assuming what he just said is absolutely true? I mean, isn't that exactly what he's doing? He's saying nothing is absolutely true except what I'm telling you.

And if I tell you there's no such thing as absolute truth, well, you see where I'm going with that. And the intolerance in America for us has started probably back in the 50s and 60s. It's just that we're seeing it coming to a fruition. There's always been an intolerance in the university system in the country. And you see this more and more all the time. There is a growing but consistent intolerance in media. There is a complete intolerance for us in the entertainment industry, which you're seeing now. And now for the first time, we're beginning, we're just beginning to feel the intolerance of our governments. We're beginning to feel that as people. Paul Nyquist said, get ready, an exciting yet terrifying era is beginning for American believers. As cultural changes sweep our country, we'll soon be challenged to live out what the Bible says about confronting and responding to growing persecution. Christianity Today said most persecution in our country is not violent.

Instead, it's a squeeze in five spheres of life, private life, family life, community life, national life, and church life. That's what's happening. And this intolerance of our culture for us has been showing up for a long time but in different ways.

There's progressively different steps. The first way they showed their intolerance for us was stereotyping. Stereotyping is through the media, making Christians look in a particular way. If you can remember, there's an old movie made about the Scopes Trial in Tennessee about evolution and creation. It's a great movie, but if you watch the movie, Christians are viewed as intolerant, ignorant, and anti-science. And they said that movie had a profound effect on the people at large in our country because they saw that. An older movie that I have really liked over a lot of years was a movie called Jeremiah Johnson with Robert Redford in it. And I really liked the movie. He was a mountain man, but there was only one horrible person in the whole movie, a preacher.

He was the worst person in the movie by miles, hateful, intolerant, judgmental. In other words, they stereotype us. Second stage is they marginalize us.

That's happening right now. What I mean by marginalizing is this, you can have any private belief you want. We're more than happy to accept any private belief you want, but you have no right to make that belief public.

You cannot make your belief public. You see, and that's what's happened in our culture. In fact, I heard somebody say at the beginning of the process here with the latest Supreme Court nominee that no judge in our country should be a person of any faith at all because if they say they're a person of faith, that means it skews all of their judgments. That means they're prejudicial.

That's amazing. It's just the whole idea of marginalizing. You can believe anything you want. Just don't tell anybody. Thirdly, even intimidation.

Over these last several years, you've heard this. Both Christian and Catholic hospitals have been intimidated by saying to them, if you want to stay to be a licensed hospital, you must do abortions. I don't care if you're a private hospital.

I don't care if you're Catholic. You must do abortions. Same idea. Privately, you can believe one thing, but publicly, you have to be something else. Now, what's just beginning in our country is litigating. It's now becoming laws.

I think you're going to see more and more and more and more of those in the future. But my problem with all this is a problem with us. I want to say this morning, this should not be shocking to us. And yet, I find Christians shocked, just seems so shocking to us that this is happening. This has been the normative Christian experience for 2,000 years. Open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 10.

I'll show you one right in the beginning. Matthew chapter 10 and verse 16. Please understand the context is different, but the intolerance is the same. Jesus Christ is the Messiah of what country? Israel.

Okay. Jesus is going to send out his disciples to what country? Israel. So, the Jewish Messiah is sending out his disciples to the nation of the Jews.

That's the context. But the nation of the Jews are intolerant of Jesus' disciples. So, he says in verse 16, Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. He says, but beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts to scourge you in the synagogues, and you will even be brought before governors and kings for my sake as testimony to them and to the Gentiles. Now, this is strange because not only can they be scourged in a Jewish court, but he said you're going to be hated so much that the Jews who hate the Romans will send you to Roman governors so that they can persecute you. He said that's what's going to happen to you. This is before there even is a church.

Down to verse 22. He said you will be hated by all because of my name. That's a fact.

Now, he's telling Jewish disciples as the Jewish Messiah that in Israel you'll be hated by all because of my name. That's a fact. That's just the principle. And the rest of the scripture is amazing with it.

Just a few examples. In Mark 6, John the Baptist tells Herod's son, Herod Antipas, what you're doing is wrong. The lifestyle you're living is wrong.

The woman you're with is wrong. He was beheaded for that. You see, that's real persecution. Several times the Jewish people and their leaders, angered by Jesus' message, tried to seize Jesus and kill him. In fact, it's in Luke 4, Luke 13, John 5, John 7, John 8, John 11. Jesus spoke the truth to them.

They hated him so much they wanted to seize him and kill him right then. Peter and the other apostles all through the book of Acts are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned. Acts 4, 5, and 12. Right in the beginning of the church. The first Christian converts living in Jerusalem were forced out of Jerusalem and had to live in other lands.

That's Acts 8. All 12 of the disciples were persecuted. 11 of them were martyred. And John was exiled on the island of Patmos. The apostle Paul suffered almost every kind of persecution imaginable. Five times he was beaten with 39 stripes.

The reason they used 39 was 40 would kill a man. So I want you to understand what this was. It was just tearing the flesh off of his body. Five times. Three times he was beaten with rods. He was run out of time.

He was often cold and hungry, according to 2 Corinthians 11, without any clothing. Persecution has always been part of it. Jesus says the world will hate you. Why? Because it first hated me.

And if the world hates Jesus, who is the perfect human being, what kind of chance do I have that the world is going to just love me? I want you to see something. Go with me now to Acts chapter 5. The persecution of the apostles.

And here we're going to see an example is how should we deal with it? It says then in verse 40, they took his advice and after calling the apostles in, they flogged them and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus. So they got the flogging. That's not a good day.

It'd be excruciating. And they told him, that's it, no more, no more, he said, speaking in the name of Jesus, and then they released him. So they went on their way, he said, from the presence of the council, and then that word, rejoicing, that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for his name. So their reaction was what?

Was it like ours? What's our reaction? Whining.

We whine about this. They rejoiced. They said, hey, these people hate us because of the name of Jesus.

That's a wonderful thing. And every day in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus is the Christ. See, what did persecution do to the early church?

Absolutely nothing. It had no effect on the early church at all. In fact, they are rejoicing that they're being flogged and persecuted. History, ever since the time of the Bibles, let me just give some stats since the Reformation, the last several hundred years. Between the years of 1540 and 1685, the Roman Catholic Church martyred 1.7 million believers. They executed them. 1.7 million believers executed ironically by the church.

In France, St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, 3,000 Protestants were executed in one day. In the 17th century, Japan made Christianity illegal. They expelled all the missionaries, and they executed every convert they could find.

The next hundred years, in the 18th century, China did exactly the same thing. The French Revolution in 1789 outlawed Christianity. The clergy were either banished out of France or killed. Churches were desecrated, and every semblance of Christianity was removed. The Ottoman Empire, we've all heard of that, has a long history of persecuting Christians. In 1915, 105 years ago, they killed in that one year 2.7 million Christians, executed them. In fact, estimates of the total deaths of Christians under the Ottoman Empire, 50 million were executed, 50 million.

The Russians had the Revolution in 1917. They actually made all of the churches, everything about the church, illegal. They confiscated all the property, and then anyone who was found to profess Christ was executed. You see, if you read history, let me tell you what's very, very, very unusual for Christians or believers the last 200 years in America.

That is very, very unusual. Not like any other time, any other place for any other people. So for 200 years, we have had freedom. You see, we have had this freedom in our country.

We have had acceptance, and it's changing, and it's going to continue to change, but it doesn't change what our reaction should be like because it's very different. What I want to say is this. You might be surprised at the source of the persecutions. I want you to turn with me to Philippians chapter 1. Philippians chapter 1 and verse 29. And this is a weird verse if you think about it.

Here's what Paul says in verse 29. For to you, that means you and me, it has been granted. That's a great word. It has been granted for Christ's sake. It's been granted. Now, when God grants you something, doesn't that sound like a gift to you? God says, I'm going to give you a gift. I'm going to grant something to you.

Oh, this is going to be good. He says, it has been granted for Christ's sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for his sake, experiencing the same conflict that you saw in me and now here to be in me. God says, I want to grant you something. I want to grant you the ability to be persecuted and suffer for Christ's name. It's a gift of God. It doesn't seem like one, does it? Not to us. But God has good reason for it.

We're going to look at a few of those right now. See, I want you to see the truth of this. The first one, let's go to Romans 5. Romans chapter 5.

He starts out in verse 1. He said, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's great. Isn't that great?

I mean, that's what happens with the gospel. Don't we all love this? I am now justified before God.

So are you. I'm declared righteous and I have peace with God. I have eternity as my future and so do you. This is good stuff. We like this stuff.

But then he says down in verse 3, he said, and not only this, we also exalt in our tribulation. The word exalt, maybe I have to use another English word, celebrate. We all like to celebrate, right? We celebrate birthdays, holidays, especially New Year's Eve. We all celebrate. We love to celebrate. Well, that's what he says right now.

He says, notice, he says this. We celebrate in our tribulations. When's the last time you've celebrated in your tribulation? A celebration. Wow, this is really a, let's celebrate.

You see how far this is from us, the way we think? How could anyone celebrate during this pandemic and all of the repercussions? He said we exalt in our tribulations.

Why? Knowing that the tribulation brings about perseverance and perseverance proven character, and proven character brings about hope. In other words, persecution and suffering shapes your character. God says, I can use this to make your character better.

Now, I know what you think. You think, like most American Christians, I like prosperity better. Just make my life as healthy and prosperous as possible, and every day without any bumps, and then I'll be good. And God would say, and you won't. John Ortberg said this. He said, God isn't at work producing the circumstances I want. God is at work in bad circumstances to produce the me he wants.

That's what happens. It shapes your character when we're persecuted, for all of us. Now, back to Philippians 1 again, right where we were. Back to that same chapter, Philippians 1.

The second thing that suffering and persecution brings us. Verse 12. Paul says, now I want you to know, heat brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, so that my imprisonment is the cause of Christ to become well-known throughout the whole Praetorian Guard and to everyone else, and that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear. So Paul says, look, I want you to know something. Now, they all know, where is Paul? He's under arrest. He's being guarded under house arrest in Rome by the Praetorian Guard.

At this stage, he has no idea if he's going to live or die. This is great. This is really good. Because, he said, I can produce the gospel. And we realize from the rest of the scripture that apparently some of the Praetorian Guard even became Christians because of Paul being in prison.

But he said, there's more to it than that. He said, in verse 14, and that most of the brethren trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment have far more courage now to speak the word of God without fear. In other words, the persecution and suffering I'm experiencing reveals my courage and grows other people's courage. In other words, when our culture persecutes us, the best of us, hopefully the most mature of us, handle it with real joy like the early apostles. That will encourage all the rest of us to have the courage that we need.

So it not only shapes our character, but it reveals and grows our courage. Music You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called OnePlace.com. That's OnePlace.com and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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That's fbcnola.org. At our website you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word. .