A New Life In Christ

This is Darren Kuhn with the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we search the ancient paths to find ways that God brings light into a dark world and helps set men free from the struggles that we all face on a day-to-day basis. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it.

Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Do you feel like you're on a religious treadmill? Do you feel like Christianity is just a system of rules and regulations?

I can do this, but I can't do that. Do you feel like your efforts to reach God, find God, and please God are futile? Do you feel like your faith is dead or alive? Today, Pastor Russ Andrews will walk us through Scripture to answer these questions. Join us on Finding Purpose, glorifying God by helping men find their purpose for living.

For more information and to connect with Russ Andrews and Finding Purpose, you can visit us online at findingpurpose.net or connect with us on Facebook. Now let's listen to Russ Andrews as he teaches us how to be a Christian without being religious. Well, good evening, men. Let's get the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you, Lord, for this night. Thank you, Lord, for your many blessings.

Lord, we love you and we thank you that you first loved us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And you want all to come to faith. You want no one to perish. You want us all to know you personally that we might be assured that we have eternal life. And Lord, that's my prayer tonight. If there's anyone listening here or somewhere out yonder over the Internet, that you will, that they will hear you speak to them, that they will hear you calling them, come follow me, and they'll be willing to leave everything behind and follow after you. Senor and I pray.

Amen. Today's message is a new life in Christ. Second Corinthians, chapter five, verse 17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old has gone.

The new has come. We're going to take an in-depth look today at what it means to have a new life in Christ. And by the way, this new life in Christ is the best life there is.

And I want you to experience it if you're not. So take your Bible and open up with me to Luke, chapter five. We're going to be looking at verses 17 through 39.

Open your Bibles and follow along with me so that you can make sure that what I'm saying lines up with scripture. And in front of these verses, I want to show you, I want to show all of you, I want you to see how the Christian life in essence progresses through four stages. Stage number one, the forgiveness of sins by Christ. Stage number two, a commitment to follow Christ. Stage number three, this new life to live in Christ. Stage number four, a personal relationship with Christ. So let's take a look at this first stage, the forgiveness of sins by Christ.

Beginning with verse 17, follow along with me. One day as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem were sitting there and the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick. Some men came, carried a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay in before Jesus.

When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd right in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, friend, your sins are forgiven. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy, who can forgive sins but God alone? Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say your sins are forgiven or to say get up and walk?

But you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He said to the paralyzed man, I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home. And it says immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, we have seen remarkable things today.

Wouldn't you like to have witnessed that? I want you to know that there are many very different religions in the world. Christianity, which I really don't consider religion, but according to Webster it is. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Atheism is a religion.

And the list goes on and on and on ad fanatum. Most of us, if not all of us who are listening right now, have not been influenced by these competing religions of Christianity. However, there's a more dangerous and subtle religion that's affected nearly all of us. It's called Churchism. What is Churchism? Well, Churchism refers to the tradition of belonging to a church, attempting to be a good person by living a good moral life. In other words, being a good citizen, obeying the golden rule. And then expecting, anticipating that you're going to heaven and somehow in the back of your mind, even if you don't say this, you believe you deserve it. Well, I believe this is the religion of the vast majority of the people that you and I know who attend all the mainline denominations. A good example of this, all this slightly different because the church had not come into existence yet, were the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who were constantly trying to trap Jesus with their questions.

Do you know why they're trying to trap him? Because they've been blinded by the God of this age, and they did not believe the truth that Jesus was the Messiah, the promised anointed one of the Old Testament, the very Son of Man who was prophesied in the book of Daniel. And these religious leaders believe that if they kept all the man-made laws of the Mishnah, which if you're not familiar with that, it was a book containing all the oral traditions of Judaism that had been passed down from one generation to the next, and they believed that if they kept all these laws, and there were like 6,000 of them, there were Ten Commandments, remember that? Well, they added all kinds of laws to these Ten Commandments. They believed that if they kept these religiously, that they would be in right standing before God, with the one exception of Christianity.

This is what all the religions of the world put forth, that if we work our way, that we can work our way into God's favor by simply obeying some laws, doing a list of things, following tradition, that we will be also in favor with God and belong to Him. Grant Kesselberry, who's our minister here, gave a great sermon recently in which he described the Mishnah, so I'm quoting him here. He said, during what is called the intertestamental period of Israel's history, that's basically between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. This is the period between when Ezra returned to the land. Remember they'd been in exile in Babylon, and if you go read Ezra and Nehemiah in the Old Testament, you'll learn about this.

They returned to the land to rebuild the city walls and rebuild the temple. That was in 436 B.C. Between that period and the time of Christ, during those 400 years, a great distortion of Judaism began to be advanced, which centered on an extreme form of legalism and works rather than grace and truth in God. What they did, they added all types of laws and regulations to the Mosaic law. This is called the oral tradition. It was passed down orally, and at some point it was written down in this book called the Mishnah. It was burdensome, hypocritical, and toxic.

It was all about externals rather than internals, because it did not address the issue of the heart. One of the main areas of the Mishnah addressed the Sabbath law. Remember the fourth commandment? God said, remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy is to be a day of rest. In other words, everyone was to rest on the Sabbath and to remember all that God had done and spend time with him. This would be a day of worship and rest. All these laws turned it into a burdensome day, because you had to worry about breaking some stupid law, and they were stupid.

I'll give you some examples. In the Mishnah, they added 39 prohibitions to just this one Sabbath law. For example, you were not allowed to walk on the Sabbath more than 2,000 cubics.

That's about 3,000 feet, a little bit more than half a mile. You were not allowed to kill the insects on the Sabbath. To kill an insect was the same as killing a camel. Women were not allowed to look in the mirrors on the Sabbath. Do you know why?

Because they thought if you looked in the mirror, you would see a gray hair, and you would pluck it out, and they called that work. You were not allowed to carry an item larger than a dried fig outside your house. That's just a few of them.

Can you imagine trying to keep up with all that? True Christianity, men, is a matter of the heart. It's not rules to obey and traditions to follow. The problem with churchism, listen, is that it is a religion.

It is a religion, it's a man-made religion that's focused on the external to the exclusion of the internal. This is why God told Samuel, man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at what? All he cares about men is our hearts, because what's in the heart is what comes out of the mouth, is what's in your mind, and what you think is what you're going to act upon.

It's all a matter of the heart. So Luke is telling this incredible story about one day, we don't know exactly what day it was, but it was one day while Jesus was teaching in what became known as his hometown, the little town of Capernaum, which sits on the Sea of Galilee. I had the privilege of going there back in 2018, and it's a beautiful little town that's partly new and partly old. And it's right there at the edge of the Sea of Galilee, and they've got a beautiful view of the sea. I remember we stood right there at the water's edge and looked out over that sea, and in that place where Jesus had walked. So Jesus was there in a house. Some people speculate that he was there so much, it was actually a house that he was staying in.

So people, can you imagine if you had Jesus in Raleigh that the house wouldn't be packed? And so it says that everybody in the town came there, including Pharisees and religious leaders from all over Israel, including Jerusalem. Do you know why they came? They were always trying to catch Jesus in a trap. They came for a showdown, and there was literally no room for anyone to stand.

Mark tells us that you couldn't even get in the door. And all of a sudden, according to Mark's gospel, everyone looked up and Jesus stopped teaching because they all heard a sound coming from above. And what was happening, these four friends who had a paralyzed friend, they were trying to get him in there to Jesus and they had heard that Jesus could heal. And if he was healing and they couldn't get in the front door, so you know what they did? They climbed up on top and they began to remove their tiles.

And all of a sudden, a hole appears. And everybody looks up and they see this bed coming down and they lowered it right to the feet of Jesus. And everybody watched because they knew what was happening. People were looking at Jesus, the paralyzed man, and all these religious leaders sitting around in their clerical columns in robes.

And there was an anticipation in the air. Scripture says that when Jesus saw their faith, the faith of the five, the paralyzed man, and that they all believed that Jesus could heal. Because of their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, friend, your sins are forgiven. Do you know what Jesus was doing? He was throwing down the gauntlet.

He knew what the Pharisees were there for. This phrase, throw down the gauntlet, I researched it. It's a challenge to confront someone. The word itself comes from a French word that referred to the heavy, armored gloves worn by medieval knights. In an age when you had chivalry and personal honor were paramount, throwing a gauntlet at the feet of an enemy was considered a grave insult that could only be answered with personal combat. And the offended party was expected to take up the gauntlet.

So basically it was that glove that they wore. And you would take it off and throw it down in front of somebody that you despised or that you had a problem with. And it was an insult. And you were challenging him to a duel. And then if he picked it up, he's taking up the gauntlet.

He's accepting the challenge. Jesus threw down the gauntlet in front of these religious hypocrites. When he said, you see, by claiming that he could forgive sins, Jesus was basically saying, I'm God. He's claiming, I am the promised Messiah.

I am the Son of Man. And they were thinking to themselves, why does this fellow, they called him fellow, no respect, he's a rabbi. In their eyes, at least he's a rabbi, he's a great teacher. They said he's blaspheming.

They're getting their thinking that's not talking out loud. And they were thinking, who can forgive sins but God alone? And so Jesus began to show right here a subtle demonstration of his deity. He says that knowing what they were thinking, he said to them, why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say your sins are forgiven or to say get up and walk?

But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He looked at that paralyzed man and he said, Son, friend, take up your mat and go home. And that's exactly what the paralyzed man did.

Immediately he got up, he picked up his mat and he walked out. Now can you imagine, they couldn't get in so they had to part like the Red Sea and let this man out who's just been healed. He probably was leaping and it says he was praising God. Jesus not only demonstrated his authority, but he gave living proof of his deity, in essence. He said, I am God. Do you know Jesus never really used those exact words, I am God? But do you remember when he stood before the Pharisees in John chapter 8 and he says before Abraham was born, I am?

He was usually the name that God used in the Old Testament. I'm going to tell you something, men. You better believe that Jesus is God if you ever want to see heaven. The problem with religion, you know what the problem with religion is?

It works to blind you. Satan has done a masterful job of blinding millions of people in our country and all around the world through religion. They sit there and they think that they're saved, but they don't have a relationship. Now listen, I'm not their judge. I'm just telling you what I believe to be true. They sit there and believe they're saved and yet they don't have this relationship with God. These Pharisees fail to see Jesus for who he really is, God in the flesh. This is the same problem many religious leaders in our country have today. I'm talking about the men and women in the pulpit.

They fail to see Jesus for who he really is, the son of man, the son of God, Emmanuel, God with us. I know a minister here in Raleigh who believes that all good Muslims and all good Jews are headed for heaven. In other words, he said it like this. I read the letter that he sent to his congregation. He said, I believe that when we get to heaven, he said, I believe that all good Muslims and good Jews and good Christians are climbing the same mountain. And when we get to the top, we realize we're just taking a different path that we're worshiping the same God.

I've got news for you. Allah is not the God who created the universe. The Bible says, as I'll say in a minute, that in the beginning was the word. I know another minister here in Raleigh who does not believe in the doctrine of the new birth. In fact, what he said, I listened to his sermon more than once. I took five pages of notes on it, and I ended up confronting him in a Zoom call. I've told you about that before.

I don't want to get back into that. But I heard him point blank say that Jesus never told Nicodemus, you must be born again. Even though it's written right there in John chapter 3. He twisted scripture by saying that the word is translated above, which it is, but it's also translated again. Nicodemus understood it because he said, how can a man enter his mother's womb a second time?

That's the point. There are two births, your physical birth and your spiritual birth. If you're only born once, you will die twice. But if you're born twice, you only die once. Do you believe that?

I'm willing to stake my life on it. Jesus is God. As God, he's the only one who can forgive us of our sins.

He was claiming to be God when he said your sins are forgiven. And this is the first stage of the Christian life. In this stage, you must recognize two things. Who Jesus is, God in the flesh and who you are, a sinner in need of forgiveness. You have any problem with that one?

I don't, with me. Let's go to the second stage, a commitment to follow Christ. Picking up now with verse 27. After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. Follow me, Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples. Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners, God forbid? I mean, give me a break. Jesus answered them, I love this verse right here.

It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Tax collectors were the most detestable people in Jewish society. They were basically agents working for the Roman government. Their job was to go out and collect taxes from their fellow Jewish brethren. Most of them were fraudulent in their dealings. What they did, they collected more than the tax bill was. If you owed them $10,000, he'd tell you you owe $20,000, he would give the Roman government $10,000, where did he put the other $10,000?

In his pocket. So they became rich, and they were despised. They were worse than a leper. Matthew, by the way, Levi, his name is Matthew. But I'm going to be referring to him as Levi tonight because that's what Luke calls him. Levi was one of them.

He was a good-for-nothing tax collector. And the text says, look, that Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting in his tax booth. This word saw means more than just see physically. It means that Jesus carefully and deliberately examined Levi. I believe the same way he examined the thief on the cross. He could see Levi's heart. Levi must have been wondering, what do you want with me? And he probably was stunned when Jesus said, Levi, follow me. Levi got up, left everything, and followed Jesus. What do you think it means that he left everything? According to Kent Hughes, who's the great commentary that's in your lecture notes, it does not mean that he never returned to get his affairs in order. What Luke is emphasizing is that he made a decisive break from his old way of life and began to follow Jesus from that point forward. And guess what? He followed him all the way to the end of his life when he was martyred.

That's called leaving it all behind, including your own life. And then he gave us this wonderful book, The Gospel of Matthew. What did Levi do next? He decided to throw a party. He invited all of his friends, including a whole lot of tax collectors, and they came to his house where he offered food and beverage. Why did he do this?

Because he wanted everybody to know the one that he knew. Listen, there's no more joyful occasion, no more reason for celebration than the salvation of a man's soul. And I don't think we really fathom how great it is. The Bible says it's a great treasure that if you discovered your backyard, you would go and take all the money you had to buy it. Bishop J.C. Ryle had it right when he said, It is a far more important event than being married or coming of age or being made a nobleman or receiving a great fortune. It is the birth of an immortal soul. It is the rescue of a sinner from hell. It is a passage from death to life. It has been made a king and a priest forevermore. It has been provided for both in time and eternity.

It is adoption into the noblest and richest of all families, the family of God. Do you realize if you are in Christ that everything I just read from Ryle is true of you and true of me? We've been adopted by the Creator of the universe, and we belong to Him, and we walk around so often like we just don't even realize it.

A lot of you all don't look real joyful tonight. This is the way we should feel about our salvation. So let me ask you, have you ever had a party and invited everybody over and told them that you're following Jesus?

Let me ask you this. Have you ever shared with a single soul that you're following Jesus? Jesus says if you're not willing to acknowledge Me before men, I will not be willing to acknowledge you before My Father is in heaven. But if you acknowledge Me before men, I will acknowledge you before My Father.

How would you like to step through death's door and you're standing right in front of Jesus, and He says, He belongs to me? Did you know that if you have your salvation, it's greater than the cure for cancer? There are people right and left dying of cancer.

But what we have is far greater. If you were cured of cancer, would you keep it to yourself, would you stand on a mountaintop and announce it to the world, I've been cured of cancer? Well, when your soul is cured of sin and you stand before God righteous and holy, we should shout that to the entire world. I heard tonight from George Cunningham that he's had three friends recently, two over Christmas, whose 20-year-old sons committed suicide. It's an epidemic.

I did the funeral service of a 23-year-old a few years back who committed suicide. You know why they're committing suicide? Because they don't have hope. Do you know why they don't have hope? Because we're not telling them about Jesus.

When a man knows Jesus, it's a game changer. Jesus answered them after they said, Why do you eat and drink with tax collection centers? Listen, they were standing out on the sidelines. They wouldn't even come into Matthew's house.

Do you know why? Because he was a Gentile and they did not want to be polluted. So they just stood on the outside and then they grumbled to the disciples. Instead of rejoicing over the fact that just recently a man was healed, the paralyzed man, they're grumbling that now that Matthew is eating with sinners.

And Jesus answered them, It's not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Do you know why this is one of my favorite verses in the Bible?

It just shows you how much God loves sinners. Being a Christian is not about being religious, but about having a dynamic, alive relationship with Jesus Christ. You've been listening to Finding Purpose with Pastor Russ Andrews, glorifying God by helping men find their purpose for living. You can discover more about finding your purpose in life by checking out the resources at findingpurpose.net or connect to Finding Purpose on Facebook. Pastor Russ would also like to extend a special invitation for you to join him and over 300 other local men to study God's Word together every Tuesday night at 7 p.m. in downtown Raleigh. Find out more at findingpurpose.net