A Deliverer is Born, Part 1

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You can find out more about Ravi Zacharias and the team at www.rzim.org. And our leaders seem to show such little regard for wisdom and common sense and all that goes on around us. When people are hired by the highest echelons of power in order to try to block out one worldview in particular, what do we do?

How do we respond? Who among us will stand for Christ when the powers that be stand against him? Hello and welcome to Let My People Think with Ravi Zacharias. Every generation since the resurrection of Christ has had someone to stand up and proclaim the gospel.

Some are names left to history while others are names with which we are intimately familiar. But who will speak the gospel to the current and coming generation? Today part one of a message from Ravi that he's titled A Deliverer is Born.

I want to read for you a scripture and give my message to you tonight, calling it A Deliverer is Born. In Hebrews chapter 11, we are reading about Moses and beginning from verse 23, it says, By faith Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict. By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God, rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of even greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith he left Egypt not fearing the king's anger. He persevered because he saw him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood so that the destroyer, the firstborn, would not touch the firstborn of Israel. By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land, but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell after the people had marched round them seven days. And he goes on to tell the story, and it ends with the verse, They were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.

God had planned something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect. Many of you know the name of J. Sekulow, who is a lawyer and fights for all kinds of religious rights, especially for the Christian. And in one of his most recent mailings, here's what it said. Did you know the U.S. military keeps briefing soldiers at bases across the United States that evangelical Christians and members of the Tea Party are extremists? Did you know these briefings warn soldiers not to join or donate to these Christian or conservative groups, or they could face punishment? Did you also know that the military has been consulting with an anti-Christian extremist and bigot to help formulate its own policies regarding religious freedom?

It's hard to believe, but it's true. The American Center for Law and Justice is taking action defending Christians and demanding action to stop this anti-Christian propaganda in the military. It's past time for us to send a clear message to our leadership. Christians are not extremists, and anti-Christian bigotry has no place in our armed forces join our new petition. When I read that, I thought to myself, yep, I know this is happening, because I've been to some of our military colleges and bases. And in one instance, without going into which particular one, some of my team members are familiar with it, the question went right up to some senators who are going to block my speaking at this particular academy. When I went to Guantanamo Bay very recently to speak, and the Navy had invited me, and the commander and so on were behind it and were able to allow me to come in there, there was a battle on their hands. And the man who's mentioned in this particular memo, who has been a consultant to the Pentagon and so on, you've probably seen him on television, filled with hate, filled with hostility, trying to do everything to just expunge Christianity and its memory from this country.

And he's a vitriolic, hateful man, but just goes for the jugular. In this room is one of my colleagues, her name is Ruth Malhotra. Ruth is just recently joined over the last few months, and she went to one of the finest institutions in the country. When she joined, she came to talk to me after coming in as I was meeting her for the first time.

Actually, I was so surprised to meet her because I'd known her father for many years, was a professor. And she told me when she was attending this university, a professor teaching on a completely different subject decided to keep mocking the Christian faith. So she put her hand up and she said, I don't understand it.

I don't understand why you're doing this, got nothing to do with the subject. And for her response, he sent her to the dean. So she goes to the dean and asks him, why am I here? He says, because you're interrupting with the class, you're really coming in the way of what the professor is trying to say.

She said, I'm not coming in the way, I'm not in any way trying to interrupt. She said, I'm just wondering why he is attacking that which is so sacred to me and my personal faith and so on. He looked at her, he said, don't you know you are here for an education? She said, but this is not education, this is indoctrination. He says to her, and listen to this, he said, no, no, no, no, no, you've got this all wrong. For 18 years at home under your parents and family, you have been indoctrinated.

Now we are going to give you an education. What does an 18 year old do when the dean of a prestigious institution has the audacity to tell you you've been indoctrinated by your family, we're going to clean all of this stuff out. In the London Telegraph of this week, there's an article sitting on my desk in my room here about why David Cameron has decided to invite the Islamic mullahs and the Islamic sheiks and all of that, and allow them to invest in England to the tree tune of hundreds of millions of pounds under Sharia compliant law.

It's the first time it's ever happened, and he hosted it in England in order to make it possible for them. And I can tell you this, I know exactly what the sheiks are doing when they go back to their rooms, licking their chops and thinking to them, under this huge banner of supposed liberty and freedom, the Western culture is systematically being decimated before our eyes. When our leaders seem to show such little regard for wisdom and common sense and all that goes on around us, when you cannot ask a professor why he is mocking things that are sacred to you, when people are hired by the highest echelons of power in order to try to block out one world view in particular, what do we do? How do we respond? And as I was reading the scriptures and pondering of people like Moses, my message tonight is entitled A Deliverer is Born.

You see, we can very easily get cynical in all of this stuff. Elie Wiesel, for example, talks about a man who went into town and was constantly speaking and preaching. First people would listen to him, then they would start to laugh at him and finally they ignored him. And when they ignored him, he just stood there continuing to speak and a young boy came up to him and said, you know, once upon a time they heard you, then they laughed at you.

Now they're ignoring you. Why do you keep speaking? And the prophet in Elie Wiesel's little story says, once upon a time I spoke and preached and shouted here, hoping to get people to listen to me. And he says, now I still keep on speaking. I still keep on shouting and I still keep on proclaiming so that I don't become like them.

That's cynical thing. It's all gone. Your audience is gone, but he's going to keep speaking so that he himself doesn't end up so indifferent. Years ago when I was starting out my ministry, I read these words. When I was young and bold and strong, right was right and wrong was wrong. My plume on high, my flag unfurled, I rode away to right the world. Come out you dogs and fight, said I. And wept, there was but once to die. Now I'm old and good and bad.

I'm woven in a crazy plaid. A battle won, a battle lost, a battle won is the differences from small my son. The world rides and says to me, inertia rides and riddles me, the witch is called philosophy. And as I look at the story of philosophy and see exactly what it is that people have done in our thinking, that a battle lost, a battle won is the differences small my son. Inertia rides and riddles me, the witch is called philosophy. I sit and say the world is so and he is right who lets it go.

Is that right? Do we just let it go? When you see what philosophy has done, when you see what has been done to the Christian worldview, when you see what is being done to the Judeo-Christian faith in this lifetime of ours, I ask myself three questions and that is this. What happened? What went wrong? How do we get to the right way again? How do we turn things around? And I look at the word of God and I see three distinct issues made very clearly and questions that were asked that made the difference right from the beginning, the questions that are being asked even till this very day.

The first question is this. Did God really say? Has God really spoken?

Isn't that the question of all questions? Is this really what God has revealed to you and me? Is this propositional truth in conformity to what actually is? Did God really say? That was the first temptation. Did God really tell you not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? He said yes because he told us in the day we do this we will surely die. Then comes the second question.

Not really. And so the question comes to my mind. Did God really say there's a day of reckoning? Is there a day of reckoning? Did God speak? Is there a divine demand? Did God give a caution?

Is there a day of reckoning? And finally, when Cain is about to kill his brother, it's amazing what God says to him. He said, you know, if you do what is right, won't you be accepted? But if you go and do what is wrong, sin is crouching at the door. It desires to have you and you must master it.

What a picture he paints. The first rejection of God's law was sin in itself. Now as you make wrong choices, the sinful frame of mind takes over almost like a crouching animal desiring to have you. Do you think a person who walks into a house of prostitution doesn't know he's being bought? He's being had for an hour of pleasure and years and years of maybe regrets and destruction?

Do you think people who get into these kinds of things don't know? But you know, the more wrong choices you make, the more dangerous a web you build and you get trapped in there. Sin is crouching at the door. It desires to have you and that personification of a clutch like thing closing in on you. And the end of the book of Genesis talks about a nation that is now living in slavery under a demagogic empire at the time of the end of the book of Genesis. In the beginning, God. And so Joseph died and is put into a coffin. Creation, death, and then the enslavement. All of a sudden in a tiny little home, a deliverer is born and here's exactly what happens.

Pharaoh is trying to kill all of the male children. And here two women who are midwives who really had the conviction of the sanctity of life decided they were going to find a way to protect these babies. So you have really five things in play here. Number one, the conviction of two women on the sanctity of life.

Imagine that. The pharaonic power is threatening them. And these two simple women see the sacredness of a little life and they're going to take a risk. Number two, you see the commitment of a mother who looks into the eyes of that baby and says, I'm going to protect you. I'm going to take care of you.

I'm going to make sure you are not destroyed. So you see the conviction of two women, midwives, the commitment of a mother, the compassion of an onlooker, which is really Pharaoh's daughter who's out there, the cleverness of a sister. Do you notice what's happening here? Two midwives, a mother, a young woman as an onlooker and another young woman as a sister. Anybody who ever has questions of women in ministry, that's a good place to begin. These women right from the start are really coming together in all of their efforts to help this deliverer to be born. I don't know where the dad is. I don't know where all these men are.

They're involved in the killing process. And these women of faith, young, old, veterans, mother, they are coming together under the creative sovereignty of God to protect this little boy because in him God was going to frame and blueprint a deliverer for his people. If you ever doubt the sovereignty of God in the calling of you and me to ministry, read the lives of these boys. Read it again and again.

Joseph, Daniel, Nehemiah, and here you've got Moses. And what happens at the end of it is this. You begin to see the heart of God, how he sovereignly rescues this man. Now I want to give you about a one minute theological lesson in what I see as the philosophical difference between the world that is hostile to the things of God and the teachings of the scriptures that are so profound.

I just spend this writing it out for the first time a couple of days ago. Where there is freedom, there is the possibility of love. Where there is love, there is a possibility of pain. Where there is pain, there's the possibility of a savior. Where there is a savior, there is a possibility of redemption. And where there is redemption, there is a possibility of restoration for the purpose for which you and I were created. So where there's freedom, there's possibility of love.

Where there's love, there's the possibility of pain. Where there's pain, there's a possibility of a savior. Where there's a savior, there's a possibility of redemption. Where there's redemption, there's a possibility of restoration and starting life all over again under the purposes of God.

In this simple thing, you see the very purpose and the heart of God. Now begins Moses' journey. Next step, he refuses.

He refuses to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter and the place of choices really begins. What is it he's giving up? He's giving up one thing, the comfort. He's giving up the second thing, a carefree life. The third thing that is moving him constantly is the compulsion to do what is right. Now first he goes about trying to bring about redemption by being a hero all himself and taking care of the boys who are torturing them. And then he's trying to settle a dispute between two Hebrews and he realizes he's in trouble and he flees in order to find a hiding place somewhere in the desert. And when he's gone, God is working away at him, chipping away at him, working away at his ego and taking away the self-centeredness and the solidity of his own strength to break him down.

That ego needs to be broken, that ego needs to be shattered somewhere in the core of your soul and your being. You and I need to come to terms with the fact that God could have given this task and this privilege to anybody else. And why does he choose you?

Why does he choose me? Why does he take a meager little boy growing up in Chennai, India and come into his life on a bed of suicide at the age of 17? God in his unique way, in his extraordinary way, comes into lives to break down their egos and make them recognize this is about him.

This is really not about us. It is critical that we know it in this time. The entire edifice of evangelical Christianity came crashing down in the 1980s when television evangelism took on big, big money, big fame, big popularity. I well remember as a starter out then, going to the book conventions and seeing all the big names, some of them sitting on gold looking thrones and signing their books.

People literally coming down wanting to touch their hand and all the money that went into it, millions and millions and millions. And it shattered the simplicity and the sublimity of the gospel and made big icons out of those who were called to be servants in the kingdom. See, John Wesley preached 40,000 sermons in his life, 250,000 miles by horseback, 15 different languages, hundreds of pieces of literature. At the age of 83, he's averaging about 14 sermons a week.

In the age of 86, he's complaining because he's not allowed to, that he's having a hard time waking up before 5.30 in the morning for his time of prayer or somewhere in the early dawn. John Wesley became a hero to me. I read his biography, read his book, read his journals. And my first time I went to London, I said, I want to see his home. So I went into Alders Gate and there outside the church, I saw the words where he was attending the service where the preface to the book of Romans by Luther was being read in those immortal words he writes, my heart was strangely warmed. I went to the Wesley house there and walked through. There are robes of Wesley. He was not a very tall man. At the back, there's a monument there that's built. And it just simply says this, sinner, if you feel constrained to praise the instrument, stop and give glory to God.

If you feel constrained to praise the instrument, stop and give glory to God. Robert Jaffrey, who was one of the great missionaries from the denomination from which I come, you know, mastered the Chinese language and knew Chinese so well that the Standard Oil Company in New York that was going to be based in China ordered Robert Jaffrey tons of money. He turned it down. They doubled up the offer. He turned it down.

Finally, they wrote to Robert Jaffrey and said to him, Jaffrey at any price. He wrote back one line, your salary is big. Your job is too small. Your salary is big. Your job is too small. My calling is not for a big salary. My calling is for a massive job that God wants us to accomplish and to bring about the deliverance of people in whose paths we cross. And I say the breaking of the ego is the first thing that God wants to do in your life and mine.

As Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, took all of the comforts and all of the carefreeness and wants to move on where God wants him. That concludes this week's episode of Let My People Think. But if you would like to purchase a complete copy of this message, give us a call at 1-800-448-6766. You can also order any of our resources online at rzim.org.

Or if you're listening in Canada, please use the website rzim.ca. We hope this message has inspired you to proclaim and think deeply about your faith. If you're interested in a deeper level of training that will encourage and equip you, RZIM Academy might be worth considering. This online training curriculum is designed to help individuals become better equipped to respond to the people around them who have sincere questions or honest objections about the Christian faith. Join the thousands of others who have taken this programme and are better prepared to effectively respond to neighbours, co-workers, friends and family on life's biggest questions. Also, 99% of course participants say the programme has changed the way they evangelise to their communities. With interactive assignments, lectures from our global RZIM team and strategic lesson plans, RZIM Academy teaches you not only how to answer the question, but the questionnaire.

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If you'd like to learn more about RZIM or discover ways in which you can partner with us, be sure to call us at 1-800-448-6766 or visit our website at rzim.org. Hello everyone, it's Abdu Murray with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and I'm excited to tell you about my book, Saving Truth, Finding Meaning and Clarity in a Post-Truth World. You know, I wrote this book because I began to see something as I went from campus to campus or venue to venue all across the world. That people were living in a post-truth culture. That's a culture that elevates feelings and preferences over facts and truth. So we don't deny that truth exists, we simply say, truth is there, but we don't care.

I wrote the book to equip us. How can we actually respond with truth to a culture that denies that it's important? And how can we get people to see that they're living in a post-truth way?

Well, I wrote the book so that people can actually answer questions on what truth really is. What freedom is really all about? Is there a difference between freedom and autonomy? Is there clarity to be found amidst all the confusion on sexuality and gender? Do science and faith conflict? And what about multiple religions? Are they all equally valid? Are they all equally invalid? Or is it possible that one, the Christian faith, has concrete answers to the exclusions of all others? These topics and more I talk about in Saving Truth. So if you're interested in knowing how you can equip yourself or speak to someone on the importance of truth in a post-truth culture, Saving Truth is for you. Let My People Think is a listener-supported broadcast that is furnished by RZIM in Atlanta, Georgia.