"Does Everybody Really Need Jesus?"

Hi there, this is Lon Solomon and I'd like to welcome you to our program today. You know it's a tremendous honor that God has given us to be on stations all around the nation bringing the truth of God's word as it is uncompromising and straightforward. And I'm so glad you've tuned in to listen and be part of that. Thanks again for your support and your generosity that keeps us on the radio. And now, let's get to the Word of God.

We're glad you're here today. If you brought a Bible, we want you to open that to Acts chapter 17. We're going to be studying again in the life of the great man, the Apostle Paul. We'll be coming to Acts 17 in just a moment or two. Remember, the Apostle Paul is on his second missionary journey.

He's got three buddies with him. He's got Timothy, he's got Silas, and he's got Dr. Luke. They've crossed over from northwestern modern day Turkey across the Aegean Sea to the northern Greek town of Philippi. Here at Philippi, the Apostle Paul spent several weeks preaching. He established a small church and as a result of that, he split his team. He left Dr. Luke and Timothy here in Philippi to watch over this church. And he and Silas then continued the hundred miles south down the yellow streak that you see.

This is the Ignatian Way, the famous Roman road, down to the town of Thessalonica. As we saw last week in Thessalonica, Paul spent six months having a tremendously successful ministry with Jews and Gentiles there. But in the process, the unbelieving Jewish community there in that town developed a seething hatred for Paul.

And finally, at the end of six months, they succeeded in getting a mob together and running him out of town. Now that's where we left off last week, so let's pick up verse 10. Acts 17, verse 10. As soon as it was night, the brothers in Thessalonica sent Paul and Silas away for their own safety from this mob to Berea. And on arriving there, Paul went into the Jewish synagogue.

Back to our map, let's show you again what happened. Paul and Silas walked the 45 miles southwest from Thessalonica to the small town of Berea. When they got to Berea, they went into the Jewish synagogue as was Paul's custom. And in our next message, we're going to talk about what happened in the Jewish synagogue.

But what I want you to notice is verse 13. When the unbelieving Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God in Berea, they went there too. And they began agitating the crowds and stirring them up against Paul in Berea. And so the brothers in Berea immediately sent Paul to the coast to go to Athens.

Now you get the picture here, right? These opponents of Paul from Thessalonica, they hated him so much that running him out of Thessalonica wasn't good enough for him. They wanted to run him out everywhere. So they actually walked the 45 miles to Berea so that they could get a mob going there and run him out of that town, which they did. Now Paul refers to these guys and this whole experience in a letter that he wrote to the Thessalonians. Here's what he said, 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 1. He said, you know, you Thessalonians know that our visit to you was not a failure. For after we had suffered and been mistreated in Philippi, what happened to him in Philippi? Remember, he was beaten with rods and had the skin ripped right off the bone all down his back.

And then he was thrown in jail and chained to a ragged old brick wall all overnight. After that happened, Paul says, as you know, that didn't discourage us. We had the boldness to come speak the word of God to you.

We kept right on going, even amid strong opposition from your own countrymen. Those very countrymen not only drove us out of Thessalonica, but then they kept trying to hinder us at Berea from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved. But you remember that when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted, and this is exactly what happened. So far, remember now, Paul has been abused at Pisidian Antioch. This is on his first missionary journey.

He's had his life threatened at Iconium. This was on his first missionary journey. He was stoned and left for dead at Lystra on his first missionary journey. He was beaten to a pulp and thrown in jail at Philippi. And now, in both Thessalonica and in Berea, he's had mobs who wanted to kill him, flat running right out of town. And friends, I tell you what, before his career is over, there's a lot more of this kind of stuff coming to the Apostle Paul.

But in spite of all this opposition and all of this persecution and all of this hostility and physical abuse, the Apostle Paul, just like John Wesley, kept going and going and going. Now that's as far as we want to go in the passage today because it's time to ask our question. And you all know what our question is. So are you ready? Are you ready? All right, well, good. All right, here we go. Ready? Here we go.

One, two, three. So what? Right. You say, Lon, so what? See, I think this is really good, all this, and I appreciate what you're saying about Paul.

And I love the Energizer Bunny, but what difference does this make to anything in my modern life today? Well, we're going to try to make that connect for you. Now, Brenda and I recently were with another couple, and the lady we were with was expecting her third child. And so just to make small talk, I said to her, I said, well, when do you do? And so she said, well, I'm due in a couple of months.

And I said, oh, that's great. So, you know, to make some more small talk, I said, well, so do you have hard labors? You know, I've learned to ask that question from Brenda. Do you have hard labors?

And so I don't know anything about it, but I've learned to ask that. And so she said, well, they're not really all that hard, she said, but they are long, she said. And then she went on to volunteer this information. She said, you know, when they first take me in, I say, I don't need any help. I can do this by myself. I'm not taking an epidural.

I can make this. She said, but by the time we're like into 10 and 12 hours, I'm like, just give me the drugs. Now, I didn't think poorly of this lady for this, because I'll tell you, if men had to do this labor and delivery thing, the human race would have ended centuries ago. Men, am I right? Would we do this?

No, we would not do this. So we love and respect you ladies. But I'll tell you what, her comment reminded me of a very important basic truth about human nature.

And that's this, that none of us likes pain and that given the chance to avoid it, we will. That's human nature. Now, if that's true, it leads us to the first question we said we wanted to ask today.

And that's this. Why did the Apostle Paul and John Wesley, if they knew that by continuing to talk about Jesus Christ, all it was going to bring them was pain, why didn't they shut up? Why did they keep on talking? Well, that's a real good question.

And let me tell you what the answer is. The answer is because they believe something. They believe something so totally, so completely and so utterly that it drove them to a level of commitment that the world has rarely seen. And what was this something that they believed? I'll tell you, they believed that apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ, people cannot and will not ever be able to have eternal life. They believe that apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ, people cannot and will not ever step foot on the shores of heaven. And this is what the Bible teaches. This is the absolute bottom line of biblical Christianity, the conviction that apart from the redemption that God offers us in Jesus Christ, all people everywhere are alienated from God under the judgment of God and headed for a horrible eternity. They say, Lon, I'm really glad you brought that up, because you know what? I really have had some problems with this Jesus being the only way thing. So I'm glad you brought it up.

Well, I'm glad that you're here if you've had some trouble with this, because we're going to try to fix the problems that you've had here this morning. What does the Bible say about Jesus being the only way to heaven? Well, listen, John Chapter 3, verse 36, Jesus said, Whoever believes in the Son, meaning himself, has eternal life. But whoever rejects the Son will not see eternal life, for God's wrath remains, sits, rests on that person. Jesus said, John Chapter 3, verse 18, Whoever does not believe in him, that person is condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. Jesus said, John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one, no one comes to the Father.

No one gets eternal life. No one gets into heaven except through me. Now, let's stop for a minute and say, if you wanted to say something clearer than that, how would you do it? I don't understand how you can be any clearer than that. Nobody gets eternal life or into heaven unless they get there through me.

But we'll continue. First John Chapter 5. And this is the record, John writes, that God has given us eternal life. And where is where do we get this eternal life? This life is in his Son. He who has the Son has eternal life. And he who does not have the Son of God does not have eternal life. Philippians Chapter 4, verse 3 says that followers of Christ and only followers of Christ have their names written in the Book of Life. And then Revelation 20 tells us that if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, that person was thrown into the lake of fire. And all of this is why Acts 4-12 says salvation is found in no one else other than Jesus Christ, for there is no other name under heaven, not Buddha, not Confucius, not Muhammad, not Rabbi Schneerson, not Joseph Smith, not Mary Baker Eddy. There is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we can be delivered. Friends, this is the unapologetic, unequivocal position of the Word of God. Now you say, well, Lon, you know what? I got some real heartburn with this position and I got some real objections to this.

Well, I'd love to hear. Okay, Lon, objection number one is why would a loving God be so mean, so cruel, and so unfair? Well, friends, just asking a question like that shows that spiritually we've got the emphasis on the wrong syllable, if you understand what I'm saying, because the problem is we're in a predicament as the human race.

Let me explain our predicament to you. Romans 5 verse 12. Therefore, sin entered the world through one man, Adam, and death came in through sin, so death therefore passed on all men. The Bible tells us that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, that they brought a flaw on the entire human race. It's called our sin nature.

It's like a defective gene that we're all born with. And look at Romans 5. What it says is the result of that defective gene is that every one of us is born with death. We're born, first of all, Ephesians 2 tells us, spiritually dead. We're born disconnected from God. We're born alienated from God. We're born separated from God. And then the Bible tells us our predicament is if we don't fix that while we're here, we go into eternity separated and alienated from God for an eternity like that.

We have a predicament. Now, God in His mercy made a solution. God in His mercy made an escape plan. And that's what the blood of Jesus shed on the cross is all about.

That's the escape plan for the people who'll embrace that and trust it. But friends, listen, if a person rejects the escape plan, if a person spurns God's way out and decides to take their chances on the justice of God, and then they end up experiencing the judgment of God, is God unfair because they decided not to take the way out? Is God unfair because He enforced the penalties He warned them about and they refused to take the escape plan?

No. You say, well, then I got another objection, Lon. My second objection is what about people who never heard about Jesus Christ? I mean, how can God hold them responsible if they never heard about Jesus Christ? Well, the Bible addresses that. It says Romans chapter 1 verse 20, for since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, meaning His eternal power and His divine nature, have been clearly on display so that all men are without excuse.

You say, what does that mean? Well, what the Bible is telling us is that as you and I look around at creation, as we look around at our natural world, as we look at trees and stars and our own human body and the complexities of our human body, we ought to be smart enough to figure out that there's a creator God somewhere, that we didn't make this. Nobody we know knows how to make all of this. There has got to be a God somewhere. And when we do that, the Bible makes it clear that God then takes it on Himself as His personal responsibility, whether you live in the jungles of Africa or the jungles of South America or the Muslim world or the communist world, doesn't matter where you live, God takes it on Himself to make sure He gets information to you about Jesus Christ so you can take the next step. You say, all right, Lon, well, then I got another objection, and that is let's say a person looks around the natural world and acknowledges there's a God.

Okay, good enough. But the closest religion to them is Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Shintoism, animism, whatever. So what if they then, instead of waiting to hear about Jesus, they embrace the closest religion to them, they start seeking God sincerely to the closest religion to them, won't they be okay?

Friends, the answer is no, no, a thousand times no. Didn't we hear what Jesus said? He said nobody gets eternal life unless they get it through me. You say, well, then I got one final objection, and that is if these people seeking God in Buddhism, in Hinduism, in Judaism, in Islam, if they're sincere, why doesn't God just credit them with the blood of Jesus? They don't have to know about it, but God can just honor their sincerity and credit it to them. Well, friends, God can do whatever He wants, but He says in the Bible this is one thing He doesn't do.

He doesn't do this. Listen, Romans chapter 10, verse 9. The Bible says, if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, not if we confess with our mouth that Buddha is nice, not if we confess with our mouth that Muhammad was a prophet, not if we confess with our mouth that Joseph Smith saw an angel or Rabbi Schneerson thought he was the Messiah. If we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, the verse continues, and if we believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, then, and might I add, only then will we be delivered. And what this means is for people to complete the deal. What this means is for people to access God's escape plan.

Look at this. They've got to confess Jesus is Lord. Now, to confess He is Lord, they've got to know something about His virgin birth, His sinless life, and His deity.

They've also got to believe that God raised Him from the dead. To do that, they've got to know something about dying on the cross, His bloodshed for our wrongdoing, and His resurrection. People have got to have cognitive data about Jesus Christ before they can do what Romans 10 says and activate the escape plan. And what that means, dear friends, is that the reason the apostle Paul, remember our question, kept going, and the reason that John Wesley kept going, and the reason they put up with the abuse and the treatment that they got and the suffering, is because they knew that there was no other way for all of those poor people they were touching in their lives, there was no other way for these people to ever have the chance to go to heaven, to ever have the chance to access eternal life, that those people needed data. Those people needed information about Jesus Christ. And unless they gave it to them, they had no way out of their predicament.

That's why they put up with the treatment they did. That's why they put up with the pain they did, because they believed that people's souls were worth whatever price they had to pay. And listen, friends, if there were another way to get to heaven and through Jesus Christ, then every missionary who ever went overseas wasted their life. If there's another way to get to heaven other than Jesus Christ, then Billy Graham and Mother Teresa are fools. If there's another way to get to heaven other than Jesus Christ and the man who stood on the streets in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and allowed people to spit on him and ridicule him and yell obscenities at him, all so he could tell me about Jesus Christ, he's an idiot. And if there's other ways to get to heaven than Jesus Christ, then may I say that John Wesley and the Apostle Paul were buffoons to put up with what they put up with.

But they weren't buffoons. Billy Graham and Mother Teresa are not fools. The man who stood on that street corner was not an idiot because we know something's true, and that is Jesus said, No one will ever see eternal life or heaven unless they see it by means of me.

Now, that being true, we have to ask our second question, and that is, well, what difference does this make to us living here in the 21st century? Friends, what all this means for you and me is that apart from Jesus Christ, every single person you and I pass every day, every person we pass on the metro, every person we pass in Starbucks, every person we pass in the hallway at work or in the hallway at school, every one of these people is separated from God, under the judgment of God, headed for a disaster when they go into eternity. And it also means that the only hope these people have is for us to lovingly open our mouth and give them the data they need to get out of their predicament. Now, we all know there's a price to pay when you do that.

We all know that. I mean, it may just be ridicule at work. People laughing at us or ridicule at school. It may be ostracism. Some people don't want to be around us anymore. It might get more serious, and sometimes it may cost us a job opportunity or a job that we've got or actual persecution on the job. Sometimes family, when we share with them, don't want anything to do with us anymore, don't want to talk to us anymore.

Friends break off their friendships and don't want to be around us anymore. There's a price to pay when you open your mouth for Jesus. We all know that. And what that means is that the only way we're going to do it, the only way you and I are going to be willing to pay that price is if we believe utterly, completely, and totally exactly what Paul believed, exactly what John Wesley believed. And that is that whatever price we have to pay, it's worth it because these people don't have any other chance. They don't have any other opportunity. All their good works won't do it. All their religious activity won't do it. All their sincere new age seeking of God won't do it. They can look at crystals and go, um, the rest of their life. And it's not going to get them any closer to heaven.

Even recycling won't do it. We know that. And because we know that and we care about the souls of men and women, that's the only reason you and I are going to pay that price. Because if we don't really believe Jesus is the only way to heaven, we'll never open our mouth.

We won't. Now as you leave here today, what do I want you to leave with? Well, I want you to leave with two things. Number one, I want you to leave with an absolute confident conviction that Jesus is just not a way to heaven. Jesus is the only way to heaven. And the second thing I want us to leave here with is a willingness to do what Paul told Timothy. Do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord. Friends, listen, sharing Jesus Christ is the apex. It's the climax of the Christian experience.

You take sharing Jesus Christ out of the Christian experience, you don't have the Christian experience. We can study the Bible all day long. We can memorize Bible verses all day long. We can pray all day long. We can fast once a week. But if all of this doesn't issue out in a willingness to open our mouths and share the Lord Jesus with people, then we have missed the whole point.

We missed the whole thing. May I close by saying that if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, I hope you'll understand two things from being here today. Number one, you're in a predicament.

And number two, God's made a way out. It's free. It's easy. You don't have to go look for the golden fleece. You don't have to do a bunch of religious activity.

It doesn't cost a thing. And you can access it right where you sit here this morning. Now we're going to give you a chance to do that because I don't want anybody to walk out of here without having the opportunity to access the escape plan. And so would you bow your heads with me and would you close your eyes? And if you're here today and you're willing to access God's way out, then all we're going to do is we're going to have a little prayer.

We're going to do that right now. And I'm going to ask you to pray along with me silently, one phrase at a time, right where you sit. Let's ask Jesus Christ into your life and let's get this escape plan operative in your life.

So if you're willing to do that, here we go. You just pray silently right after me. Lord Jesus, I come to you today because I understand that I'm in a predicament. I also understand that in your mercy you made a way out for me. And so today I invite Jesus Christ to come into my life. I'm willing to trust what he did on the cross for me as my only payment before you for all my wrongdoing. Come into my life today and forgive my sin. Grant me eternal life and secure me a place in heaven. I embrace you today as my Lord and my Savior in Jesus' name. And Father, I want to pray for the folks who prayed that prayer that you would confirm in their hearts right as they sit here that a great transaction has taken place, that they've passed from death, as the Bible says, into eternal life. And we thank you, God, for having made a way out. Thanks for the people who took advantage of that today. And the rest of us here who have already done this.