This teaching is a second of five in a series entitled, "Daughter's Welcome" by the Reverend John W. Howe of Truaux Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia. The title of this teaching is, "What about those who have never heard of Christ?" We left off last time with the challenge to consider the evidence, the evidence in particular of the Christian gospel. and I left the almost last comment was that if you consider that evidence, if you really take a good hard look at it, I believe you'll be driven to one of three logical conclusions. It seems to me, in fact, there are only three intelligent conclusions to which you could come about this person, Jesus of Nazareth.

One is that he was a blasphemer, That he knew perfectly well that he was no more God incarnate than you are, or than I am. That he knew perfectly well that he was a man just like any other man, perhaps more charismatic, perhaps dynamic, and able to do certain things that were impressive, but in the last analysis, another fellow human being, and in fact a sinful one by any absolute standard, in spite of which fact he perpetrated a lie, a falsehood. That he knew the truth, but he was deceiving his followers.

That, however kindly you want to treat him, is blasphemy. That is one logical possibility. That he knew that what he claimed about himself was nonsense, was a lie, but he said it anyway.

Another possibility is that he, rather than being a deceiver, was himself deceived. that he thought he was God, but he wasn't. Now that's a fairly large error. If you came in here and said, I am God, we probably, rather than getting angry at you, we would probably pity you.

You would probably be a very ill person. We've had instances of people who have claimed to be God, and for the most part, we try to treat them psychiatrically today. The third possibility, and I really think it's the only other one, when you come right down to it, is that he was precisely who he claims to be.

See, he's either right or he's wrong. And if he's wrong, he's either sincere or he's insincere. If he's sincerely wrong, then he is sick.

He's a subject for treatment and he deserves our help. If he's insincerely wrong, he probably deserves our condemnation because what in fact he's perpetrated is such a radical distortion of the truth that he got what he deserved in the last analysis. I want to look at that just a little bit more carefully, because you may very well follow that line of reasoning, but nonetheless say, well, what is the evidence to be considered?

And that's a transition to the question that we want to deal with tonight. What is the evidence? And it seems to me that there are three basic kinds of evidence.

They're very much related to each other. You cannot consider one part without the other. And the first, and the obvious, is his character.

I think if you were to take a survey, a hundred people that you meet in the street at random, and say, what do you think of Jesus of Nazareth? The overwhelming answer would be, he was a moral giant. He was a good man.

He was a great, charismatic, moral leader. Many of them would have serious question about whether or not he was divine. but they would acknowledge the high character of this person.

His closest associates went much farther than that. Peter, who was in many ways one of the very closest of his associates, and you'll remember that Peter, in a moment of weakness, three times denied that he even knew this man at his trial, but then came around afterward, was strengthened, and toward the end of his ministry he made a summary statement that in a very real sense speaks for all of the apostolic community. He said in his first letter, Christ left you an example that you should follow in his steps.

He committed no sin. That's a very strong statement when you stop to think about it. He committed no sin.

I mean, how many people in the history of the world can you think of whose closest associates would say that of them? Mohammeds never said that of him. He never claimed that of himself.

Okay? He committed no sin. No guile was found on his lips.

When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten. But he trusted to him who judges justly.

He trusted, in other words, to God. This is Jesus as a shining moral example. He committed no sin.

The book of Hebrews, we read, in every respect he was tempted as we are yet without sin. In every respect, he was a real human being and he knew the real temptations of real flesh and blood human beings yet without sin. At one particular point, when the Jews were having a great deal of trouble with what Jesus was saying about himself, he turned it all around with a question to them and he said, which of you convicts me of sin?

And they couldn't do it. Stop and think about this fact. that the only accusation about him was that he claimed to be God.

That was what sent him to the cross. He makes himself equal with God. And they, of course, had to translate that into a political issue for the Romans, namely by claiming to be God, he also is claiming to be king and therefore is a counterforce to Caesar.

He claims to be God. That's the accusation. But that's the very question.

is he? I mean if he is that's no evidence against him is it? you remember that at his trial Caiaphas the high priest had hired some people to come in and perjure themselves and give false testimony against Jesus but he didn't need to use them because Jesus in answer to the question are you the Christ the son of the blessed said yes I am and Caiaphas whirled around and said we don't have any need of any other witnesses he's condemned himself.

The only thing that condemned him was claiming an equality with God. He committed no sin. Nothing wrong with it except what he claimed.

Pilate. I find no fault in him. Wash my hands of this matter.

There's no fault in him. Judas says, I've betrayed innocent blood. Think about his character.

That's the first piece of the evidence. This man, at the very least, stands with the best who have ever lived. I think, as a matter of fact, on closer examination, he stands without equal.

All right, that's my opinion. I invite you to make that sort of a comparison for yourself. Most people, without any hesitation, would agree that at the very least, this man is one of the most noble figures, most morally excellent figures who has ever lived in the history of the world.

But, alongside of that, the second piece of evidence I've already alluded to, and that is what he had to say about himself, his claims. You've got to consider the interrelationship of character and claims. We've already seen some of the claim.

Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? Yes, I am. He said, before Abraham was, I am.

If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.

He says, I have the power to forgive your sin. Now think about that one. I mean, it's one thing if you do something against me.

All right, let's say you take my wallet and I choose to forgive you for that. Or you slander my reputation and I choose to forgive you for that. That's one thing.

When your offense has been against me, I can forgive you for what you've done to me. But supposing that you do something to Paul over here, your offense is against him. And I come up and I say, I forgive you for what you've done to Paul.

Who am I to do that? And yet that's exactly what Jesus did over and over and over again. He walked into situations and acted as if he was the party offended in every offense.

I forgive you. As if the sin ultimately were against him. he says I have the power to lay down my life and take it up again no one takes it from me I have the power to take it up again now as we saw last time this is in radical contradiction to the way in which other religious leaders speak they point away from themselves there is God follow him or there is the way follow it there is the noble eightfold path go follow it over there are the four noble truths go live by them they point away from themselves either to the truth as some object of reality or to God or the gods and along comes Jesus and he points consistently to himself come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden I will give you rest I have the gates of I hold the key to the gates of heaven and so on Now think about that for a minute.

Think about the megalomania involved in making those sorts of statements. I mean, supposing I came walking in here and said that to you. If you've seen me, friends, you've seen the Father.

As I say, you'd either get angry at that or you would pity me. Right? If I say to you, I have all power in heaven and earth, before the foundation of the world, I was there.

before Abraham achieved his nobility, I was there. You either get angry or you pity me. The paradox is that we have just acknowledged that Jesus is this man of incredibly high character and yet at the very center of his character is this sort of claim which in anyone else would be the surest megalomania, surest lunacy.

How do you put that together? We have seen other people in the history of the world, and we've seen other religious figures, in fact, who have claimed to be God, and claimed this sort of power and so on, and the world has invariably dismissed them. They've gotten a few followers, maybe a few hundred, maybe even a few thousand.

They come and go, very quickly. I remember Maharaji a few years ago. You remember the little teenage, fat little Korean kid?

He's running around. And, you know, people were going excited about him on college campuses and so on. And, you know, and you begin to look at his lifestyle.

And you see his multiple Rolls Royces. You see his seemingly endless billions of dollars in bank accounts. You see his playboy lifestyle.

You know, his own mother and brothers totally dismissed him, you know, as a liar and a counterfeit. I remember there was a little episode on television. Do you remember the Chicago 7?

And Rennie Davis was one of the conspirators back there. And he became a convert to Maharaji for a short while. And they had an interview with Abbie Hoffman, who was one of his co-conspirators.

And the interview ended. The reporter asked Abbie Hoffman, well, what do you think of Maharaji? And he said, well, I don't know if he's really God.

He said, but if he is, he's the sort of God America deserves. But we've seen this sort of person who would make that claim about himself either out of lunacy or out of some sort of desire for power. But the character never squares with the claim.

We see right through it. You know, there was Father Divine a few years before that. And in fact, I think you can make a double generalization.

You have the lunatic fringe over here, the Father Divines and the Maharajis and so on, who are claiming extraordinary things for themselves, whose character doesn't begin to support the claim. On the other extreme, you do have the truly great religious leaders down through history, Confucius and Buddha and Gandhi and so on, who are making no such claim for themselves, who are very humble about themselves, who are consistently appointing away from themselves. And then you have Jesus.

And like the loonies, he claims to be God, and yet he outshines the best of the noble. I put it this way to you. In my opinion, Jesus is the world's unique example of a man who claims to be God and acts like it.

Just ruminate on that a while. We've seen lots of people who act nobly and claim very little for themselves. We've seen lots of people who claim much for themselves and act very ignobly.

Where have you ever seen anybody who claims so much for himself and acts so much in accord with it? The world's unique, in my opinion, unique example of somebody who claims to be God and acts consistently like it. His worst enemies can offer no evidence of a moral sort against him.

The only thing they can say against him is he claims to be God, and yet that's begging the question. That's the very thing at stake. The third and, in a way, most important piece of evidence, Jesus himself prophesied repeatedly.

He said, I'm going to go to Jerusalem. The scribes and the Pharisees are going to rise up against me. They're going to persecute me.

They're finally going to put me to death. But three days later, I'm going to rise again. He said, destroy this temple, referring to his own body, and in three days, I'll raise it up.

The unambiguous claim of the New Testament is that that's precisely what he did. that on Easter morning the tomb was empty. More than that, the apostles were eyewitnesses to a resurrection.

Now that by itself wouldn't necessarily prove the case, but alongside of what we've already seen, the character and the other claims of this man I submit to you, that is an incredibly powerful piece of evidence that we need to deal with. And we need to deal with it in an adult, logical and intelligent fashion. if in fact Jesus Christ came back from the dead that bears all manner of implications with it that is a confirmation of his claims about himself now some people would suggest to you well of course the disciples just made that up they were exaggerating the fact in order to get people to believe their message have you heard that sort of thing said they wanted so desperately for others to believe in Jesus and in all that he stood for that they exaggerated a little bit.

He didn't really rise from the dead. It was simply the overwhelming power of his life even after crucifixion as it impacted them. You've heard that sort of argument.

Let's just trace that through for a minute. If you take away the resurrection, you take away the claims to divinity, you take away all of the implication that I've just drawn from resurrection, you say, that's not the real point. The real point is something else.

they just added that in order to get you to believe the something else right I ask you what is the something else and you'll tell me it's the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and do unto others as you'd have them do unto you it's a moral message it's a spiritual message but you take away all that and the only message that's left is pure Judaism and everybody believed that already that's an enormous amount of effort to go to to get people to believe what they already believed and it's worse than that because if the disciples were themselves guilty of perpetrating a deliberate lie then they were the ones who were blaspheming against the very God that now you're telling me they were trying to get people to believe in if they knew that Jesus was not Messiah was not God incarnate they knew that But they said it in order to get you to believe in God. The God that they're trying to get you to believe in is a monotheistic holy God who says, I'll share my glory with nobody else. Do you see the overwhelming self-contradiction of that?

And as I say, everybody believed that already. It's worse than that. Because the disciples, in perpetrating such a lie, had absolutely nothing to gain.

They had everything to lose. And in fact, they lost it. They were cut off from their families.

They were thrown out of their temple, their synagogues. They were disenfranchised from the political process. They were persecuted.

In many cases, in almost every case, they were martyred. For what purpose? For no purpose.

And I don't think, you can show me, very many instances in the history of civilization where people have died for what they knew to be a lie. They may have died for what they thought was the truth, but they were mistaken. But how many instances can you show me of people dying for what they knew to be a lie?

And yet that's what's involved in saying the disciples made it up. So if you want to challenge the evidence of the resurrection, you're left with exactly the same logical dilemma, one step removed. You see, either the disciples are deceived or they are deceivers.

Either they are lying or they themselves have been lied to. The harder you look at all that, the less convincing I think you're going to find it. I think the easier it becomes to accept their claim as we find it in the New Testament.

They were surprised. They were overwhelmed. They didn't expect Jesus to come back from the dead.

In fact, they didn't expect him to die in the first place. They thought he was going to be politically victorious. When he wasn't, they totally defected, only to be completely astonished three days later when he came out of the grave.

So you've got three things side by side. And I think the burden of proof would be on the person who wants to deny them, as a matter of fact. You've got the overwhelming high character of Jesus, unparalleled.

You've got his claims about himself, which in the context of that character are very extraordinary claims. and then he says the final proof of the pudding is put me to death and see what happens and they do and he comes back and his disciples bear witness to it and the harder you try to explain it away the more trouble you're going to find yourself in I think all of which adds up to a very substantial case for his being who he claims to be and if he is who he claims to be you see that carries with it some very very far reaching implications it tells me something about the moral direction of the universe it's not all an accident it's not simply a matter of dog eat dog and survival of the fittest but it tells me something about the moral character of the God behind the universe it tells me secondly that I have no legitimate claim to sovereignty over my own affairs I have someone to whom I'm answerable who has a claim upon my life it tells me I have a responsibility to order my life in accord with his will and most importantly of all it tells me that salvation is to be found in relationship to this person Jesus who's come amongst us it also raises a very searching question you consider the evidence you find yourself being drawn more and more to the conclusion that he is who he claims to be and that salvation is in a relationship with him wherein he's given the place of preeminence, it raises the question then, what about those who never heard? What about those who never heard?

If Jesus can say, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me, then immediately as a knee-jerk reaction, we find ourselves saying, what about those who never heard of him? How can a good God condemn them to hell? Well, the answer to that is not as difficult as you might think.

I want to turn to the first chapter of the book of Romans. And for some of you, we're going to be on somewhat familiar territory here because we've studied the book of Romans before. But this is as concise a summary of the issue as you could find.

Book of Romans chapter 1, and I want to start with verse 19. 18. the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth that's telling us God is against ungodliness and he's against those who suppress the word suppress there literally means to push down get the image of people who know the truth and are trying to hold it down keep it down God is angry with that okay come to one of the most extraordinary statements in the Bible in the next verse.

For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. What can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. Now the Bible does not tell us in much detail how He's shown it to them.

It simply makes this bold assertion that somehow implanted in the consciousness of mankind is the realization that God is there, that God exists. A little bit more than that, what can be known about him, that is to say something about his character, is somehow implanted in the consciousness of man. It goes on in verse 20, Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse. Let's name two things. What can be known about God is plain to everybody because God has shown it to them, and that means two things in particular.

His power, his sovereignty, his omnipotence, if you will, and his deity or his holiness. And Paul makes this extraordinary claim. All men everywhere know that about God.

That's what it means to be a man. That's what it means to be a human being, is to know that God exists, God is there. We may not know very much about him, but we know the two essential things about him, namely that he is God, that he has all power, and that he's a holy God.

He's a deity. He has a divine nature. And then it goes on to say this, So they are without excuse, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. Therefore, God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts, to impurity, and so on. You can read to the end of the chapter for yourself.

It goes on to catalog a whole increasingly degenerate list of sins of the flesh. Now what many of you have been raised with and what is still being taught in many schools today is what you might call the evolutionary view of religion. And it runs something like this.

It says that man's earliest religious consciousness began out of fear and superstition. That he looked around him and there was so much out there in the world that he didn't understand, couldn't control, and which hurt him, which impacted his life in a negative way, he was scared of it. And out of his fear, there was generated superstition.

Fear and superstition leads to animism, it's a technical word, the seeing of spirits everywhere, and magic. People trying to coerce those hidden dark powers of the universe and get them to do what they want. Superstition leads directly into magic, into animism and magic.

Given centuries of time, man evolves from that to polytheism, seeing of specific gods and idolatry. Instead of the spirit of this babbling brook and that lake and this roaring cataract over here and the thunderclouds, we have the god of water or the god of rainfall. Instead of this niad and dyad and this nymph you know, whatever you have, the god of the woods.

So out of animism comes specific tribal deities. Man is moving upward and onward to the stage of polytheism, the seeing of many gods, and with them the worshipping of statues and images and so on, idolatry. Then eventually, again, given centuries more development, polytheism finally coalesces into monotheism.

And out of the many gods, we see one god. Some of you have been taught that? You've run across that view?

Okay, that's the evolutionary view. That's an accounting of how man got to be religious. Look at what Paul has said in contrast to that.

Point for point for point, the exact opposite. He says that rather than being the final end result of centuries, perhaps millennia, of cultural and religious development, rather than being the end of the process, man's awareness of one God is at the very beginning at the very beginning man knows there is one God to whom he is responsible but that out of thanklessness out of rebellion out of a refusal to honor God as God he falls away from that into polytheism and magic away from that into animism into superstition into fear, into darkness, and into degeneracy. Just exactly the opposite.

Rather than an evolution upward, Paul sees it as a devolution downward. Huh? The remarkable thing is that in the middle of the 20th century, secular anthropological studies, sociological studies, cross-cultural studies have increasingly proven that Paul is right.

Rather than the evolutionary view, which is so popular and still being taught, it turns out that what Paul says is in fact the case. This is one of the basic texts that you're going to find on college campuses used in the history of religion. It's called Man's Religions by John Noss.

Let me read you from the very opening chapter. A section called The Recognition of High Gods. It says, It is common to find among many primitive groups a recognition of the existence of a god far up in the sky or at a great remove who has made everything, man, earth, sea, and sky, and who at a distance sees all that goes on among men.

But though he sometimes disapproves of what he sees, he does not often interfere. Among the lower primitives, like the Pygmies of Africa, the Fugians of South America, the Australian Bushmen, the belief in such a high god has been even clearer and more definite. It has been an old belief of these most backward races that the high god formerly lived on earth, instructed men in their social and moral laws, and then retired to the skyland, where he keeps an eye on men's doings and sometimes severely punishes their lapses.

Lightning is his weapon, thunder his roaring, but he himself is never seen. A dispute has arisen among anthropologists as to whether this high god has the religious significance of the nearer spirit powers of the earth. In other words, this is the high creator god, and yet he doesn't seem to be as powerful as the many gods that these people would worship.

The prevailing opinion is rather negative. Primitive men have not had to be concerned daily about the high God. Catch that.

They have not had to be concerned daily about the high God. He is supreme and uncreated, existing from the beginning. But other spirits are much more active as determiners of destiny down on the earth.

If there have been any exceptions to this comparative evaluation, We come across them among the Australian Bushmen and the Fugians. The former in some localities addressed prayers for food to the supreme being, and the latter thought he caused all deaths. So they're saying, it is universally so, and the only exception to that, thus far known, is in these two instances, and the exception is not a denial of his existence, but in fact praying to him where others don't. Yet the members of one of the Fugian tribes used to speak of him in the third person as if he had no direct dealings with them.

And so on. He goes on in the same vein. That behind the worship of the many is a dim recollection of the one.

And to him is attributed a supremacy. He's the uncreated creator. He's the moral lawgiver.

He started the whole blessed process off in the first place, but somehow we've lost touch with him. And the real powers in our lives are much closer at hand. That's an extraordinary statement.

A fellow by the name of Robert Brow wrote a little book published by InterVarsity Press. It's called Religion. And he said this, after 80 years of intensive archaeological and comparative religion studies the theory of the upward evolution of religion is being restated to push the emergence of monotheism back into the shadows of prehistory again rather than being the end of the process it's at the beginning of the process monotheism is at the beginning of the process led by father wilhelm Schmidt of Vienna, anthropologists have shown that the religion of the hundreds of isolated tribes in the world today is not primitive in the sense of being original.

These peoples that we call primitive men, primitive tribes, their religion, he says, is not primitive. It's not their original religion. It's not their original religion. There is something way before that, which we can see, we can see the traces of still among them.

The tribes, he concludes, have a memory of a high God, a creator, father God, who is no longer worshipped because he is not feared. Do you see what he said? That's exactly what Paul said.

Men start with an awareness of God. Somehow they fall away from it. It's not that that emerges as the last byproduct of a long cultural process.

Having gone through all these stages, going through polytheism, eventually you get to monotheism exactly the other way around. They start with monotheism and fall away from it, a devolution downward. And Brough goes on to demonstrate that the universal perception of this high creator God is that he is holy and all-powerful.

The two things again said of him, that he's holy and all-powerful, and yet somehow our relationship with him has been lost. He will even make yet a further point, and that is that the earliest worship of that God, before the falling away, was by means of sacrifice, blood sacrifice, as in the Old Testament. So, what we're dealing with comes down to this.

The question was, what about all those who have never heard? the answer is there isn't anybody who has never heard everybody who has ever lived has an awareness of God that is enough to respond to him it may not be a very complete awareness of God culturally it may have slipped somewhat into the dim recesses of their memory But everybody who has ever lived has enough of an awareness of God to begin to respond to him, to believe in him, to trust him, to obey him, to seek his forgiveness. Missionary literature is absolutely chock full of stories of so-called primitives going out into the bush in revolt against their tribal teaching, looking up into the heavens and saying something like, Oh God, I know you're there.

I know you're not some stone fire-breathing monster to which we've got to feed our little children. I know that you're something better than that and I give myself to you. And it may be years later that a Christian missionary comes through and preaches the gospel of Christ and these folks say, Yeah, that's the God I worship.

I didn't know his name before, but that's the God I worship. One of the loveliest stories still available in print from the last century, the story of a girl named Mimosa, was raised as a Hindu girl in a very primitive part of the world, and went out and prayed just such a prayer. The Christian missionaries came through years later.

She was an elderly lady, and she had remained faithful to that early prayer all her life, and responded as they presented the gospel. Let me give you a little diagram. Some of you have seen this before.

It'll sum it up as quickly as I can. and then you may have some questions or reactions to what I've said. Picture a bullseye.

All men who have ever lived have at least the witness of creation. Remember David in the Old Testament says, The heavens are declaring the glory of God and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. You know, we look at the creation and we say, that didn't just happen.

That didn't just bring itself into existence. The creation witnesses to a creator. All men have at least the witness of creation.

That tells us that there's a creator. It doesn't tell us very much about him. Very little, in fact.

But it tells us something about him. And what it tells us about him is true so far as it goes. It doesn't go very far.

But so far as it goes, it's true. The creation witnesses to the reality, to the existence of a creator. That's enough.

Just that much is enough to begin to respond to this God. If you know there's a creator, if that's all you know, you don't know one blessed thing about him beyond that, you know that you have a responsibility to someone higher than yourself. You know that you are not the last word in the universe.

Right? If that's all you've got going for you is the fact that there is a creator, a high creator God, you know some true truth about him. Not very much, but enough to begin to respond in a faithful way.

Okay? Secondly, conscience. All men have the witness of conscience.

And if you'd like, we might put it this way. The conscience tells us a little bit more about this Creator. It's the implanting of a moral sensitivity within us that tells us a little bit about His will for us and in turn that tells us something about Him.

That He's not a capricious, arbitrary God. That there is a way that's right and a way that's wrong and we're held accountable for it. Now, it's possible for us to abuse our consciences.

It's possible for us to violate them. Paul speaks to Timothy about our consciences being seared, which is like sticking your hand in a fire. You stick your hand in a fire and it hurts, but you hold it there, it'll stop hurting because you destroy the nerve endings.

You can destroy the nerve endings of your conscience by violating it, okay? So our consciences are not very good guides because we can abuse them. But they are guides somewhat.

They give us a little bit more information about the nature of this God. Now notice, I've deliberately put that inside. because what I'm suggesting is it's shedding more light on the same subject it's telling us a little bit more about the God that we already knew something about just by looking at the creation we knew there was a creator now we have a little bit of sensitivity as to his moral character that's more light on the same subject again, if that's all you had going for you that's enough to begin to respond to him faithfully.

There are things that your culture any culture on the face of the earth will tell you it's okay and your conscience will tell you no it isn't. And you can respond either to the culture or to your conscience. Take a third circle we're narrowing the focus here we're sharpening the picture if you will and at a dramatic moment in history God selected a people. They're called the Jews and he made a covenant with them.

He said to Abraham in particular, you come and follow me and I'm going to lead you to a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey. I'm going to give you that land. I'm going to produce innumerable descendants.

Even though you and your wife are too old to have any children, you're going to have innumerable descendants. And through your descendants, one of them is going to come along one day through whom the whole world is going to be blessed. That's the covenant he made with Abraham.

And out of that covenant began a relationship with a given people, the Jews. The witness of the Old Testament is very clear that God never selected the Jews simply so that they could have a corner on the market. But he selected them to be a messianic people proclaiming to the whole world the nature of the God who was revealing himself to them.

that was their purpose in being selected now my point being God at the point of the covenant and from then on began to reveal himself more and more clearly to these Jews but once again it's not a matter of something radically different than what he said before it's shedding more light on the same subject you don't have to leave behind the witness of creation and the witness of conscience say, well, now I've got to start on something altogether new. No, we're building on that. We're sharpening and intensifying the picture.

Do you understand what I'm saying? God had already been speaking true truth about himself through the creation and to men's hearts. Now he began to reveal himself in history.

Okay? It's a clearer picture. Okay?

On down through the whole of their history. he demonstrates his character he demonstrates his trustworthiness he gives promises and he keeps his word he says do this and you'll be blessed don't do it and you're going to get in trouble sometimes they do it and they get blessed sometimes they don't do it and they get in trouble by the time you get to the to the end of the Old Testament they know a whole lot more about this God than at the beginning he's revealing himself to them throughout their saving history. Again, at every point, it's more light on the same subject.

As you get toward the end of the Old Testament, a group of people emerges that are called the prophets. And they have a lot to say about God's will for the nation, about his social concern, but there's another theme that begins to run through the latter prophets, and that is that God himself is going to visit this planet. He's going to take on human flesh and come amongst us.

He's going to come to save us from our sins. He's going to bear the sin of the nation and in fact the sin of the whole world upon his own shoulders. He's going to be laid to death and then he's somehow going to come back to life again.

And he's going to see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied. There's a prophetic hope. Again, more light on the same subject.

This God that has been revealing himself down through all ages, down through generation after generation is coming. among us. And we have a much clearer picture of what he's going to be like.

And finally, he arrives. And Jesus says, I have come to fulfill all the law and the prophets. Everything you read in the book of Moses and in the Psalms was written about me.

When the apostles went out to proclaim the gospel after the resurrection, invariably, you'll see in the book of Acts, the way they began was, here's what the prophets said, here's what Jesus did, they're one and the same. Now, I've taken you through this exercise to draw a couple of conclusions. Even with the coming of Jesus, if you follow this, you'll see that even the coming of Jesus is not something radically new and different.

It's more of the same. It's more light on the subject. It's the same word spoken more loudly, more clearly.

That's what Jesus says. He says, don't think I've come to destroy the law and the prophets. I've come to fulfill them.

He says, if you believed Moses, you'd believe me, for he wrote of me. It's more light on the same subject. Okay?

So that we have to see that Jesus coming amongst us was not to give us some new hoop to jump through, some new barrier to cross as if we were doing just fine up to this point, but now God adds some new thing that we've got to deal with. Not that at all. Jesus' purpose in coming amongst us was to make it easier to believe.

The God who's been revealing himself down through all ages to all people everywhere has now spoken even more clearly by coming amongst us. But it's the same God. Okay?

And the final implication of all of that is drawn out very clearly in chapter 2 of the book of Romans, the essence of which is that God holds men responsible for what they do know, not for what they don't know. God holds men responsible for what they do know, not for what they don't know. if all they had was the witness of creation, we've said that's enough to begin to respond to God.

But that's all they're going to be held responsible for. Those who have never heard specifically of Jesus are not going to be held responsible for Him. They're going to be held responsible for what they do know, which is enough to respond.

God was gracious enough to give most people more than just the creation. He gave them consciences. Those who have only the witness of creation and conscience will not be held responsible for Jesus.

They'll be held responsible for creation and conscience. And that's enough to respond. But God was still more gracious and he gave the covenant.

And he began to reveal himself in greater and greater detail, greater and greater clarity, showed what he's like, demonstrated his faithfulness. at every single point, whilst he's making it easier for people to understand what he's about, do you see that the level of responsibility is growing as well? The more you know about him, the more incumbent it is upon you to deal with what you know.

So that the guy at the end of the Old Testament who has all of this 2,000 years worth of history has a whole lot more to be responsible for than the guy at the beginning of the New Testament. Do you realize that Aaron, Moses' right-hand assistant, goes down from Mount Sinai and leads the people of God in making a golden calf and having a sexual orgy in front of it? And God allows him to continue functioning as high priest?

Because his awareness of God is so incredibly confused at that early date. You see, he's held responsible only for what he knows. And God is gracious to forgive him.

but at the end of the Old Testament, the standards are much more stringent because God has demonstrated himself over and over and over with consistency. Okay? Finally, then, you come to Jesus himself.

And we who have seen Jesus, who have looked him in the face, who can consider the evidence, the whole point is that we ought to be finding it that much easier to put our trust in God because we see so much more clearly what he's about. the picture is that much more compelling and gracious and attractive to us. That's His purpose in coming, is to win us to Himself, not to make it harder, to make it infinitely easier for us.

That what He's been claiming about Himself down through countless ages, now He's demonstrated on the stage of human history by becoming a man and living among us. It was to make it easier for us. But, here's the kicker, we're that much more responsible.

So don't look down on the little primitive who has so little going for him. Look down upon the cultured PhD who doesn't bother to deal with what he knows. We've called this a bullseye.

Let me just change the image of the same thing. Let's put it one different way to conclude. Supposing that the sunlight is shining brightly on this blackboard, Okay?

Sunlight is everywhere diffused. Okay? That's truth.

The sun, the light of God, is everywhere diffused, but it's not very clear. And so you take a magnifying glass and you begin to capture the rays of the sun. And you move it closer and closer.

You're getting it in focus. That's what you're doing. You're getting the sunlight, which is everywhere diffused.

You're bringing it into focus. Right? and when you get it perfectly in focus, what happens?

What does that mean? To have a magnifying glass perfectly in focus. Do you know what it means?

Yeah, it's more than that. It's more than concentrating the rays. At the point where it's perfectly in focus, there will be an exact image formed of the thing which is in focus.

If you're capturing the rays of the sun, there will be an exact image of the sun at that point. If you held a magnifying glass up and there were bright sunlight coming through that door, do you know that you would see a picture? It would be like a color photograph.

When it comes perfectly into focus, you'll see a picture of that door on the page or on the blackboard. If you're getting bright sunlight, you bring it into perfect focus. There will be an image of the sun.

Perfect image of the sun. And then it will burst into flame. That's what the gospel is.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is capturing the diffuse truth of God, which is everywhere, bringing it perfectly into focus. At the point where it comes into perfect focus, we have an exact image of God Himself. And then it bursts into flame.

So what about all those who have never heard? They're held responsible for the amount they've heard. We're held responsible for what we do know, not for what we don't know.

There are those who have never heard of Christ. What about them? The Christian church needs to be sending out missionaries to them to make it easier for them to respond to the God of whom they already know something.

What about those who have never heard at all? There isn't any such person. Everyone who has ever lived has enough truth, enough true truth about God to respond to Him.

And the word responsibility simply means able to respond. Response, able. Let's bow our heads and then you may have a question or two or a reaction.

Father, we thank You that You, out of Your love, Your graciousness to all men everywhere, have never once left Yourself without a witness. you have been revealing yourself in the very creation in our consciences down through history amongst the prophets and finally in the coming of Christ your Son we do pray that we would be responsible to the level that we have seen your truth and that we would walk in the light of it for your name's sake Amen