Jesus, the Universal Savior

Listen Online:

Transcript:

When I pastored in Arkansas a few years ago, I was four hours away from most of my family, and that was the furthest I’d ever lived away from family. And so I found myself getting very homesick. I loved the church I was pastoring.

I loved the people, and I loved Arkansas. We drove through the town where I used to live on the way back from the convention, and thought, I’ve missed this. Not that I’m unhappy to be in Seminole either.

I’ve just missed Fayetteville. But I would find myself getting very homesick for my family, for Oklahoma, for anything connected to home. Because what I found out very quickly was even though it was only four hours away, even though it’s only one state over, Arkansas is a very different place.

Especially during football season, which is when I moved there. Arkansas is very different. Oklahoma is very different.

There are cultural differences. They didn’t have Whataburger there, and that was very upsetting to me. And now they have one, now that I’ve moved back.

But they didn’t have Whataburger, and every time I’d get homesick, I would have to go eat at Brahms because it would remind me of home. And I had a real bad habit on the rare occasions that I would see somebody brave enough to wear OU Sooners paraphernalia instead of Razorback stuff. On the rare occasions I would see somebody out in public who was brave enough to wear a Sooner’s jersey or a Sooner’s hat or had a sticker on their car, I would look at them and say, they’re from Oklahoma.

And I would walk up to them and talk to them. And you’re probably thinking, what’s wrong with that? You talk to them.

I talk to them like I knew them. I just approach these people in line at the store or at a restaurant and say, you’re from Oklahoma. Where are you from?

Do you live here now? What part of Oklahoma are you from? How long are you going to be here?

And these people would just get this weirded out look. And my family would have to remind me whenever they’d hear me say, look, they’re from Oklahoma. They’d have to say, you don’t know them.

Okay, yes, that’s true. I just get so excited. And maybe you all think I’m crazy.

Maybe you don’t know what that’s like. But I was just so homesick at times that I would get so excited. I know these people.

Or at least we have something in common, and I would walk up to them and talk to them like I would know them. And their reaction, you know, usually they were very polite, as we Okies tend to be. But you could tell that it was a little unusual to them.

That I’m talking to them like I knew them, and I could tell by the reaction, you don’t know them. You don’t know them at all. Just because we like some of the same things doesn’t mean we know each other.

and where I’m going with this is that this is the same kind of relationship that a lot of people in our world have with Jesus. We like some of the same things and we might even be in close proximity to each other and so we act like we know him. Well, Jesus, you know, Jesus likes for us to do the right thing.

I like when people do the right thing. I like when people are nice to each other. Jesus likes when people are nice to each other.

Jesus says to tell the truth. I think we should tell the truth. I’m around him.

I live here in the Bible Belt. I hear his name. I’ve been to church a couple times.

I know him. It’s the same kind of relationship that I would have to other people in OU Sooners attire in Arkansas. We like some of the same things and we’re standing there next to each other in line, but it really didn’t mean I knew them, did it?

We were strangers. And my fear is that for a lot of people, they view Jesus in that same way. That because we like some of the same things, and because we’ve been around each other a little bit, at least in close proximity, that we know him and he knows us.

And Jesus himself made it clear that that’s not enough. That’s not enough. That doesn’t mean we know each other.

We’re going through this series on Sunday mornings through the month of June about whether Jesus is who he said he is or not. Because Jesus made claims, Jesus made claims about who he was and about what he came to accomplish that we can’t just ignore. Jesus claimed to be God.

For all those who say, well, you know, that was made up by his followers later. He never claimed to be God. I hate to break it to you, but you open up the Gospels and it’s all through there.

In John, it’s like it’s shouted out, but even in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it’s in there it’s in there the things that he said he could do I can forgive sins only God can do that I can raise the dead only God can do that I will judge the world I will judge you only God can do that and yet he claimed all these attributes if you don’t have them there are some if you don’t have one yet there are some bookmarks that I made up with just a list of the the claims that I found very briefly one day that you could take with you and put in your Bible and look up the references at some point and see in there that Jesus claimed all throughout his ministry to be God. We have to take those claims seriously. Whether we reject them or accept them, we can’t ignore them.

We can’t say, oh, I like him as a good teacher, but I don’t believe he’s God. Well, he claimed to be God. So, is he God?

Or is he a supposedly good teacher who was just so crazy that he thought he was God, even though he wasn’t. That’s not somebody I want to listen to. There was a, there were, oh never mind, I’m not going to go into that.

Is he some crazy person who thought he was God when he really wasn’t? Was he a liar who knew full well that he wasn’t God and yet claimed to be anyway? Was he somebody that they made up stories about years later that he claimed to be God?

We know that’s not true. As I’ve said every week, we have a mountain of manuscript evidence going back to within a generation of Jesus’ time saying he claimed to be God. So the question really boils down to, for us, is he who he claimed to be or not?

Is he who he claimed to be or is he who all the experts today, the supposedly enlightened experts of our time, think he is? Because he can’t be both. There are theologians, there are pastors this morning who will stand behind their pulpits and tell their congregations he’s not really God.

I don’t understand the point of any of what we’re doing here if he’s not God. Just board up the church and go home if he’s not God. But there are pastors, there are theologians, there are scholars, there are experts who will say, he never claimed to be God, he never claimed this, he never claimed that.

And Jesus, on the other hand, in the Gospels claimed, I am those things. And so we have a choice to make whether we believe Jesus’ account of himself, or do we believe what the world says about him now. And maybe I’m naive, maybe I’m backwards thinking, I don’t think I am, but maybe I’m all of those things, but folks, I’m going to take Jesus’ word about who he is over some smart guy 2,000 years later who wasn’t even there.

And we’ve been examining over the last few weeks some of the popular views in our world today about who Jesus is. And the one we’re going to look at today is this idea that he’s the universal savior. Now please don’t misunderstand what I’m talking about here.

We did have a long discussion in discipleship training last week about whether or not everybody could be saved. There are people who believe and teach, as they understand the Bible, that God has chosen some to be saved and some to be condemned to hell, that he chose that before the foundation of the world. There are people smarter than I am, and I will readily admit that, who believe that teaching.

And no offense to them, that’s not what I happen to see and understand out of the scriptures. My understanding of the scriptures is that God offers mercy to everyone. And yes, he’s sovereign, but he’s also given a free will to accept or to reject that mercy.

But my understanding is that anybody can be saved if they will come to God through Jesus Christ. Now, how all that works, the free will and the sovereignty of God, theologians have been arguing about that for years. And I’m not going to settle that argument today. But I wanted to clarify that so you’ll understand what I mean when I say this modern idea that he’s the universal savior is not true.

I’m not saying that not everybody can be saved. What I’m saying is there’s this idea that has developed and there are Christian writers and there are theologians and again there are scholars and just people on the street who believe that just because Jesus is so loving, that because Jesus is so good and he’s so kind that he wouldn’t possibly send anybody to hell, that we’re just automatically saved. And that, hey, if I’m just good enough, Jesus and I like some of the same things.

We like honesty. We like morality. We like family values.

I’ve gone to church. I’ve been around him some. We know each other.

But Jesus made it clear that this idea of a Savior who puts no obligations on anyone is false. This idea that He saves and He doesn’t expect anything. And I’m not saying expectations to be saved.

You do not earn your way to heaven. We’ll talk about that too. But this idea that Jesus is just low pressure, He doesn’t expect anything from anybody, that it’s really more about your experience with Him, how you feel about him, how you feel when you’re around him and his people, and that he’s just going to let everybody into heaven.

This idea, this modern idea of a universal savior that we’re all just automatically saved and we all know him and it’s all happy and it’s not true. It’s not what Jesus taught. Because Jesus taught that salvation can be found only through him.

We’ve talked about this the last few weeks. There’s nothing you can do to earn your salvation. There’s no other way.

There’s no other method. hey, if I can just be good enough, God will love me. No, he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes unto the Father but by me.

He made it very clear. And we’ve talked about this multiple weeks. He made it very clear that he came for the purpose of showing us that we couldn’t earn God’s forgiveness and that he was the only way.

And so the biblical view of Jesus is that he taught salvation can only be found through him and that it requires something of us, not for us to earn it, not for us to deserve it, but it requires repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ, as the book of Acts talks about. He taught that there is a way to heaven and that there is a way the opposite direction as well. And that’s where we pick up in Luke chapter 13, starting in verse 22.

He’s just been teaching to the disciples. He’s just been teaching the parable of the mustard seed, and he’s talking about the leaven of the Pharisees. And it starts in verse 22 that he leaves, and he continues on this journey as he’s traveling and he’s teaching.

And it says, and he went through the cities and villages teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? So the question was, it’s an interesting question to ask.

Are there only a few people who are going to be saved? Because as he taught about the kingdom, it became apparent that there were a lot of people that didn’t understand the things that he was teaching about the kingdom. And it became apparent that all their ideas about how to get to heaven were wrong.

Their ideas that, hey, because we’re descended from Abraham, we’ve got the right DNA, and they didn’t know DNA back then, but we have the right family tree, and we do good things, and we keep the law that because of this we’ll be saved. And Jesus took those ideas and turned them on their head. And so the question naturally came up, okay, so if we’re all wrong about this, then are there just going to be a few that are saved?

And he said to them, verse 24, Strive to enter in at the straight gate. For many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. When once the master of the house has risen up and has shut the door, and ye began to stand without and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us.

And he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are. Then shall you begin to say, I have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. And he shall say, I tell you, I know not, I know you not, whence ye are, depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.

So he says, you go in through that straight gate. You go the way I show you. Because there are going to be many who miss the boat here.

He said there are going to be many who, I don’t believe this is teaching that only some can be saved. I believe it’s teaching that there were going to be some who ignored the salvation that he offered, who ignored the road he showed them until it was too late. And then at that point, they began knocking and pounding on the door after the door had been shut and saying, let me in, let me in.

And the voice from the other side says, I don’t know who you are. I don’t know you. I never did know you.

Now, obviously, Jesus knows all of us. God knows every person who’s ever lived. God knows every person who’s ever died, every person who’s ever been forgotten, every person who’s never been born.

Some of you saw on Facebook, we had the opportunity while we were in St. Louis to go visit an old family cemetery. I have a, it’s my fourth great-grandfather who died in 1870.

He was a circuit-riding preacher in the Missouri Territory back in the 1840s. And he’s buried in a little wooded, secluded area just outside Fenton, Missouri. And we went and we had some directions that we found online that were posted back in 2001, so we didn’t even know if they’d still be good directions, maybe the landmarks are gone.

We actually found it with relatively little problem. And as we went up on this little family cemetery, which wasn’t even marked as a cemetery, it’s just a little clearing in the woods, there were the headstones that we were looking for, and then there were four or five other smaller tombstones that had been there so long that the names and the dates and everything had eroded off of them. There was no way to tell who was buried there.

We look at it today. We have no idea who was buried there. There’s a military cemetery in Fayetteville that I went to shortly after I moved there.

Most of the graves there have no names on them. You walk through, there are hundreds of men who died in the Civil War in and around Fayetteville who are buried there, and we have no idea who they are. In all these unmarked graves, God knows exactly who’s buried there.

Jesus knows each of those men and women who are buried in those graves, even if we don’t remember them. So don’t misunderstand me and think, well, God just doesn’t know everything. No, God knows who these people are.

Jesus knew, Jesus knows all of you. And he knows your kids and he knows your grandkids and your great-grandkids. And he’ll know for generations down the road, he already knows who they are.

But for Jesus to say, I didn’t know you, he’s talking about an experiential knowledge. He’s talking about knowing somebody on a deep and intimate level. Somebody asked me at the convention about, found out I was from Seminole and asked me if I knew Kelly Haney.

Used to be state senator here, chief of the Seminole nation. I said, well, I know who he is. I’ve never met him.

He wouldn’t know me from Adam. But yeah, I know Kelly Haney. I don’t know Kelly Haney like I know my wife.

I don’t know Kelly Haney like I know most of you sitting out here. We know each other. That’s the difference.

And that’s what he’s saying. I don’t know you. We never knew each other.

And so he says there are going to be people who are going to miss it. They’re going to wait too long or they’re going to reject me altogether. And they’re not going to realize until it’s too late.

And they’re pounding on the door after the door’s been shut and saying, let me in, let me in. And the voice comes out from the other side. I didn’t know you.

I don’t know you. And in verse 26, they’ll begin to say, we’ve eaten and drunk in thy presence and now is taught in our streets. But wait a minute.

We spent time together. That eating and drinking together. You know, you don’t just, especially in their day, you didn’t just sit down and eat and drink with anybody.

There was an intimacy about that. That was a time of fellowship. Even at that, I mean, think about it today.

You don’t go into a restaurant and just sit down at a table with people you don’t know. They’ll look at you like the people looked at me when I would walk up to them in the OU shirt and act like I knew them. They’re going to think you’re from Bizarro World.

We sit down and we eat with people we know. And there were always people around Jesus. But they were there for the show.

They were there because he was feeding them. They were there because he was doing miracles. They never really concerned themselves with knowing Jesus.

And you taught in the streets. You were around us. We listened to you teach, and we thought you had some good ideas.

Again, they’re liking some of the same things and being in close proximity and think that means they know him. And he says, I never knew you. and he says in verse 28 there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and you yourselves thrust out and they shall come from the east and from the west and from the north and from the south and shall sit down in the kingdom of God and behold there are last which shall be first and there are first which shall be last So the point that Jesus is making in this passage, the simple point we need to focus on that he’s making from this passage, is that there will be some who will be left out of the kingdom.

Now the idea here is not Jesus saying, I don’t like you, so you’re out of the kingdom. Or, you weren’t wealthy enough, you didn’t go to church enough, I didn’t like your haircut, so you’re all out of the kingdom. No, there were going to be some who were out of the kingdom because they never took the time to know Jesus.

They never really did know him. And they never did follow the road that he set before them. Which is not a road of good works.

Please hear me and please understand what I’m saying when I tell you the road that he laid out for them. The road he laid out for them is not saying, live a good life. Do the right things.

Walk just this way and don’t get out of line. That’s not the way to heaven. That’s the broad road that he’s warning against. The road that says, I can do it.

The road that says, I can earn my way to God. Or I’m acceptable to God just the way I am. The narrow road that Jesus talked about that led to the straight gate was the realization that we can’t be good enough for God.

It was the realization that we can’t earn God’s forgiveness or acceptance. It was the realization that it was only through Jesus Christ. How do we know that’s the narrow road? Do people not still say that it’s narrow-minded today to believe there’s only one way to God, through Jesus Christ?

That’s why it’s okay when you pray and pray to God. You can pray to God in a public meeting, you can pray to God in Congress, that people get their feathers all ruffled up when you pray in Jesus’ name. You can go on the talk shows, you can go on Oprah or whatever they have nowadays, I don’t think she’s on anymore, But you can go on TV, you can talk about God all you want.

But when you start talking about Jesus, people get upset. Because it’s narrow-minded. It’s narrow-minded to say that there’s only one way to God.

Everybody who believes in God wants a way to God. But this idea that there’s only one way, you can only find Him through Jesus, is narrow-minded. And I’ll remind you of what I said a couple weeks ago.

The thought that occurred to me that the world looks at it and says it’s so narrow-minded to think, it’s incredibly narrow-minded to think that God would only make one way. And I’m still amazed that He would even make one way. We don’t deserve His mercy.

We don’t deserve His grace. We sure didn’t deserve for Him to send His Son to pay for our sins on the cross. What we deserve from God was for Him to look at us in our sin and in our rebellion and say, Bye, enjoy hell.

and yet out of his own love and mercy and goodness he decided to send his son to pay for our sins so that we could have a way to heaven so this narrow road is is not a road of good works it’s a road of realizing that we’ve all rebelled against God we’ve all sinned against God and that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to heaven and that that way to heaven is not found by liking him and liking the same things as him, believing that he existed. It’s about realizing that Jesus Christ died to pay for our sins that we could not. See, it’s not enough to be a fan of Jesus.

It’s not even enough to believe that he really existed. I dare say it’s not even enough to really just believe that he died. We’ve got to understand that he died for us.

that he died for our sins because in no other way could we be acceptable to God. In no other way could we find peace and forgiveness with God. In no other way could we find a hope and an eternal life in him.

And my fear is that many today will think I’m okay, I’m going to end up with God, I’m going to be with Jesus because I like Jesus and Jesus died to save us all. Well, he did, but have you accepted that mercy? have you gone down the narrow way and walked in through the straight gate because Jesus said elsewhere in the gospels that broad is the path and wide is the way that leads unto destruction and many there be that find it I hate that thought and straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to everlasting life and few there be that find it and if you already know you’ve trusted Christ as your Savior and you’ve gone in at that straight gate down that narrow way, then it ought to keep you up at night, the realization.

It ought to keep us all up at night. The realization that there are going to be more people that find the broad path to destruction than find the narrow way to God through Jesus Christ. And we ought to be standing out there at that fork of the road pleading with people to come to God through Jesus Christ. See, He’s a universal Savior in the sense that everybody can be saved. but he’s not a universal savior in the sense that everybody will be saved it’s not automatic it’s not I like him he’s good I went to church I like some of the same things he did that’s not enough to know him folks there’s no salvation outside of the blood that Jesus Christ shed for us there’s no salvation outside of believing that he shed that blood to pay for our sins and asking God’s forgiveness on the basis of what he did.

You can’t get to heaven by being good. I mean, by all means, be good. I’m not telling you go out and be crazy and live bad lives.

The preacher said we can’t get to heaven by being good, so I’m going to knock over this liquor store or this bank. No, that’s not what I’m telling you. By all means, do good things.

But understand, you’re not doing good things to get yourself into heaven. there’s not enough good we can we can do to overcome the wrong that we’ve done if I were to mix up a pot of coffee which I don’t do anymore since I overflowed it last time the coffee pot I’ll leave that to those of you who know what you’re doing back there but if I were to mix up a pot of coffee and I were to put some of your strychnine that you use to kill gophers, just a pinch of it, in the coffee, how much good coffee would I need to add to that pot for you to drink it? Is there any amount?

I see lots of skeptical looks out there. Good for you. Good for you.

I’m not Jim Jones. I’m not trying to get you to drink the strychnine-laced coffee. Good for you.

There is no amount. Do not drink that coffee. Oh, sin is like that strychnine in the coffee.

There’s no amount of good we can do to get that sin out of our lives. It’s there. We just need a new pot of coffee.

We need new life. We need Jesus to come in and clean us from the inside out. We can’t do that ourselves.

We can’t clean up our lives so we can come back to God. I’ll deal with the Lord when I get my life cleaned up. Baloney.

You can’t get your life cleaned up enough to come to the Lord. And Jesus Christ has made a way. Through his shed blood, through his death on the cross, and through his resurrection, we now have the opportunity to recognize our sin, to recognize that we have fallen short of the standard of a holy God.

And to now ask God’s forgiveness. It’s not automatic. Salvation is not automatic.

Knowing Jesus is not automatic. It takes humbling ourselves enough to admit our sin and come to him by faith, believing that he died for our sins, believing that he died to take all the punishment we deserve, and then asking God’s forgiveness. And at that point, he will and can and does save everybody who comes to him by faith.

he said that if we would come to him he would in no wise cast us out so my question to you this morning and again like some of these I have three points here and I’m not going to give them to you we’re just going to stick with this one is Jesus who he claimed to be or is Jesus wrong and the experts today are right because Jesus said there are going to be some who miss out on the kingdom and here’s how you find the kingdom and there are many today that say no everybody’s going to be in the kingdom because God loves everybody yeah right God loves everybody enough that he sent his son to make a way into the kingdom so my question to you this morning is who’s right Jesus or the experts it can’t be both I mean the experts who say the opposite of Jesus it can’t be both do we believe what he said that there is a way into the kingdom that many will miss it but it’s there or do we just go on rejecting what he said and think we’ll find ourselves in the right spot eventually?

For me, I think there’s a lot more wisdom in trusting what Jesus said about the matter. And I hope that you will as well. I hope that when you think about it in those terms that I, hey, I can’t believe both of these.

If they’re saying the opposite, somebody’s got to be right and somebody’s got to be wrong. Please don’t take my word for it. Jesus is the one who said it.

There will be some who miss the kingdom. But he’s given us the way in right there, and it’s through him.