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Born to Win Podcast - with Ronald L. Dart
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Born to Win's Daily Radio Broadcast and Weekly Sermon. A production of Christian Educational Ministries.
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The Words of Jesus #4
Feb 20, 202500:27:35Tap to summarizeI doubt if there are any words of Jesus more widely quoted and better known than his little statement in John 3:16:For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.John 3:16 KJVIt is hard to grasp how a first-century Jew would have taken that. Listen to the emphasis. God so loved the world—not just the Israelites, and not just the Jews. And it is everlasting life we are talking about here, and it is for whosoever believes him, not just for the Jews. It is difficult, looking back from our perspective in the 20th century to the 1st—we already have a concept of Jesus, we already have a very strong idea of what he taught and believed, and we have attached a very strong meaning to this one little verse. But it’s hard to understand what that verse meant to the man who first heard it.Judaism was the religion of the Jews. Gentiles were shut out unless they made the complete transition—being circumcised and observing the whole package including the Oral Law and traditions of the Jews in order to have any access to God at all. Observant Jews would not so much as eat with a gentile.What Jesus is saying here is not new. The prevailing doctrine of the Jews relative to Gentiles was not what the Old Testament taught. The prophets—especially Isaiah—spoke quite frankly of the conversion of the Gentiles; and the Torah made definite provision for Gentiles to worship God, to adore him, and observe most (if not all) of his festivals. So Jesus, in a manner that must have gone over his listeners heads, speaks of God loving the whole world and extending salvation to all people.
Transcribe →The Words of Jesus #3
Feb 19, 202500:27:32Tap to summarizeWhatever image you have in your mind of Jesus Christ, it is surely wrong. None of his disciples told us anything at all about how Jesus looked—which is a curious oversight, in a way, because we really would like to know. It comes as a shock to some people when they learn that the picture of Jesus they bought and hung on the wall is a painting of some male model the artist recruited to sit for the portrait.There is every indication that Jesus was unremarkable physically. He was a Jew, but that was completely ordinary to his disciples. So we know nothing about Jesus’ physical appearance, but we do know a great deal about his character and personality—which is of a great deal more interest anyway. He was definitely not a talkative man. And when he did speak, he was often cryptic. When he acted, though, he was pretty definite.And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things away; make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise.John 2:13–16 KJ2000I have often pondered how Jesus got away with this. He turned the whole place upside-down, and no one laid a hand on him. I think they were a little bit afraid of him. First, they knew that he was right. No one argued that these activities should have been going on. The temple should have been a quiet place of prayer, filled with the smell of incense. But it had all the noise of a marketplace and the stench of animal dung. They knew this was not right. I think that Jesus also had a charismatic personality—he spoke and acted with authority. When challenged on the source of his authority, Jesus had this to say…
Transcribe →The Words of Jesus #2
Feb 18, 202500:28:03Tap to summarizeNothing is more central to the Christian faith than baptism. Whether it be by immersion, sprinkling, or pouring, baptism is the initiation rite to the Christian church. If you haven’t been baptized somehow, someway, you haven’t met the entry level requirement. Baptism is a Christian thing—and yet baptism did not originate with Christianity. It had been practiced for at least 150 years before Jesus appeared on the scene, and even in the New Testament itself it does not originally come from Jesus, but from John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus himself.There is a puzzling exchange that takes place between these two men, and it is only in recent years (because of things we’ve learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls) that we have come to understand what it is all about:Then came Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized by him. But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized by you, and come you to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Permit it to be so now: for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he permitted him.Matthew 3:13–15 KJ2000Baptism was already an old custom—how old, no one really knows. The Qumran community had been in the area where John was baptizing for generations, and John’s baptism resembled theirs in some important respects. We make a mistake if we project the doctrine of Christian baptism back onto John’s baptism. There was an important difference. Christian baptism washes away sins—purifies. But the baptism of the Qumran community required that a person become clean and free from sin before he could be baptized. It is hard to say if John knew anything of Christian baptism when Jesus came to him. Now, listen to the words of Jesus in response to John…
Transcribe →The Words of Jesus #1
Feb 17, 202500:27:35Tap to summarizeDid it ever occur to you to wonder why Jesus didn’t write his own book? Why do have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the four Gospels, but no Gospel According to Jesus? And have you ever noticed how little Jesus had to say? He was a man of few words for the most part, though he did sometimes wax eloquent for, say, five minutes. Let me show you something really curious about the gospel accounts of Jesus speeches. Mark, in his gospel account, passes over all the early years of Jesus’ life very quickly and comes to the actual beginning of Jesus’ work. Jesus calls his disciples, and then we have this:And they went into Capernaum; and immediately on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue, and taught. And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.Mark 1:21–22 KJ2000Then he heals a man in the synagogue and Jesus and his disciples leave the synagogue. What is wrong with this picture? Well, I for one, would give a lot to know what Jesus said in that synagogue. Mark says they were astonished at his doctrine. Mark doesn’t, however, see fit to tell us what the doctrine was! To a 20th-century reader, this is a remarkable oversight. He taught doctrine. He taught with authority. His listeners were astonished. Please, please, tell us what he said! But no, Mark doesn’t think it is important. Here I am, concerned about the intellectual content of Jesus’ teaching, while Mark is far more concerned with what Jesus actually did and the message contained in what he did. But if I want the intellectual content of Jesus’ message—what did Jesus actually say, what did he teach—how am I going to find it?
Transcribe →The Starting Point
Feb 14, 202500:28:07Tap to summarizeNancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth, brought something into focus that I had thought about but hadn't quite got together. She observed that a common weakness of evangelism is that we start with redemption. It's true, especially among evangelicals. When there is an altar call at the end of a sermon, it can't help but control the entire sermon. The object is to bring the sinner home. Evangelism starts with redemption.I have commented before about the signs we used to see on the sides of barns, and in neon lights on top of a temple in downtown Los Angeles: Jesus Saves. Yes, but what does that mean? Saves from what? Saves for what? What do you mean by that? I have heard Billy Graham cry out, Christ is the answer. Does anyone ever ask, Yes, but what was the question?Christian evangelism seemed to me to be all bound up in their own jargon. It is good that, in spite of all that, they found enough people who felt they needed saving from something and came to accept Christ. And some of these people experienced a changed life as a result.Nothing I am going to say here, and nothing Ms. Pearcey says, should diminish the idea of redemption in the least. That said, she advanced a kind of framework for a worldview composed of three elements: Creation, The Fall, Redemption. Her argument is that the place evangelism should start is not with redemption. It should start with creation. For without this truth at the foundation, nothing else means anything.Unless you believe in the creation, the idea of a fall is meaningless, and so is redemption. Man is just a terrible accident that the universe would have been better off without—except, without creation, there is no better or worse.
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