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WHY I

Laugh

Ed Young

November 12-13, 2005

Transcript

[Ed walks on stage with a long piece of toilet paper hanging out from the back of his pants.]

A while back I met a friend for lunch and we met at a very expensive restaurant. The reason I went to that restaurant is because he was paying for the meal. I got there early for some reason and he wasn’t there yet. I looked around the restaurant and the restaurant was packed. I recognized a few people from Fellowship Church. I went to the men’s room and when I came back from the men’s room, my friend still wasn’t there. So I basically went from table to table saying “Hi” to everybody. I was like, “How are you doing?” and, “What’s going on?” And people started laughing at me and I had no idea why.

I went back to my table and sat down. My friend showed up, we had lunch, and after lunch I was walking out and my friend said, “Ed, dude, you’ve got a tail of toilet paper hanging from your pants!”

How many of you have ever had an experience like that before? Raise your hand. If your hand’s not in the air, you’re lying! Don’t be acting like you’ve never done that before.  This is church.

It’s fun to watch you laugh. We all laugh in different ways, don’t we? I have a friend of mine, he laughs like this. “Aheea, aheea, aheea, aheea.”  If something is semi-funny he gives it one, “Aheea.”

My uncle laughs like this, “Haaaaaaaaaaa!” And he usually repeats the punch line. For example, if the punch line is, “The chicken,” he goes, “The chicken! Haaaaaaaaaa!”

I have a friend of mine who is a body builder. He’s in his 60s and he laughs like Johnny Carson, “He, he, he, I tell ya!”

A guy I’m close to here at Fellowship Church laughs like this, “Uh ha, uh ha, uh ha, oh gosh!”

I wonder if we could combine them all. (Ed combines all the different laughs together). “Aheea, aheea, aheea, aheea, haaaaaaaa, uh ha, uh ha, uh ha, oh gosh!”

Laughter is a lot of fun. We’re made for laughter. It’s fun to laugh.

I’ve been asking myself some questions lately. That’s why I’ve crafted this series of talks. I’ve been asking, “Why do I live?” I talked about that last time. I asked myself that question, but I didn’t stop with myself. I also asked God that question. “God, why do I live?” And God showed me through his word why I live.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been lobbing another question God’s way. I’ve been saying, “God, why do I laugh?” Because people tell me, “Ed, you laugh a lot.” So I decided not only to ask myself that question, to ask God that question. “God, why do I laugh?”

Over the next few moments I’m going to tell you why I laugh. And if I tell you this stuff, you will learn more about me. And I think you’ll learn more about yourself. And then, I think we’ll all learn about God.  Why do I laugh?

WHY DO I LAUGH

It Makes Me Feel Good

Number one: I laugh because it makes me feel good. You’re saying, “A reason why you laugh is because it makes you feel good?” Yes. It sounds shallow and superficial, I know, to a lot of people here. But there is a real depth to it as I unpack it.

What happens when we laugh? New research says that our T cells are all ramped up, and our endorphins really explode, and our entire muscular system relaxes. That’s what happens. That’s the health benefits, they say, of laughter. I want to laugh at the new research, because the Bible tells me in Proverbs 17:22, “A cheerful heart is good medicine.”

Laughter is God’s tranquilizer. Ecclesiastes 3:1 and 4 says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…a time to laugh.”

One of the things that kept me from going into the ministry for a while was the fact that so many pastors were so serious and boring and monotonous. I thought to myself, “I don’t want any of that.” As I read God’s word, as I began to pray, I discovered that God is our creative creator. And God wants us to laugh.

God being God could have decided that the prevailing attitude of his children would be one of boredom and solemn-ness and seriousness. But God didn’t say that. Throughout his word God has told us that the earmark of a Christian, the sign that we know Jesus Christ, is outrageous, contagious joy. And a byproduct of joy is what? Laughter. So it’s good to laugh.

I experience life in the raw every day being in the ministry. I deal with some tough stuff in people’s lives and I need to laugh. I need to laugh and to feel good. And that’s a lot of fun. We have a fun time laughing around our staff.

Several Easters ago someone attended one of our Easter services and our security camera got that picture. [A picture is shown on the side screens of a woman wearing an Easter bunny costume, sitting in the worship center, at Fellowship Church.] That’s the real deal. A woman showed up in a rabbit costume. Now you’ve got to laugh at that. One of the ushers said, “Ma’am, would you please take off your ears? People can’t see behind you.”

And she said, “Well, if I take my ears off, it will show my hair and my hair is totally messed up.”

Look at the guy next to her. He’s going, “Oh, no! What is happening at this church?”

Easter—the day the rabbit came to church. You have got to laugh at people like that, don’t you?

One of my problems is I take myself too seriously, and many times I don’t take God seriously enough. Are you that way? If I take myself too seriously, I look to Ed for all the answers. If I take God seriously, I look to God for the answers of life. “God why do I exist? Why do I live? Why do I laugh?” Don’t stop at Ed. Don’t take Ed too seriously. Look to God.

When I first became a pastor at 21, I worked at my father’s church. At the time, my father’s church was the largest church in America. I did not report directly to him, I reported to another guy. And one day this guy walked into my office and said, “Ed, I want you to give the morning prayer at the 11:00 service.” Now the morning prayer, man, that was the prayer of all prayers. You had to have all the words down. You had the “thees” and the “thous.” It had to be a high priestly prayer. And every time you’d do the morning prayer, you concluded by getting the congregation to repeat with you The Lord’s Prayer.

So, man, I worked and worked and worked on this prayer. I mean, I was studying hard for this prayer. I knew Sunday was coming and I said to myself, “I’ve got to have good prayer. This is my first public prayer. It’ll be a packed out church and the television cameras will be rolling. I mean, I’m the preacher’s kid. I’ve got to step up. I’ve got to bring my A game!”

So, I thought about this prayer and I outlined the prayer. I thought since everyone would have their heads bowed and eyes closed, I could kind of read the prayer. And then, with The Lord’s Prayer, I wrote every word. I had it laminated in my Bible. I was ready for the prayer. So we had this giant pulpit on this stage and all these big throne chairs. You’ve seen those before. There was a choir behind us. I had my Bible with the prayer in it and I was sitting there ready. So the organist began to play softly and then the minister of music looked at me and gave me “the nod.”

Nods are funny aren’t they? I’ve done a lot of funerals, and not to laugh at funerals, but man, people who work for funeral homes they can nod. It’s a nodding contest. They never talk.

So anyway, they nodded at me on the platform and I walked up to that big pulpit, slapped my Bible down, and in my best voice I said, “Let us pray.” I grabbed the side of the pulpit and I began to pray. And man, this prayer was going great. It was incredible. I was saying to myself, “This is a good prayer. Ed, you are really praying all the ‘thees’ and the ‘thous’ and all this stuff.”

And then I got to The Lord’s Prayer and my transition was beautiful. In the prayer I said, “And we voice this prayer in the name that is above every name—Jesus Christ; the one who taught his disciples to pray saying….” Is that great or what?

And then I’m saying, “Okay, now all I’ve got to do is just read The Lord’s Prayer. I mean, how easy is that? I can read!” I had it down in my Bible. It was right there.

I said, “Our Father…” And I paused and the entire church said, “Our Father…”

I said, “Who art in heaven…”

Everybody said, “Who art in heaven…”

And then, friends, I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t read anymore. I couldn’t talk anymore. I totally choked. I forgot everything. The crowd started laughing and murmuring. Then I said quickly, “For thine is the kingdom forever. Amen.”

And I closed my Bible and people began to die laughing, “You’ll never be a pastor!”

So I walk down the steps from this platform feeling about that big [measures 2 inches with thumb and forefinger], saw an opening on this front pew, sat down—and people were still laughing. I happened to sit down by my mom of all people, and she turned to me and she said, “Ed, your voice sounded real good.” Only a mother would say something like that. My voice sounded real good.

I told you that story because it makes me feel good, now, to tell it. And hopefully, it makes you feel good to hear it. Why do I laugh? Because it makes me feel good. I’ve got to laugh.

It Tells Me Who My Friends Are

Here’s the second reason why I laugh. It tells me who my friends are. Who are your friends? Do you laugh a lot with your friends? We should all laugh a lot with people we connect with. We should look for lordship, number one. Is Jesus Lord? Is he number one? Does he have the car keys of their life? That’s the most important question. And behind that comes sense of humor. The laughter thing.

One of the most difficult things I do, in fact the most difficult thing I do in my job, is public speaking. If you read a stress level survey, number one is experiencing the death of a loved one; number two is speaking in public. That’s what I do. And I wish I could tell you I never get nervous. I wish I could tell you that I just walk up here and just start talking. I have to bust my rear to come up here each and every weekend.

I can’t put the appointment off before 17,000 – 21,000 people—depending upon the Cowboy schedule. I can’t say, “I don’t feel like going to church, Lisa.” I can’t call in sick. I’ve got to be here with my A game. I’m saying a word from God. That brings me a lot of stress and anxiety.

Man, when Wednesday rolls around, I feel this pressure on my shoulders. I’m saying, “Whoa, I’ve got to say a word from God. It’s got to be biblical. Hopefully, it will be compelling and applicable to a seminary professor or someone who’s clueless about Christianity. That’s a pretty stressful thing.

So within this stress, what do I do? I’ve got friends and many times I’ll call my close friends just to laugh. Many times I’ll call them at 6:30 – 7:00 a.m. if I’m facing a really hairy day—just to laugh.

I was thinking about my life. It funny, because people say, “Hey man, have a good weekend.” I haven’t had a good weekend in a long, long time. I have good weeks, but not good weekends. My father and I talk about that a lot. But usually on Saturdays, there’s a friend that I call who lives in another state. And the main thing we do on Saturday morning when we talk is—you guessed it—laugh.

I’ve got to laugh. We have to laugh. God made you in his image. God made me in his image. God’s the author, the inventor of laughter. So we should laugh. When I laugh with my friends I’m affirming them. I’m building up their self-esteem. They’re building up my self-esteem.

Laughter breaks down barriers, doesn’t it? When we laugh, we’re disarmed and we hear the truth.

In Matthew 7, Jesus was talking and he used some Hebrew humor. He said (paraphrased), “Here you are walking around with a sequoia tree in your eye, a plank plastered across your face. And here you are picking out a speck in this girl’s eye that you see every day around the office? You’re saying to her, ‘I can’t believe you! You’ve got a piece of sawdust in your contact lens.’ How dumb and ridiculous do I look?”

That’s Hebrew humor. Jesus said (paraphrased), “Yank the plank. Don’t jump down someone else’s throat. Worry about your junk.” That’s funny. The exaggeration, the humor involved in it.

And then, that’s one of the things we do here at Fellowship Church. We take what Jesus did, his teaching methodology, and we simply do it like I believe he would do it today.

A while back, I was teaching on commitment. The Bible is a book about commitment and covenant, as we know. And commitment is all about pledging yourself to a position no matter what the cost. Yet our culture loves to talk about feelings. We say, “I’ve got to feel it. If I feel it, it’s real.” And I made this statement: I said, “We cannot feel our way into a commitment.” We can’t say, “Okay, I feel it now. And if I feel it, I’ll stay in the marriage or in the friendship. But if I don’t feel it, I’m out.” Feelings are freaky. You could have eaten a bad pizza. You don’t feel your way into commitment. No, no. You commit and then the feelings will follow.

During our planning session, I was talking about this to several of our staff members and we were going back and forth and I began to just sing this song. I love to sing. [Ed begins singing the song “Feelings”] “Feelings, nothing more than feelings….” Some of you remember that. And so Preston Mitchell, one of our pastors said, “Ed, man, you ought to sing that to start off the message.” And then he said, “Sing it like you’re serious. It’ll cause tension, because at first people will laugh at you like, ‘Ha, what are you trying to do? Sing?’ But then they’ll know that you’re trying your best and it’ll make them all nervous and stuff.”

And that’s what I did. And it was so funny to watch you.  When I started out, “Feelings, nothing more than feelings,” you’re going like, “Ha, ha, ha. Oh, some kind of joke.” But I stayed with the song and you were like, “Oh, okay. He’s serious. He’s trying the best he can, honey.”

But the song illustrated the fickleness of our feelings. Throughout the message I went back and I sang, “Feelings, nothing more than feelings….”

We’re simply doing what Jesus did. We try to use humor. Who are your friends? And whose are your friends?

Singles. If you’re single, lift your hands. You’re single. Wave your hands, singles. I’m not single, but I’ll use the “we” now. Man, we’re always…singles are always looking, man.  “Does he have a ring on? Does he look rich? Did you see the car he got out of? Man, have you seen her? Wow!”

Single men mess up. Single men concentrate on looks way too much. Men concentrate on looks way too much! Good looks, guys, ain’t gonna bring you a cup of coffee in the morning. Good looks ain’t gonna make you breakfast in the morning. Good looks ain’t gonna be a good momma to your kids! Looks fade and they sag and they wrinkle. I don’t care if Tyra Banks or Angelina Jolie is in the house, one day it’s going to be sad singing for them. Sagging and wrinkling.

How many believe that beauty fades? How many are a testimony to that? Yes! Single guys are too much into the looks. Now looks are there, but I think number one, lordship, as I said earlier. Is Jesus Lord in this person’s life? Is he number one?

Number two, how about laughter? We don’t think about that when we’re dating. Laughter. Do you laugh at each other and with one another? Is that a part of your foundation? Do you have that chemistry, that affirmation? Are you building one another up and encouraging one another? That’s important. And after that, looks. You’ve got to have that! Ha!

I talked with some single guys recently, and this is hilarious. Single guys are picking all these women apart as far as their looks. And I want to say to them, “Look in the mirror! Look at your face. Look at your butt, you know. Man, guy, you had better take a long look in the full length mirror next time you start critiquing a girl, all right?” (This is a good tape. I might buy this tape myself.)

I was talking about friends, wasn’t I? Oh yeah! Friends and dating. My friends and I laugh a lot. It’s important to laugh. And we laugh at the right things. And I’ll talk about that later.

It Gives Me a Proper Perspective on Life

The third reason why I laugh: it gives me a proper perspective on life. Let me press the rewind button a second and go back to a statement I made earlier. I hope you didn’t miss it; I hope you put it in your frontal lobe. So often, I take myself too seriously and I don’t take God seriously enough.

A couple of years ago my son, EJ, was asking me to bring home all the tapes of my messages. Every week, “Dad, did you bring the tape of your message of your sermon?” This happened for a long time. I was feeling kind of good that he was listening to my tapes. My own son! And finally I said, “EJ, why do you want my tapes of me preaching and teaching?”

He said, “Well, Dad I play them at night, because they put me to sleep!”

Kids, along with, of course, God himself, will help all of us not to take ourselves too seriously. And I’ve learned that many times, the hard way. It gives me proper perspective, a proper read on life. It helps me to be able to see life the way God sees it.

God’s got to have an incredible sense of humor because he made you and me. Don’t you know God laughs. Just think about how funny we are. We have security cameras all around the church and most people don’t know where they are. One of the most hilarious things is to go back stage and see these security cameras looking at people in the audience. Oh, it is hilarious! People asleep and drooling. Couples kissing. You would not believe what we see on the security cameras!

Sometimes I play a joke on the people who are asleep in the service. I’ll just let you in on my little pastoral humor. I’ll be talking along, then I look and I’ll see someone who’s drifting off to sleep. So I just start talking softly and I watch them go drift to sleep and I’ll continue to talk soft just for a while. (I do so many services I can do this.) I talk soft and then I’ll make a point and shout out a word or two and watch them jerk awake and go, “Amen! Amen! Yes!”

It’s just kind of funny for me. I don’t do it for you, just for me. You don’t even know I’m doing it. I do it just to shock them a little bit.

Laughter gives great spice to life. We’ve got to laugh. Laughter is a sign of spiritual maturity. Laughter is a sign that you have a deep walk with Jesus Christ. You show me someone who laughs a lot and I’ll show you someone who is a true Christ follower. You show me someone who is all solemn and serious and routine-like and rut-like, and I’ll show you someone who is immature spiritually.

It Pleases God

That brings us to the fourth reason. Why does Ed Young laugh? It pleases God. It makes God smile. God has feelings too. And he smiles when I smile.

How many parents do we have in the house? Hey, parents, we love to watch our children laugh. There’s nothing that thrills me more than to see them laugh from the belly.

Our heavenly Father is the same way. “Aheea, aheea, haaa, ha, oh, gosh.”

Remember, God could have said, “Okay, I want the prevailing attitude to be one of boredom and seriousness and solemn-ness. Galatians 5:22 says, “The fruit of the spirit is…” What? “Joy!” Yeah, outrageous, contagious joy.

[Ed begins singing.] “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy down in my heart! Where? Down in my heart!”

I learned that song as a kid. I like that song. Here’s another verse. Nehemiah 8:10, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”

There was another song I used to sing. [Ed begins singing…] “The joy of the Lord is my strength, the joy of the Lord is my strength. He fills my heart with laughter…ha, ha, ha.”

I just wanted to sing that for me. Well, “The fruit of the spirit…” Galatians 5 says, “…is joy.” What’s the byproduct of joy? Laughter. What happens? I receive Jesus Christ, and the person of the Holy Spirit infiltrates my life. He redecorates my life from the interior, and I produce, Galatians 5 says, supernatural fruit. And one of the things is this thing called joy—outrageous, contagious joy. We should be known by our joy.

The fruit, though, is not for self consumption. We don’t eat the joy. No, no, no. What do we do? We share it. We share our outrageous, contagious joy and laughter.

John 10:10. I talked about this last time. “The thief comes (that’s Satan) only to steal and kill and destroy.”

You might be asking, “How does that relate to laughter?” Hold on to your theater seats. Jesus said in that same verse, “I have come that you might have life, and have it to the full.” Or your translation might read “to the abundance.”

The word “abundance” in the Greek is pronounced par-a-sos. It means “overflowing.” It means a life full of joy and laughter and creativity and adventure and excitement. That’s the kind of life that Jesus wants us to live.

Every time you have a gift like laughter, you have Satan coming in and giving us a counterfeit. Any laughter that is disrespectful, dirty or degrading is not godly laughter. It’s not the kind of laughter that we were designed for. And if you are involved in it, get away from it. If you are hanging around people, and that’s all they do, get away from them. Cut them from your herd. Move toward people who are into lordship and laughter. Don’t get into the lude stuff and the lustful stuff and the degrading stuff.

I laugh at these comedians, not their jokes, because so many of the comedians use the “f” bomb and they talk about all the dirty stuff. And then at the end they’ll say, “God bless you! You were a great audience.”

How easy is it to use all the dirty words and the dirty jokes to get some cheap laughs? But it takes real creativity, real innovation, real stuff from God to really laugh. Many times Lisa and I will be at a restaurant with some friends, and we’ll be laughing and laughing, and people will come up and ask, “What are you drinking?”

I just look at them and say, “We’re drinking Perrier and flavored tea.” Do you really have to drink alcoholic beverages to really laugh? How pitiful is that? Too many people think, “Oh, we need stimulants to laugh. Smoke this, drink this. Then we’ll really laugh.”

That’s not true laughter. You’re missing it. You’re missing it. Or we laugh at homosexuality. “That guy with that guy, ha! Look at those queers.” We laugh at lesbians. “Ha, ha, ha.”

You know what? That kind of laughter is Satanic. It’s Satanic. Satan wants us to laugh at stuff because we drop our guards and then one day we’ll accept it as normal. God did not make a man to be with a man or a woman to be with a woman. He made a man to be with a woman in the context of marriage. Now, we love fornicators; we love adulterers; we love homosexuals. But we draw lines in the sand and we say, “We love you enough to tell the truth about your condition.”

So make sure you’re laughing right man. Psalm 126—here’s the context: the children of Israel had been in exile for 70 years. Now they were coming back to J-town, back to Zion. (J-town is Jerusalem. You might get that later.)

Psalm 126:1-6, “When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed.” This is the Israelites talking. “Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues sung songs of joy.”

Now this is really cool, it’s very convicting in my life.

“Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’”

The other people are going like, “Man, God has blessed you! Look at your joy and your laughter. Man, you’ve got something that’s unique about you.” Do people say that about you? I hope they say that about me. I hope.

Let’s skip down to the last verse, Psalm 126:6, “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying the seed to sow, will return with the songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.”

Life is not always happy is it? I mean it’s not. Sometimes, I talk to people who try to say, “Everything is great, everything is joyful, everything is wonderful. It’s just happy, happy, happy. If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands! Everything is just awesome. Man there are not any problems.”

I want to say, “Man, what are you smoking? Life is hard. It’s full of stress and anxiety. We live in a fallen world. Loved ones get sick. They die. We get fired. We lose money. People get hurt. Accidents occur. What about that?”

I was off one time in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and I saw this beautiful forest being burned to the ground. I watched helicopters dumping all this stuff, but it didn’t even mess with those flames. But I’ve been back to Jackson Hole and now those forests have grown back.

God is a god of restoration.

One time I broke this finger right here, but the bone’s healed now. Isn’t that incredible. We go through grief. Do we live in grief? No, because on the other side of grief there is joy and even laughter.

Well, the Bible tells me that even my tears that I shed are like seeds. They hit the ground, they hit the soils of our lives, and if we walk with God, they germinate. And one day they’re going to produce joy. And what is the byproduct of joy? You guessed it. Outrageous and contagious laughter.

Psalm 122:1, “I rejoice with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”

That’s one thing I love about Fellowship Church. Our church is full of joy and laughter. If you ever go to a church and the church is not laughing a lot, it’s not a Godly church. If you ever go to a church and there’s not joy, it’s not a Godly church; it’s not a spiritually mature church. Christians should laugh more than anybody. I should laugh more than anybody.

And really I guess this could be the fifth reason why I laugh. Here’s the bottom line: I laugh because of The Gospel. Think about it. I mean, I’m a fallen and fallible self-centered sinner. I’m totally unrighteous, and there’s this cosmic chasm separating me from God. I deserve to get nuked. I’m toast, because I’m a sinner. God’s perfect. He’s holy, and I’m not. So man, I’m in trouble. It’s like, it should over.

What did God do, though? God loved me so much, he loved you so much, that he sent Jesus Christ, who lived a perfectly righteous life, to die on the cross for all of my junk and funk, and yours too. Jesus rose again, and I’ve received what God has done for me through Christ. And because of that, I’m freed up to laugh.  I mean, I’ve read the last page, and guess what? We win! So I can just laugh, man! I’m freed up to have the kind of joy and the kind of exuberance and excitement that is not manufactured from Ed Young. It comes from God. It comes totally from God.

So laughing is a mature thing. It’s a sign of, I believe, spiritual depth. And again, that’s one of the reasons Fellowship is so great. People tell me that all the time who come by Fellowship Church or come by our Uptown campus or our Alliance campus or our Plano campus, “ I’ve never seen a church this joyful. You people know how to have fun!”

And I simply say, “You know what? The joy of the Lord is our strength.” It’s all about him, because God frees us up to really, really laugh.

DO YOU LAUGH?

Let me turn the spot light on you for a second. Do you laugh? Ask yourself that question and also ask God that question. “God, why do I laugh?” You should laugh a lot if you’re a Christ follower. I know many of us are believers here. Some are still kicking tires and that’s cool, but if you’re a believer, you should laugh a lot. Are you laughing?

Maybe you’re saying, “Well, no I’m not really laughing that much.” Why? Why? Maybe just maybe you’ve got a sequoia tree in your eye. Maybe just maybe you need to tell the truth about your whole deal and yank the plank.

Are you selfish? Maybe stingy. Are you serving in a ministry? Because if you’re not serving, I’m telling you, it’ll turn into cynicism. And then your level of laughter will greatly diminish. What has you bound? Anger? Greed? What has you bound?

I’m going to challenge you to think about your schedule, because so often the pace of life will trip me up. I’ve gone through seasons in my life where I’m thinking, “Okay, tomorrow. Yeah, next week. I’ve got to travel here and then we’re thinking about building this with Fellowship Church, and then and then and then….” I can’t enjoy the moment. We’re so busy—we’re over-challenged and over-stimulated—that we miss the moment. We’ve got to maximize the moment and enjoy it. And when we do that and allow God to maximize the moment, then we’re going to be people of laughter. Aheea, aheea, haaaaaa, he, he, oh, gosh!

AUTHORITY ISSUES

The “S” Word

Ed Young

August 28-29, 2005

Today we are talking about authority in marriage.  Singles, don’t check out on me, because this one is also for you.  I have to give some introductory remarks before I get into the depth of this talk.

It’s going to be very, very tempting for the wives here to think about their husbands when we go through this material.  You’re going to be like, “Oh get him, Ed, get him.  Hit him a lick, hit him a lick.  Harder, harder!”  But don’t go there.

Men, it’ll be very tempting for us as husbands to go, “Ha, ha, ha!  Oh, man, I’m so glad she heard that.  I’ll just smile confidently and just sit back and listen.”  Don’t do that.

We all carry a bunch of baggage and junk and funk and presuppositions to the table when we think about authority in the home.  So I’m going to ask you to press the delete button, to clear the decks of all of that junk, and to simply say, “God, show me your truth.”

We’re going to open God’s truth, His Word, and talk about what the Scripture says regarding authority in marriage.  This is a towering topic with huge implications.

I hate to carry umbrellas, I really do.  I don’t like them.  Lisa always carries an umbrella.  A while back it was raining cats and dogs.  I mean, it was coming down in sheets.  Lisa had her umbrella and we had to walk together from one building to another building.

So, with her holding her umbrella she said, “Honey, come underneath my umbrella and I think we can make it to the building without getting wet.”  So she’s holding the umbrella and here I am like walking hunched over like this.  And I’m getting drenched.  And she said, “This is not working.”  I said, “No it’s not.”

So she handed me the umbrella.  I took the umbrella and she got close to me and we walked in concert together to the other building.  We even got a couple of kisses in.  It was a beautiful thing.

What is a husband’s job description in Scripture?  One word.  It can be summarized in one word.  This is our job description.  If you’re single and you’re a student or if you’re married, this is our job description in this beautiful relationship called marriage.  One word: Sacrifice.  Men, say it with me.  Sacrifice.  One more time.  Sacrifice.  That’s our job description.

Now let’s talk to the ladies.  Women, the Bible—I’m talking about God’s word—says that your job description can be summarized in one word.  Women, say it with me.  Submission.  I know it hurts.  Smile when you say it.  Let’s go.  Submission.

Now when you said the “S” word, a lot of you—I’m talking to women now—have these whacked out views of what the word means.  And hopefully as we unpack the depth, the richness, of Scripture and of authority in marriage, you’ll leave this worship service with an “A-ha” in your mind; like, “A-ha!  Now I get it.  Now I see the genius of God.”

A man, though, is superior to a woman…in being a man.  A woman is superior to a man in being a woman.  God made us different for a reason.  Men are to be men and women are to be women.  God does not want any she-men or he-women.  We’re unique and we’re different so we can be one.

God always works through authority.  We’ve been talking about that around here.  God is all about authority.  It’s who he is.  The Trinity—God the father, God the son, God the Holy Spirit; equal in form, unique in function.  We have authority and submission going on in the nature and character of God Himself.  And God always works through authority.

We need to get under those things that God has placed over us so we can get over those things God has placed under us.  But most people live this one and only life without realizing that whole concept.  They just walk around like this [holding the umbrella at arm’s length].  Here’s the authority of God and they’re getting hammered by hell—H‑E-L-L.  They’re getting pelted by all the problems, drenched in dysfunction.  How crazy does this look?  “Okay, there’s the authority of God.  But I’ll do my own thing man, yeah.  I’m ready for life.”  No you’re not.  No you’re not.

How do we understand God’s authority in marriage?  We understand God’s authority in marriage as we stand under his authority.  We stand under his umbrella of authority.  God uses authority figures and authority systems to mold us and to make us and to shape us into greatness.

MEN

Some of the guys are saying, “Well, man, I want to control my life.  I want to call the shots.”  Listen very carefully.  If you want to control your life; if you want to gain control of your life, you’ve got to give up control.  Because the moment you give up control, that is when you gain control.  Men, it’s all about sacrifice.  That’s your job description.  That’s my job description.

The Scripture says in 1 Corinthians 11:3, “Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.”

As I’ve said before, anything with no head is dead and anything with two heads is a freak!  You’ll get that later, some of you.

Husbands, I’m not, nor is God, talking about rights.  I’m talking about responsibility.  God in His sovereignty has placed the leadership of the relationship, he’s placed the umbrella of authority, in the hands of the man.  The husband is to be the leader of the relationship.

Just the word “husband” comes from two words, house and band.  The husband is to band the house together.  We’re to lead.  We’re to hold the umbrella.  The wife is to come alongside the husband under God’s authority and under the husband’s authority as we do life together.  It’s a beautiful, beautiful picture.  Scripture says the head of the woman is man.  It’s our responsibility.

Do you remember when Eve ate the Sunkist orange and sinned?  Do you remember that?  Adam and Eve tried to play this cosmic hide-and-go-seek game with God.  What did God say to them in Genesis 3?  You know what God said?  Adam, where are you?  He didn’t say Eve.  He said to the man, “Where are you?”  Adam was the guy holding the umbrella, the guy who was responsible.  “Adam, where are you?”

And that’s the same question I want to pose to all of the guys in the house, especially the husbands and those singles who are thinking about hooking up and walking down the wedding runner.  Men, where are you?  Husbands, where are you?  As I talk about this topic a lot of things are going through our minds.  A lot of things are kind of rebounding back and forth, and we’re going, “Whoa, this is some serious stuff.  This is going to call for some change and some tweaking and….”

Yes, it will.  But if you want the best for your life—and God, believe me, wants the best for you—it’s all about standing beneath his authority.

You’ll never achieve your ultimate position until you live a life of submission.  First of all, guys, submission to God.  Secondly, submission to others.  And then you’ve got to do a white knuckle grip on the umbrella, because you’re the leader.

Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  The playing field is level at the foot of the cross.  It’s level.  We’re different in function.  We’re different because of this oneness thing.

Ephesians 5:25—man, this is a cool verse, but a very convicting verse to me as a husband—”Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”  Or you could put your name there.  I would say “Ed, love Lisa just as Jesus loved the church and gave himself up for her.”  Whoa!  That’s my job description.  I’m to love Lisa how?  Like Jesus loves the church.

We’re the church.  What’s the church?  A colossal collection of moral foul-ups.  We’re fallen and fallible.  Jesus loves the church.  Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  I’ve got to love Lisa—that’s my example—as Jesus loved the church.

SACRIFICIALLY

Well how did Jesus love the church?  I’m glad you asked that question.  He loved the church sacrificially.  Sacrificially.

Check this out.  There was a cosmic chasm caused by sin.  Jesus lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, and rose again.  He took the initiative to bridge the gap to bring me to God.

As a man, as a husband, I’m to take the initiative in spiritual things, in leadership things.  Obviously, Lisa is superior to me in many areas.  I’m superior to her in a few areas.  We have authority and submission going on.  I submit, she submits.  But the buck has to stop with someone.  There’s got to be a leader.  And the buck stops with me, as the man, as the husband.  And the buck stops with you.

But a lot of guys are going, “Whoa, man, that’s too heavy.  Forget that stuff.”  And you’re getting hammered by hell, H-E-L-L.  Drenched in dysfunction.  You can’t even see the umbrella anymore.  You’re just doing what you want to do.

“Yeah, I think I should do this and we should do that….”  And you’ve got battles going on.  Now and then you might find an umbrella.  “Whoa, found an umbrella!”  And maybe your wife finds an umbrella and then you go “En guard!”  How crazy does that look?

Sometimes, guys, we’ve just said, “Okay honey, you take the umbrella.”  And we’re trying to do life like that [all hunched over and getting drenched].  How nutty was it when I let Lisa hold the umbrella?  It didn’t work out.

Other times we give the umbrella to the kids.  “Oh, it’s about you.  Hey, kids, you take it.  You’re our authority.  We will orbit our lives around you.  It’s all about the kids.  It’s all about the kids.  Where do you want to eat?  Where do you want to go to church?  What do you feel like doing?  How are you?  Oh really?  Is that what you feel?  Well, who cares about us?  No, no, no, we’re not leaders.  We just are your buddy or your friend.  We’re your coach.  No, no, we’re not your parents.  We’re not leading.”

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.  He loved it sacrificially.  He gave it all.  He took the initiative.  And that means if Lisa is 99.9 percent wrong and I’m 0.1 percent wrong, as the spiritual leader, as the umbrella fella, I have to take the initiative and reconcile the relationship.  I don’t say, “Hey Lisa, you blew it.  You’re 99.9 percent wrong, I’m only 0.1 percent wrong.  Ha, ha, ha!”

No, I don’t do that.  I say, “Honey, I was wrong.  Will you forgive me?”  Jesus loves us sacrificially.  He gave it all for you and for me.  He put it on the line.  And ladies, if your husband is loving you like that?  Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm!

Husbands, love your wives sacrificially.  Ed, love Lisa sacrificially.

SELFLESSLY

Also, husbands love your wives selflessly.  Selflessly.  That’s the second way we should love our wives.  Jesus loved us selflessly.

What did he do?  The Bible says He submitted His will to the will of the Father.  He lived this perfect life, died on the Roman cross, and rose again.  He submitted His will to the Father’s.  So I, as a man, as a husband to Lisa, have to submit my will to God’s will.  What’s God’s will?  For me to love Lisa like Jesus loved the church.  That’s God’s will.  And I’ve got to be willing to die for her and die to myself.  I die to Ed’s wishes, Ed’s wants, Ed’s ego, Ed’s sins, Ed’s rebellions, Ed’s authority issues.  That is my job description.

STEADFASTLY

Whoa!  I’m to love Lisa sacrificially, selflessly.  I’m also to love her steadfastly.  Steadfastly.  Jesus loves us with a love that’s consistent.  It never stops.  I ask you, when does Jesus ever drop the umbrella and walk out on the church?  Answer me that question.  Never.  Never, ever, ever.  He’s totally committed to us.

And guys, husbands, too many of us have dropped the umbrella and walked out on our marriage.  We’ve treated the marriage like a contract, not a covenant, always looking for loopholes.

“Yeah, but it’s better for the kids.”  Ask the kids.

“Yeah, God just wants me to be happy.”  No he doesn’t.  He wants you to be a covenant-keeper.

“Well, it’s better that way.”  You’re a liar.  It’s a covenant before God.  You don’t feel your way into a commitment.  “Yeah, I feel it, so it must be real.  I’ll go ahead and stay in the game.”

It’s not about feelings.  It’s not about emotion.  It’s not about the quiver in the liver.  It’s about commitment, and feelings will follow.  Until you get that down, you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever understand God’s beauty, His authority, or your responsibility as a man.

When did Jesus walk out on the church?  When does Jesus turn his back on us?  Never.  Ever.  We have too many weak men.  Too many guys are just going, “Okay, no.  I don’t want to lead.  It’s too much, man.  Too many responsibilities.”

Also there’s some men and some women when the man wants to lead, the wife will say, “Oh yeah, I want my husband to be a spiritual leader.”  But ladies, you will not let him.  You say, “Oh, I want leadership,” but down deep you don’t want to be led.  And you’ve got to deal with that junk.

First Peter 3:7, “Husbands, likewise dwell with them”—them, being women—”with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel.”  Whoa!  As the weaker vessel?  That’s true about women. [the verse continues] “…and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.” 

The weaker vessel.  Question—and ladies, you answer it—what’s weaker, steel or gold?  Gold.  You’re gold.  You’re not steel.  Husbands are steel.  Steel-headed.  The men of steel.

What’s more expensive?  What’s more precious?  What’s weaker?  Silk or old blue denim with holes in it that you pay for?  Ladies, you’re silk.  You’re precious.  You’re awesome.  You’re beautiful.  Guys, we’re just like old blue denim.

Treat and love your wife that way.  Put her on a pedestal.  She’s looking for someone to lead, someone to protect her, someone to love her passionately and with purpose and power and strength.

“Well, Ed, are you saying that I, like, lose my personality?”  No, ladies, no.  You discover who you really are.  And guys, you discover who you really are as well, because here’s the beautiful picture: When you walk together under the authority of God and when the husband is the leader, what happens?  You get closer and closer to each other and you become one.  God made us different for a reason.  What’s the reason?  Oneness.  Think of the Trinity.  God the father, God the son, God the Holy Spirit.  What do you have?  Oneness.

When a man and woman have sexual intercourse, what do you have?  Oneness.  Before God they are one.  They walk and talk in concert together.  Spiritually, they’re on the same page.  Emotionally, they’re on the same page.  Physically, they’re on the same page.  In every realm and every slice of life.  That’s the beauty of marriage.  So husbands, what’s our job description?  One word: Sacrifice.  Hey ladies, what’s your number one job description?  Submit.

If you had a choice, would you rather sacrifice or submit?  I’d choose submit any day of the week.  But it first starts with the husband.  We’re the initiator.  It first starts with us.

WOMEN

Now let’s switch gears and talk to the ladies here.  We’re going to talk about submission.  Here’s what I feel like as a pastor.  I feel like I’m in a tiny wooden rowboat.  And I’m rowing up to all these women at Fellowship Church in this big, honking battleship.  And ladies, you’re behind those giant machine guns aimed at my tiny wooden rowboat, and I take out my tiny little Bible with “Ed Young” embossed on the front; and I read Ephesians 5:22 which says, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.”  Let me say that again.  “Wives, submit to your husbands….”

The word “submit,” do you know what it means, ladies?  It means “to come under.”  That’s all it means.  “Wives, submit to your husbands”—don’t miss this part—”as to the Lord.”

Do you remember, husbands, what I read to you out of Ephesians 5:25?  “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.”  So, men and women, we’ve got to get our “as” in gear.

Husbands, how do you sacrifice?  As Christ.  Ladies, how do you submit?  As to the Lord.  Look at Verse 23, “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church…”  That’s his responsibility now.  “…His body, of which He is the Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”  In everything.

Whenever I talk about the “S” word, women man the battle stations on this big ship, and you can hear, “I am woman.  Hear me roar.  Numbers too big to ignore.”

SUBMISSION MISCONCEPTIONS

MINDLESS

Let me tell you what submission is not.  Ladies, submission is not mindless obedience.  It’s not, “Well my husband tells me to jump, I say, ‘How high?’”  That’s not it.  Don’t even go there.

MANIPULATIVE

It’s not this manipulative deal.  “Well, I’ll wine and dine and seduce him into my way of thinking.”  Because I know women are smarter than men; that’s a fact.  And they’re so smart they can make us think we’re leading, but in reality we’re not.  So it’s not about manipulating your husband.  That’s not submission.

MASQUERADE

It’s not about masquerading like, “Yeah, on the outside I’m like the Stepford wife.  I will submit.  But on the inside, I’m screaming, ‘He’s a self-centered jerk!’  Women who are aiming for equality with men are aiming too low.”

That’s not it.  It’s your job description.  First, if your husband is being the spiritual leader and loving you sacrificially, selflessly, steadfastly; you have no problem coming under his authority.  And your personality will go to the next level.  You discover, ladies, who you were wired up to be.

I’ll say it once again.  I am inferior to Lisa in many areas.  And in those areas I submit to her.  And in the areas where maybe I’m superior, she submits to me.  We have the mutual submission going on.  But the buck stops with me.  I have got the umbrella.  I lead out in spiritual things.  I lead out in reconciliation.  I lead out (I should) in conversation and all those things.

I’m not perfect.  I have a long way to go.  Many times there are holes in my umbrella and I’ve got to go, “Whoa man I’m getting wet.”  But it’s about sacrifice and it’s about submission.

Genesis 3:16—after the fall of man, after Eve ate the Sunkist orange, after God said to Adam, “Where are you?” check out what he said.  This is the result of sin in the marriage.  I just found this out this week as I studied this stuff.

To the woman God said, “Your desire (in the Hebrew it’s teshuqah) will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”  Now most of us would think, “Oh, what’s so big about that?  Teshuqah—that means surely that I should, you know, go after a man.  I’ll have a desire for a man.  I want to, as a woman, be with a man and get married.”

It doesn’t mean that.  This word “desire,” “teshuqah,” means to usurp his authority.  Because of sin, because of man’s rebellion, we will have this struggle, this classic struggle in the home over authority, over authority issues.

“It’s my umbrella!”  “No, it’s my umbrella!”  And then we start fighting.  This word “desire” also means that husbands will be tempted to take authority and abuse it in the home.  So these are some serious issues.

And if you have authority issues in your marriage, you have an issue with God.  If you have an issue with leadership, an issue with sacrifice, an issue with submission—whatever it is—you have an issue with God.

THE SPIRIT OF SUBMISSION

Well how does this stuff play out on the rugged plains of reality?  How does this stuff play out when you’re walking through the rain?  Let’s talk about the big three.

FINANCES

Let’s talk about finances, authority and submission over finances.  Financial turmoil is one of the number one causes of divorce.  Usually when two people hook up and they walk down the wedding runner, one is more of a free-spender and the other one is more conservative.  And all that causes us to start fighting.

“I want to spend money and forget the umbrella.  You save too much and you try to control me with finances and….”  Let’s get ready to rumble!  Call in the lawyers to pick up the pieces.  That’s what happens, isn’t it?  Yeah it is.

One of the biggest mistakes Lisa and I ever made happened before we got married.  We did not receive premarital counseling.  Please, please, get some premarital counseling.  I didn’t read any books on marriage.  I didn’t listen to any tapes on marriage.  I didn’t see a Christian counselor.  That’s why we talk about marriage so much here.

And we’ve written a book called The Creative Marriage.  It’s in its fourth printing.  It’ll be coming out again soon.  Read a book like that or one of the marriage books you can find in our bookstore.  Or go to a great Christian counselor.  We have a list for you available on our website.

Before you get married, please, I beg you, talk about finances.  Because here’s what happened to Lisa and I.  We walked down the wedding runner, we’re married for a couple of months, and financially we said, “Man, what’s wrong with us?  Something’s happening.”

We had arguments over finances.  I was in seminary and she was working full time and I was trying to work full time, too.  It was an authority issue.  We both had to get beneath God’s authority for financial freedom.

God says the first thing we’re to do is we’re to bring the tithe into the local house of worship—10 percent.  I’m not talking about giving.  We’re not giving.  We’re bringing it.  You will not be under the authority of God until you bring 10 percent of your income to your local church.  It’s not going to happen for you.  So we started doing that 24 years ago.  Ten percent.  “Okay God, here it is.”

The Bible also says we should save.  S-A-V-E, save.  We began to save just a little bit of money.  Twenty-four years ago we began to save.  Ten percent.  We started, really, about 5 percent, then we worked up to 10 percent.

And then you have 80 percent that you can enjoy.  And don’t freak out over that.  Enjoy the 80 percent.  You can shop and spend money for the glory of God.  Some of you are all conservative and tight.  Loosen up.  Some of you are like, “Okay, I’ll go buy this and buy that, ching, ching!”  Don’t do that.  There’s a balance there.  10, 10, 80.  And for us to get to that point 24 years ago, we had to sell one of our cars and downsize in our home.  But now, because we’ve developed that pattern and live by that pattern, we’re enjoying the fruits of God’s blessings, even financially.

Are you doing that?  Have you submitted to God’s authority?  I don’t know.  It’s a big issue.

KIDS

How about kids?  Kids are amazing.  They can divide and conquer, can’t they?  “Dad what do you think?  Well, Mom…oh, really?  Hey, Dad, Mom said this and….”  They’ve separated.  They’re dividing.  They’re trying to conquer.

What do you do?  It’s all about authority.  Kids want authority.  They’re screaming for authority.  They want to see authority and submission in marriage.  So as wise parents, if we have kind of a sticking point, we huddle up away from the kids and say, “Okay, you said this, but… Okay, that’s great.  We will present a united front, because we’re under the authority of God and because we walk in concert together.  Here is the deal.”  Together.

And then your kids, who are screaming for authority and boundaries, will see that you are on the same team.  Then when they start dating, they’ll look for that in the person they’re dating.  The little girls will say, “Hey, he is holding the umbrella.  This guy is an umbrella fella.  I like that.  He reminds me of my father.”  The guy will say, “Whoa, look at her!  She has a servant’s heart, a heart of maturity.  I like that.  I like that.”

When we become a Christ follower, what happens?  We say, “Jesus, I’ve been ambushed by your grace and mercy and power.  Jesus, I want to serve you.  I submit my all to you, Lord.”

God does not want our cold-hearted servility.  He doesn’t need the manipulation thing, ladies.  He doesn’t want us to masquerade around.  He doesn’t want us to have this mindless obedience.  We want to serve him.  We want to love him.  And that’s this beautiful thing that we’re talking about.  This sacrifice thing and this submission thing.  Finances and kids.  Don’t give the umbrella of authority to your kids.

SEX

Let’s talk about sex.  I hear now and then in marriage one is in the mood and one’s not in the mood—sometimes.  Does that happen?  Surely that’s just a rumor.

Everybody always gets quiet, you talk about sex.  I’m doing a series on sex, beginning the weekend after Labor Day.  It’s called Love Affair.  You do not want to miss this one.  It’s the second most important place we all talk about sex.  First in the home; secondly at church.  So, if you have a problem with it, build a bridge and get over it.

What happens when one is in the mood and one is not in the mood?  What do you do then?  What do you do?  Well the Bible says to stop depriving one another, except for time of prayer.  And it goes on to say that both the husband and the wife must agree to pray together.  And that’s the only reason you should say “no” to your spouse’s sexual advances.  That’s the only reason.  Mutual, agreed-upon prayer.  So I guess the excuse now will not be, “Honey I’ve got a headache,” but, “Honey, let’s pray.”

Whenever one party is in the mood and the other isn’t, don’t just say, “No!”  Don’t ever do that.  You can say “no,” but say “no” with a 24-hour rule.  “No, tomorrow morning.  No, tomorrow afternoon.  No, tomorrow night.”  Don’t just say “no.”

The act of marriage is the glue, it’s the superglue.  “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.”  That’s why I laugh so much when people talk about sex in a casual way.  “Yeah, they just had sex.”  I mean, making love and sex is so holy.  It’s so powerful.  It’s so incredible.  When the sperm and the egg meet, you have the beginning of an eternal soul.  How profound is that?

So what do you do when one’s in the mood, one’s not in the mood?  You can say “no,” now and then, but not very much.  “No, tomorrow morning; tomorrow afternoon; tomorrow evening.”

Authority and submission.  You’re submitting one to another.  First of all you’re submitting to God.  You’re submitting to the other desires of the mate.  And it works financially; it works with the kids; it works in the life of intimacy and every other way.  Every single way.

Men, sacrifice.  Women, submit.  Men, love your wives as Christ loved the church.  Wives, submit as to the Lord.  As to the Lord.

When does Jesus force you to do anything?  He never does.  We do it because of love.  He first loved us.  Guys, you see the picture?  I don’t know how Scripture could do a better job at spelling it out.  It’s God’s Word.

SINGLES

How about singles?  Some of the singles are saying, “Well man, when are the Newsboys coming back?”  [The Newsboys led worship for this service.]  Singles, you had better listen to this so carefully.  I mean you better be on the edge of your seats.

Ladies, you look for a guy who’s an umbrella fella.  He better be standing under the authority of God, because that’s the place of blessing, the place of protection, the place of peace, and the place of uniqueness.  You had better look at this guy you’re thinking about dating or maybe you’re dating him now.  Is he an umbrella fella?  “Well, he is,” (you say).

Well wait a minute.  Go through the seasons—the fall, the winter, the spring, and the summer.  Watch him weather some storms and see if he’s still under the authority of God.  See if he’s still that umbrella fella.

Now some ladies, some Christian ladies, have a vice grip on the umbrella.  And they want to get married so badly that when they just see somebody with pants on, they don’t care about an umbrella or not.  They grab him around the neck and drag him.  “Oh, we’re walking down the aisle together.”  No, no, no.

Some singles come to church and the umbrella is at arm’s length.  They’re being pelted by problems, drenched in dysfunction.  All the junk and funk and then, Whoa!  Did you see that man?  Girl, look at him!  Did you see what kind of car he was driving?”  But if you’re like that, then you can’t even find the umbrella.  It’s got to be all about the umbrella.

So in a great dating relationship, the man should have the umbrella and the woman should have the umbrella of God’s authority.  Then, when they date, the man takes the umbrella.  It’s his responsibility.  The whole sacrifice thing going.  And then the woman is submitting.

So you have a picture, a microcosm in dating, of a healthy dating relationship that should reflect a healthy marriage that should reflect Christ’s relationship to the church.

And let me say this.  The best place to meet your spouse is in church.  The church should be a social place.  It is a social place.  That’s why we call ourselves Fellowship Church.  Fellowship is all about relationship and community and all that.

Hey guys, where are you?  I mean, that’s the question I’ve got to ask you.  Where are you?  That’s what God said.  Ladies, where are you?  Are you trying to walk through life like this [holding the umbrella at arm’s length]?  Is the wife holding the umbrella and, husbands, are you walking hunched over like this?  Are you fighting each other with the umbrellas?  Are the umbrellas gone?  Have you given the umbrella to the kid?

Or guys, husbands, are you holding the umbrella?  Are you leading in love and loyalty and passion and purity, the way God wants?  Because we’ll never understand marriage until we stand under God’s authority.

THE TABLE

Part 1

Ed Young

October 9-10, 2004

[A dining room table and four chairs are on stage.]

How many of you have ever been to Canton, Texas?  I’ve been there several times.  Canton, Texas—the largest flea market in the world they say.  I like Canton.  A lot of people don’t like Canton.  A lot of guys don’t like it.  I like it.  It’s pretty cool.  You can get all sorts of stuff in Canton, Texas.

One time I went to Canton with Lisa.  (I kind of got in touch with my feminine side and spent the day with her there.)  The demographics at Canton are pretty scary, aren’t they?  99% female to maybe 1% male.  All those frenzied females pushing their shopping carts at a NASCAR pace throughout the isles.  Looking at all the kknick knacks, antiques, clothing, and jewelry, with sweat dripping off their faces, but they’re smiling!  I mean, they’re like, “We’re in Canton, baby!  Girl, look at that!  That’s incredible!”  You know?  There’s nothing like Canton, Texas.

After some power shopping—I guess maybe two or three hours—Lisa and I found a food court, if you could call it that.  It was pretty much a bunch of picnic tables lined up in the shade.  There were some little restaurants around the picnic tables.  And there was some heat, like triple degree Texas heat, right out from the shade in between all those barns of all the knick knacks and clothes and antiques.  So you could sit at a table and eat and watch the masses file by.

We were finishing our chicken sandwiches, and I noticed a girl from the chicken restaurant walking around.  She had samples of food with her, and this girl was in the shade giving samples to all the picnic people who were already full.  Now, she tried to give some samples to Lisa and I and we said, “We’re full!”  We said, you know, “We don’t care for any samples.  We’re eating the chicken right now.  We just got it from your restaurant.”  And then the girl kind of walked off.

Lisa turned to me, she smiled and she said, “Isn’t that crazy?  I mean, all the girl has to do, Ed, is walk 15 to 20 feet out into the heat and give the samples of the bread and chicken to all the people filing by.  And then, you know, she could bring people who are hungry into the area and they could buy from the restaurant and sit down at the tables.  That would be a cool thing.”

And then the light turned on.  I said, “Lisa, that’s the challenge of the church.”  I said, “That is where so many churches are in our culture today!”  I said, “We are feeding the already fed.  We’re handing out samples to the already fed.  And all we have to do is walk about 15 or 20 feet out into the heat from the shade and hand the bread, the chicken, the samples to all the humans who are filing by.  And we could invite them to the ultimate table, which happens to be the church, and, Lisa, they could find and dine on the bread of life.”

The church is a table where people come to get fed.  Jesus said in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life.”  We talk a lot about protein these days.  But in God’s economy, complex carbohydrates are king.  Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”  The ultimate bread, the ultimate food, I think, demands the ultimate presentation.  And the challenge that we have as local churches in this culture, and also around the world, is to feed people.  It’s to build believers and serve seekers.  That’s the two-fold purpose of the church.  Say it with me.  It’s to build believers and serve seekers.

We have a hunk of people right now who are listening to my voice and you are Christ followers.  You’ve stepped over the line.  You’re in the family of God.  One of the goals of Fellowship Church is to feed you; to feed you the bread of life.  I’m the chef.  I’m the dude with the food.  Food is the word.

Now, we also have a hunk of people here at Fellowship Church who are seekers.  And it’s our mandate, not only to build believers, but also to serve seekers.  What’s a seeker?  A seeker is someone with no Biblical pre-knowledge.  A seeker is someone who has not stepped over the line.  A seeker is someone who could have grown up in church, yet you’ve never, ever established a personal connection with God through Jesus Christ.

At Fellowship Church we are set up to reach both.  We want to build believers and serve seekers.  So to do that, we have the opportunity week in and week out to serve the bread of life.  And the ultimate food deserves the ultimate presentation.  I’m not talking about paper napkins or plastic forks or Styrofoam cups or a weenie roast here.  I’m talking about serving, in a creative and compelling way, the food, the bread of life.

Do you like to have people over to your house to eat?  Do you like to?  Lisa and I do.  We have people over all the time.  It’s fun.  It’s kind of sad, though, that entertaining is a lost art these days.  A lot of people don’t want to do it.

THE INVITATION

When we invite people over to our home, what do we do?  Well, we first of all ask them to come over.  Call them up and say, “Hey, would you like to come over?  Does your schedule fit?”  And then we will ask them, “Okay, what kind of food do you like?  What kind of food don’t you like?” And then, if they say yes, we set a time and a night.

Then what do we do?  We work.  Our family does the work.  The guests don’t do the work.  We do the work and clean the house—not that the house is not clean, but we clean it more.  And we think about the food and we think about the ambiance.  We’ll light some candles, turn on some soft music and serve the food in a compelling and imaginative way.

Now, when our family eats, when it’s just us, we don’t always do that.  We oftentimes eat on paper plates and we use paper cups and napkins and all that.  Sometimes the kids will burp now and then, throw some food.  But before guests come over, man!  We give our kids a pep talk.  “Hey kids, no burping.  No food fighting.  Put your napkin in your lap.”  It’s about the guests.  It’s about other people.

Question: Are we being compromising when we do that?  Are we kind of watering down the food?  Are we going soft when guests come over?  No! We’re just being strategic.  We’re being smart.  We’re being, hopefully, good hosts and hostesses.  We [the church] have the opportunity to serve the bread of life, the cosmic carbohydrate, to a hungry world that’s filing by.  What is the church to do?  Do we stay in the shade and feed the already fed, feed the already full?  Or do we step out into the heat, into the elements, and serve the bread of life to all those people filing by in your life and mine?

When you entertain people, do you think about guests?  Yes, you do.  Well, every weekend we entertain people at Fellowship.  And we think about the family.  Our church family does some incredible serving—all the servants here that help put this thing on—to help put this meal on.  But also, we think about the guests.  We think about the people who are outside the family of God.

We think about the people whose lives are falling apart.  We think about the couple whose marriage is hanging in the balance.  We think about the single adult who thinks there’s no direction, who is dealing with large levels of loneliness.  We think about the student who might be contemplating ending it all.  We think about all those people.  We think about the table, because the church is the table.  We think about the bread, because the bread is the word.  We think about the dude with the food.  And we think about who’s in the chairs.  Who’s in the chairs?

This invitation is pretty important.  John 4:34, Jesus said, “My food…is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work.”  Jesus said, “My food … is to do the will of Him (that’s God) who sent me and to finish His work.”  Entertaining takes work, doesn’t it?  And I figured out that’s why a lot of people don’t do it, because it takes so much work.  It’s like, “Man, let’s just go out to a restaurant!” And that’s cool.  But to entertain, to think about the guests, to defer to them, and to serve the food in an imaginative and creative, compelling way?  It takes a lot of work.  You’ve got to get outside yourself to do that, don’t you?  You’ve got to think about other people.  You’ve got to think about the cuisine.  You’ve got to think about the conversation.  You’ve got to think about the context of the conversation and the cuisine, because you want the best meal possible.  You want the best experience possible.

When I’m not speaking at Fellowship Church, oftentimes I’ll attend Fellowship Church because I’m still here.  Last weekend I loved hearing Tianne speak.  She spoke to my heart.  When I pulled into the Fellowship Church parking lot, I just sat in my truck for a while and looked around.  And I saw all the people filing in.  It was so thrilling to me to see so many people from so many walks of life coming to Fellowship Church.  Some different economic levels, different color skins, white collar, pink collar, purple collar, whatever you want to say.  All sorts of people were flooding into Fellowship Church.  And I saw people that I know pursuing and I saw people with other people who obviously didn’t know Christ.  I saw these Christians bringing people who didn’t know Christ to Fellowship Church.  That thrilled my heart.  I mean, I’m saying, “Man, these people are putting the ball through the net.  They get it.  They understand the essence, the mission of the church—which is to build believers and serve seekers.  They get it.

Then, though, I saw some people that I know who have been around Fellowship Church for a long, long time and they were alone.  And, yeah, I’ll cut people some slack—two, three, or four weekends without bringing someone.  But I said to myself, “You know, I wonder if they are handing out the bread of life?  I wonder if they’re out there in the heat handing out samples of the real meal?  I wonder if they’re out there saying, ‘Hey, I want you to come to Fellowship Church.  I want you to get fed.  I want you to experience this meal,’” which, incidentally, starts the moment you pull into the parking lot and the moment you drop your kids off.  It continues when maybe you grab some coffee or a cookie.  And hopefully, it culminates when you walk in here and you’re focused on God.  And when the word is opened, when the word is articulated, then the Holy Spirit does its thing.  Then we’re fed, and the people who are hungry get fed.  And then we push away from the table and serve others and use ourselves.  Hopefully that’s what happens week in and week out.  But it starts with you and me inviting people to Fellowship.

Whenever I develop a talk—you might call them sermons, or whatever—but whenever we’re planning a worship service; when Rob Johnson, Michael Higdon, Vanessa, Yanci, and I are in a meeting; whenever we do anything at Fellowship Church, we think about a table.  Because the church is the table where people come to get fed.  And we also think about chairs.  Basically, three chairs.  Every time we have a service here, there’s three chairs because a healthy church should be made up of thirds.  A third should be mature believers.  A third should be baby believers, brand new Christians.  And the other third should be hell-bounders.  I’m talking about skirt-chasing, cocaine-snorting, wheeling, dealing lost sinners.  That’s the healthy church.

If you ever hear someone say, “You know, the healthy church is full of mature Christians,” they’re clueless about the Bible.  “Well the healthy church should just be full of baby Christians;” they’re clueless about the Bible.  The church should be full of thirds, because, watch this now, if the mature are doing what they should be doing, what are they doing?  They’re inviting their lost friends to Fellowship Church!  They’re serving them samples of the bread of life.  They’re one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.  And then these hell-bounders are becoming Christ followers.

So the hell bounders are becoming Christ followers, they’re baby Christians.  And then they’re becoming mature Christians as they push away from the table and serve.  And you have this beautiful ecosystem going.  You have this beautiful environment going.  You have a healthy, full, and robust meal being served at a beautiful table.

I want to talk to the Christians for a second.  What part are you playing in this process?  You’re a believer; you’re a Christ follower.  Are you really handing out samples of the bread of life to people that God has placed in your life?  Who’s in your life right now that’s hungry?  Names are popping out right now in your mind.  A neighbor, a co-worker, a friend, or a family member.  Someone you’ve just gotten to know.  What are you doing about it?

“Well, Ed I need to know more.”  No you don’t.  If you know Christ personally, you know enough.  Yeah, we all need to know more.  That’s important, but you need to pray for those people.  And pray for God, that he would give you the opportunity to share, to give those samples out to people who are so very hungry.

You see, we give out samples to people by the way we talk, by the places we go, by our language, by our business practices, by our attitude, by our actions.  And as a Christian, have you forfeited the opportunity to really get out there and hand out samples of the bread of life by your behavior?

We have the opportunity to do that, to hand out samples of food.  What are you doing in this process?  Are you inviting people to Fellowship Church?  Because as a believer, that’s your food.  That’s your food.

THE PREPARATION

We work like crazy at Fellowship Church—and we love doing it—to prepare the meal, to prepare food.  That’s why at Fellowship we have a mantra.  We say this, “It’s the weekend, stupid.”  Do you remember James Carville?  I’m not a big fan of James Carville, but you remember James Carville?  Yeah, he headed up the Bill Clinton campaign years ago and did a great job.  He had a sign on his desk that said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  And Bill Clinton won.  Bill Clinton won because of that, and he also won because of Ross Perot.  That’s a whole other story.

“It’s the weekend, stupid.”  That’s the most important thing any church does, any time, anywhere, any place.  The weekend.  All the other activities are important, they’re vital—small groups and youth activities, and children’s ministries and all that stuff.  But the weekend is that corporate time, it is when the ultimate presentation is given.  So we should work very, very hard as leaders who prepare the food for the weekend, for the big meal.

And so should you, as Christ followers.  We should think about that.  We should pray about the weekend, because so many people who come to Fellowship Church each and every weekend are without Christ.  Things are right there teetering in their lives.  They’re right there, just hanging in balance.  And as the Holy Spirit works, as the Word is presented, great things occur.  But we’re not going to give a half-baked presentation of the bread of life.  We’re not going to do that, because people matter to God.  And they matter to God so much that we must work as hard as possible to give a creative and compelling and innovative word to every single person that comes in contact with the church.

It’s always sad, you know.  The church should not say, “How do I become creative?”  That’s the wrong question.  The church should say, “What are those barriers that are keeping us from unleashing the kind of innovation and the kind of preparation that God wants?”  So a church should not stand out when it grows so much or when it does stuff in a different way.  That should be the norm.

All you have to do is thumb through the pages of Scripture and see that God used word pictures and illustrations to communicate his truth and message to so many people.  You’ve heard me say this before.  He used a piece of fruit with Adam and Eve.  He used some salt with Lot.  He used a boat and a whale with Jonah.  He used, ultimately, a cross with the world.  And those of us who were leading in the church, we must use creativity and use our uniqueness as leverage to take kingdom turf for the nature and the glory of God.

Jesus told Simon Peter this, he said [John 21:18], “Feed my sheep.”  So as a teacher, I’m a chef.  I’m kind of like Emeril or the late Julia Child or the great Dean Ferring here in Dallas.  That’s kind of my vibe.  So, if I’m the dude with the food, I’ve got to work like crazy and be strategic like crazy to serve it in ways that people can understand it.  And our goal at Fellowship Church is not to muddy up the food.  It’s not to make the food so complex that no one understands it.  Because the Bible in many different ways is very, very complex.

It’s easy for me to keep the complex complex.  I have no problem doing that.  I’ve been to seminary, taken the Hebrew and the Greek, and that would be easy for me to talk over your heads like that.  You go, “Whoa!  What is Ed talking about?  What does he mean by that?  I have to look four or five of those words up!”  I can talk Christianese.

But here’s what I learned a long time ago.  Jesus used the street language of the day.  That’s how Jesus communicated.  He used the street language.  So as a communicator of God’s truth, I need to be simple.  Not simplistic, simple.  Because I discovered something years ago: No one understands anything unless they can explain it in a very simple way.  So everyone, when we serve the food, must understand its food and here are the utensils and here’s how to eat it and here’s how to digest it and here’s how to live it out.

One of my favorite restaurants in Dallas is a Vietnamese restaurant called the East Wind—great place!  I love Asian food.  East Wind has a classic menu, because on the menu, it’s written in the Vietnamese.  But then, thank God, below that Vietnamese it’s written in English.  I love that.  I love that.

Well, as a Christ follower first, as a pastor second, as a communicator third, I can easily talk in Vietnamese.  But what should I do?  I can talk Vietnamese some.  But I’d better explain it.  Because remember, I’ve got mature believers here and I’ve got brand new believers there and I’ve got hell-bounders.  Well, if they’re over at my house and we’re having a meal, if I’ve invited guests over and I launch into a story about salt water fly fishing, I don’t just launch into the story, “Hey, I hooked a tarp in this past summer and a hammerhead shark tried to eat the tarpon.  It was incredible!”  And that was a true story.  I don’t just say that, though.  I go, “Hey, you know, I don’t know if you know this, but my favorite thing in the world to do is fly fishing.  Fly fishing is unique.  It’s not like your typical conventional fishing.”

Then I explain fly fishing and say something like, “I like to go to Florida in this one spot that does a lot of tarpon fishing.  I try to go there every year.  And I know some people down there.  I’ve even preached down there at a church.  I love it.   Tarpon Community Church, you know.  [audience laughter]  No.  I’m joking.”  But I’ll explain and bring people up to speed.  And then I’ll launch into the story.  Any host who is in the game is going to do that.  Bring everybody up to context.  The cuisine, the conversation, the context.

And that’s simply what we’re doing here at Fellowship Church.  I might launch into a story about Moses or Isaiah or Jeremiah.  I might launch into a story about sanctification or justification or talk about the entities of the Trinity.  But before God, I’m going to explain it in a way that people can get it.  We want our music to be music that people can connect with and understand.  Because remember, it’s about the thirds.

Jesus said in Matthew 9:37, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.”  And here’s what fires me up about Fellowship Church.  I want to applaud your work ethic.  You people blow me away.  I’ve seen it for 14 years.  The work ethic that you show by inviting people, through service and prayer and diligence, through your preparation, conversations with God and with stepping up in so many ways.  It is just so inspirational to me.

There have been many, many weekends where I’m kind of feeling down, and I’m like, “You know, I’m the dude with the food, but I don’t feel like cooking this weekend.”  But I’ll see an act of service, I’ll see someone bring someone else or I’ll know that person is a person without Christ or I’ll know this person has a marriage problem or I know that person just experienced a death and is asking these big questions and going through all these issues, and that just energizes me.  So thank you, thank you.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.  But see, we can’t stop here.  We have to continue doing the stuff.

THE PRESENTATION

The preparation is a huge piece.  But also, there’s the presentation as well.  When we serve the food, we have to serve the food, as I said earlier, where people can get it and understand it.  You know, we don’t just throw the food on the table and say, “Do with it what you want.  Just throw the food, play in the food, we’re not going to give you utensils.”

No, no, no, we’re not going to do that.  We want to show people and give them answers about how to take the food and receive the food.  So every time we do something we think about the chairs.

Earlier I said this, “The twofold purpose at Fellowship Church is what?  To build believers and to serve seekers.”  Right?  To build believers and to serve seekers.  And here’s the question, here’s the tension that should always be in the church.  How much do you play something, do you angle something towards believers; and how much do you play something and angle something toward the seeker?  I love that tension.  And that tension has been with us for 14 years at Fellowship Church.  And it will always be with us.  That’s one of the reasons we plan with the team approach.  That’s one of the reasons we talk to so many people.  That’s one of the reasons we get input from so many different areas.  Because it helps us to formulate these weekends that build believers and also serve seekers.

Here’s the challenge we have, though.  And I’ll talk about this more next week.  As you know, I did not want to come to Dallas/Fort Worth to start a church.  I did not want to come up here.  I love Dallas/Fort Worth, but I did not want to come up here.  I wanted to go somewhere like Las Vegas, Nevada.  I wanted to go somewhere like Montreal, Canada.  I wanted to go to California or somewhere in South Florida, maybe Miami or Ft.  Lauderdale.  I did not want to come to Dallas/Fort Worth.  Why?  Because, I thought there were too many churches here.  Too many churches, too many ministries, too many seminaries, too many televangelists.  I did not want to come up here.  I wanted to go somewhere where there was a lot of spectacular sinning going on, you know, a lot of people who where totally clueless, totally out there about Christianity.

You know, I’ve grown up in the church.  I grew up in a Pastor’s home, and I thought I knew a lot about the world—until my parents and I parted ways.  Not in a bad way, but we parted ways when I was 18 and I went to school at Florida State, which was a pretty crazy place and I’ll talk about in a second.  That, though, helped me so much.  God used Florida State in my life to really assist me in seeing not only the life of believers, but also the life of those people who had no concept about God, Christ, the church or whatever.  And God used that in a mighty way.

So we moved to Dallas and God led, which he had to do to get Lisa and I up here.  I thought, you know, it’s just a place full of Christians.  And you know, there’s not a lot of people out there who don’t know Christ personally.  Well, man!  That’s not true at all.  Man, there’s a lot of spectacular sinning going on right here in Dallas.  There’s a lot of people who are totally outside the family of God.  And there’s also a lot of people who are in church, but don’t even know Christ personally.

Here’s what blows me away about the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  And I’ll develop this more next time.  Dallas/Fort Worth has a number of Bible studies and churches that are diet driven.  Diet-driven churches and Bible studies.  In other words, they concentrate on the word of God.  And they concentrate on studying the Bible.  And they feed on Scripture, which we have to do.  Oh, we have to dine on Scripture.  Yet, what’s so odd is, these churches and Bible studies are diet driven.  Okay, hold that thought for a second.

What does the medical community say?  If you want to live a long life, do what?  Eat well, diet, and…  What?  I can’t quite hear you up here.  Exercise!  Diet and exercise!  God began to show that to me about 15 years ago.  Diet and exercise.  So, it’s more than just diet.

Yet, for so many of these churches, even around our country, and Bible studies—it’s all about just the Bible.  And [they say] if you, you know, eat the Bible, eat the Word, dine on the word, then  that’s enough.  Just a diet, diet, diet, diet, diet.  Well, the Bible says from cover to cover it’s diet and what?  Exercise!  Diet and exercise.  We have to eat the right food.  Oh, we’ve got to get into the Word.  We’ve got to study.  We’ve got to break it down.  We’ve got to know this stuff.  But we’ve got to do it.  We have got to do it.

And here is the call of our church and every church out there.  Every church, every Bible study should be a diet and exercise entity.  Feed on it.  And then the food will give you the energy to do what?  To push away from the table and get out there and do the stuff.

How do you build believers?  Believers are fed.  They consume the bread of life.  They don’t just get fat.  They don’t just sit there and say, “Feed me, feed me, feed me.”  Because you can turn into, “Hey, hey, hey!  I’m fat Albert!” You know?  You can’t even see your feet any more you’re so spiritually fat.

But the challenge is we build believers.  We feed believers, get them to push away from the table, and then exercise as they do what?  Serve seekers!  As they serve in the church and serve seekers.  And then the seekers come to the table, they get fed.  And you have this beautiful process going on.

And here’s another thing that’s so fascinating about diet driven churches.  One would think diet driven churches would reach a lot of people.  But in my studying, they really don’t reach a lot of skirt-chasing, cocaine-snorting, hell-bound people.  They don’t.  Because what happens is they get eaten up with pride.  And they become so fat they don’t know how to work out any more.  And that’s again what’s so awesome about Fellowship Church.  We’re a diet and exercise church.  So we invite people, we prepare the food, and then we present the food before God in a creative and compelling way.  We speak to the chairs.

And I think about several series we’ve done in the past.  I just jotted some of these down, like “Multiple Choice.” You know, we try to serve a balanced diet around here.  And I’ve discovered something, because I’m the dude with the food.  Believers are in the throws of making a lot of decisions, and so are babies, and so are hell-bounders.  So we did a series of talks on “Multiple Choice.”  It’s amazing how many people in the Bible, in God’s Word made decisions.  We didn’t call it “Decision Making God’s Way.” We didn’t call it “Biblical Decision Making.”  No.  We didn’t do that.  We called it “Multiple Choice.” A title that everyone could get.  Do you hear me screaming?

“The Real F-Word: Forgiveness”  The real F word?  Whoa!  Forgiveness.  Man, that relates to someone going to hell doesn’t it?  That relates to a baby believer.  It relates to a mature believer.  It relates to a pastor.  I told you about some junk that I was holding on to that I’d not dealt with in my life as well.

Remember I did a series called “Snap Shots of the Savior”?  It was when Mel Gibson’s great movie “The Passion” came out.  We just talked about different snap shots from the life of Jesus Christ.  Everyone can identify with that.  It’s Christianity 101, 201, and 301.

“RPMs: Rating Potential Mates”—remember when we talked about that?  The RPM thing.  Finding the ultimate mate.  That’s the second most important decision we’ll ever make.

I just finished up one called “Questions.”  We all have questions.  We should ask questions.  The believer should ask questions.  The new believer should ask questions.  And the hell-bounder should ask questions.  And I said in this series, you know, a lot of you are just one question away from eternity.

One of the things we try to do, too, is we try to be consistently inconsistent at Fellowship Church.  “Well, why do you try to do that?”  We try to be consistently inconsistent because Jesus was consistently inconsistent.  He never communicated the same way.  His theology was the same, but his methodology changed.  He drew in the sand, sat on a boat bow, picked up a child, pointed to a sower, and talked about a building falling over.  He used parables, word pictures, and humor.  He always changed.  We want to be consistently inconsistent.

Have you ever been to that restaurant in Deep Ellum called The Green Room?  It’s got to be at least in my top 3 favorite restaurants, The Green Room.  The Green Room and East Wind, I mean they’re right there one and two.  Have you been to The Green Room?  You haven’t?  Man, if you haven’t, you need to go.  Deep Ellum.  It’s great.  The first time I went to The Green Room  Lisa and I, you know, showed up.  And you know Deep Ellum is an artsy, cool, hip place.  So we’re sitting down in this restaurant, you know, that is unique—unique art work and stuff, kind of a strange ambiance.  Strange in a good way!  And we’re sitting there, “Wow, I wonder if the food is going to be good?  I don’t know.  You look great tonight, Lisa.”  You know, talking.

So the waiter comes up and here’s what he said.  He said, “Do you have any food allergies?”  I go, “No.”  He said, “Are any foods like you don’t like?”  “Well, let me see…No.  Lisa and I pretty much like all foods.”  He goes, “Well, you need to get the chef’s specialty.”  We said, “What’s that?”  He said, “It’s called ‘Feed Me.’”  “Really?”  And he said, “Yeah.  The chef just creates this stuff.  You don’t know what he’s going to bring.  It’s called ‘Feed me’ and it is really cool!  You ought to try it.”  “Lisa, this sounds great!  Let’s try that.  ‘Feed Me.’”

So sure enough, this creative chef started bringing this stuff.  It was the most creative meal ever!  And every time I go to The Green Room, “Feed Me.  Just, just feed me.”  Well, I want Fellowship Church to be a “Feed Me” church, you know?  I want people to go, “What’s coming next.  Who’s speaking next?  What kind of video, what kind of song?  What… what… WOW!”  Consistently inconsistent.  Being simple not simplistic.  And serving a balanced diet as we serve the bread of life.

As I said earlier, I went to Florida State.  I thought I knew a lot about the world until I went down there.  Man, Tallahassee is a crazy place, especially playing athletics.  College athletics?  Man, pretty wild.  Pretty crazy people.  That’s just the way it is.  I had never really been around that many people who were that nuts.  And I was 18.  I roomed with a guy named Greg, not a believer.  And after about two or three days, he looked at me, “Man, Ed, I mean, what is wrong with you, brother?  I mean, I’ve never met someone like you before.”  He said, “I don’t understand why you don’t do this and why you do that.  And man, tell me about this stuff.”

So I told him.  And he said, “Nah, man.  I don’t believe that stuff.”  He didn’t say “stuff,” I’m just editing the story, okay?  I said, you know, “Whatever.”  So, you know, over the ensuing months (I’m a Freshman, he’s an upper classman) he kind of made fun of my Christianity.  And some of the teammates did.  But after a while as I, by God’s grace, stood for my faith, people began to respect me.  And everything was cool.  I roomed with Greg for two years at Florida State, my freshman year and my sophomore year.

One time I went to church with Greg and I saw church through his eyes.  Since I saw church through his eyes, I’ve never been the same because of that.  Never, ever, ever.  Because this guy was totally clueless about Christianity, about the church.  And when I saw that church, a good church, doing good church in churchy ways, I said to myself, “Wow! They’re speaking Christianese.  And they’re doing songs and stuff that he can’t connect with.  Is there a way you can do both?  Is there a way that you can build believers and serve seekers?”

I left Florida State after my sophomore year.  I felt led to go into the ministry, so I gave up the scholarship and moved to Houston, and you know the rest of the story.  I went to seminary and all that.  Worked at Dad’s church on a volunteer basis.  And worked full time for a while.  Then in 1990, Lisa and I came up here to help start Fellowship Church.  And I kind of lost contact with Greg.  I hadn’t really talked to him.  Maybe now and then a couple of times, but nothing significant, until a couple of days ago.  I called him.  And I found out that he has a couple of months to live.  He has cancer.  And you know, I talked to him a little bit and I could tell, you know, he was still very cynical, very angry for some reason, you know, toward God.

I said, “Greg, you know, I want to thank you for your friendship.  Because,” I said, “you know, when we started Fellowship Church—and really for the last 14 years—you’re one of the people that I thought about when I planned Fellowship Church.  You were one of the people I thought about in meetings.  You’re one of the people I thought about before I preached hundreds of sermons.  You were one of the people I thought when we planned songs and hired staff and built buildings and chose backgrounds.  You are one of the people, Greg, that I thought about.”  There was silence and then he said, “Well, I’m glad I could help you.”  I said, “Hey man, I’ll try to contact you in the next couple of weeks.”

And that afternoon after I talked to Greg, a couple of days ago, I was lifting weights with my friend.  I was on the incline bench, or something like that, I think, and I heard this song over the loud speaker by the Newsboys.  [The song “Breakfast in Hell” begins to be played in the background]  And the words go like this:

When The Toast Is Burned,

            And All The Milk Has Turned

            And Cap’n Crunch Is Wavin’ Farewell.

            When The Big One Finds You

            May This Song Remind You

            That They Don’t Serve Breakfast, In Hell.

And when I heard that song, it was really crazy.  I saw a quick image of Greg in our apartment, I don’t know why, eating a bowl of cereal.  So, you know, I pray I never get over the fact that people like Greg are dying real deaths and facing a real Christ-less eternity.  I pray I never get over that.  And I pray that Fellowship Church doesn’t either.

DECODING THE DAVINCI CODE

Part 2

Ben and Ed Young

June 26-27, 2004

ED:  I want to welcome again, my brother, Ben Young, to the stage with me.  Ben, it’s great to have you here.

BEN:  It’s good to be back.

ED:  We’re continuing our series of talks, “Decoding The DaVinci Code.”  And Ben is super qualified to talk about this.  He’s been on PBS, he’s written about it, and he’s lectured about this across the country.  And while I was busy playing basketball and fishing, Ben was studying, so…. [laughter]  They are laughing, but it’s true.

Well, lets jump right in, Ben.  Last time we did talk about this book, and we talked about some of the things that we should be cognizant of.  Today, though, I want to get detailed into stuff about the Bible.  People ask me all the time, “Was the Bible tweaked?  Was it changed?  Surely over the years it’s just different, you know?  It’s kind of a different Bible today that we had years ago and people did some creative editing and all that stuff?”

We are also going to talk about Gnosticism today—something that Dan Brown talks about fluently.  And it [“The DaVinci Code”] seems to be a very authoritative book.

Then we are going to talk about the person of Christ.  Jesus—is he God?  Did he say he was God?”

So those are some big time issues.

BEN:  No doubt.  And again, I think, our theme verse is 1 Peter 3:15.  We read that last week.

ED:  Yeah, I’ll read again.  1 Peter 3:15, “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord.  Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.  But do this with gentleness and respect.”

BEN:  Yeah.  And that’s our obligation as Christ followers—to be ready, be prepared, when people ask us questions or they directly or indirectly attack our faith.  We need to be prepared to give a response to them.

I love that word there, “always.”  We need to be always ready to give an answer to everyone who asks.  And I think a lot of times in our sound-bite culture today we fill our minds with a lot worthless facts.  Like, a lot of guys in here can tell you who played second base for the New York Yankees in 1961, but we couldn’t find Genesis in the Bible.

ED:  It was Bobby Richardson, I believe, in ‘61.  Bobby Richardson.

BEN:  Case in point.  So, anyway, that’s why we’re doing this series—to hopefully encourage people to do a little more research, a little more studying.  And again, if you don’t have time—we have busy lives, no doubt; we live in a very fast paced culture—at least know about some resources you can turn to or give to friends, family members, and co-workers who are asking legitimate questions about the faith.

ED:  Yeah, and these questions bombard us, Ben, from books, maybe movies, television shows, documentaries, etc.  I want to read a quote from the book, “The DaVinci Code,” and I want to get your response to it.

Page 234, I pulled this out: “From this sprang the most profound moment in Christian history.  Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made him god-like.  The other gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned.”

Now, he is talking about the Council of Nicea that we talked about last time, 325 A.D.  We don’t have time to explain all that again, but how do you respond to that quote?

BEN:  Well, basically he is saying that the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D.  was a power play by Constantine.  Constantine was the first so-called Christian emperor of Rome.  Up to that time, Christians had experienced intense persecution at the hands of Diocletian and other evil Roman emperors.  Now, Constantine was either converted genuinely or maybe for political reasons.  And Brown says that Constantine used the Council of Nicea to kind of reinvent Christianity, to cover up the secret that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that Christianity was really a religion about sacred feminism and not about Jesus Christ as Savior of the world.

And also in this quote, he brings up those three issues you talked about earlier.  And that is the issue of (1) how did we get the New Testament?  (2) What are these other gospels that were supposedly burned?

ED:  Those banned from the Bible.

BEN:  Yeah, the Gnostic gospels.  And the third issue is so very important, and that is (3) what do we know about Jesus?  Who is he?  And, what are some sources we can turn to?

ED:  Well, Brown mentioned something else pretty much in your face.  On Page 235 of “The DaVinci Code,” he says, and I quote, “…almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false, as are the stories about the Holy Grail.”

BEN:  Yeah, which is kind of interesting because on one hand the book is saying, “Don’t trust history.  Don’t trust tradition.  But trust my history and trust my tradition.”  Which, again, is not even revisionism.  It’s fantasy file—a lot of things he talks about in the book.  But the first issue I think is so key is the whole issue of how did we get the Bible?

ED:  Yeah, Ben, how did we get the Bible?  [sarcastically] And surely, man, the Bible was changed over the years.  It’s an ancient book, and I want to hear about that.

BEN:  Yeah.  Well, first of all the New Testament is a collection of 27 books written between about 50 and 90 A.D.  And these books were written by people who were either direct followers of Jesus Christ, they were eye witnesses of the events in his life, or they were close friends to people who were eye witnesses.  So that is a little bit about our New Testament.

Also, it’s important to understand what standards were used to accept those books into what we now have as the New Testament.  That’s called the Canon.

ED:  That’s good.

BEN:  Yeah, and the word “Canon” means “standard.”

ED:  Canon.  Standard.

BEN:  Exactly.  For example, let’s just say, if I made the claim that my shoe here is one meter in length.  You’d probably say…

ED:  No.  It’s bogus.  Crazy.

BEN:  But what if I said, “I feel in my heart!  I believe, I sincerely believe…”

ED:  Well, you’re wrong.

BEN:  No.  I believe in my heart this is true to me.  This is one meter in length.  How are you going to disprove me?

ED:  Well, I’m going get a meter and show you that you’re way off.

BEN:  Right.  You’ll go get a meter stick.

ED:  Yeah.

BEN:  Somewhere in France, you can go and find a meter stick which will have all the metric measurements there, and we can take my shoe and say, “You know what, Ben?  Here is the standard; you fall short.”

So the early Christians, the early church, had to have a standard by which they judged a book worthy to be considered Scripture.  And some of the standards were, first of all, apostolic origin.  In other words, was this book written by an Apostle or someone close?

ED:  Now, Ben, what is an Apostle?  We hear that term tossed around.

BEN:  Yeah, an Apostle was the one who was sent out.  But in New Testament terms, when it comes to understanding the Scripture, it’s someone who was an eye witness to the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

ED:  Okay.

BEN:  That is the way someone would define that.

ED:  Who’s said to have apostolic origin.

BEN:  Right.

ED:  That’s number one.

BEN:  And second of all, it had to be doctrinally sound.  So it had to fit with what Christ taught and the early disciples believed.

ED:  And that’s doctrine.

BEN:  Right.  And then third of all, it had to have widespread acceptance and usage among the churches there in the Mediterranean world as they were growing.

So those were their standards.  And again, the Bible, the New Testament, was written in a historical context.   And Luke, when he would write his gospel, when he would write Acts, which is the history of the early church, he would set it in a geo-political context.  So it’s very important that we realize that our Bible is not written in the form of, well, someone will say that the Bible is myth.  It’s not written in the form of myth.  It’s written as sober history.

Now there are some aspects of the gospel that are the Scripture and they’re more poetic.  Others are more narrative.  Others are more biographical.  But the Bible is not written like Homer’s Iliad or something like that.

ED:  Yeah, for example, I remember when I was at Florida State some professors would just try to smash the Bible.  We had this guy who taught geology, and he would just rip on the Bible all the time.  And he’d talk about other ancient works like, “Oh, man, that’s right.  That’s the real deal; that’s true.”

So, how does the New Testament stand up, for example, against some other ancient pieces of literature?  Maybe Plato, etc.

BEN:  Yeah, exactly.  The New Testament is the most credible document of antiquity that we have when you compare it to the works of Plato and you compare it to Julius Caesar and the history we have there

For example, let’s take Plato.  You look at Plato.  He wrote his stuff between 427 and 347 B.C.  Now, the earliest copy we have of Plato’s works is 900 A.D.  We don’t have the autographs of Plato.  Neither do we have the autographs of the New Testament.  But the earliest copy [of Plato] is 900 A.D.  Now, the time span between when it was actually written and the copy is 1,200 years.

ED:  Wow!

BEN:  That’s a long time.  And we only have seven copies.

ED:  Seven?!

BEN:  However, when you were in high school or college philosophy class, I doubt the professor said, “What I hold in my hand, as I read to you The Republic, these are not the words of Plato.  We’re not really sure about that.”  No.  He’s going to say, “This is an accurate rendition of what Plato taught.”

Now let’s compare Plato to the New Testament.  The New Testament was written between 50 and 90 A.D.  The earliest copy we have is around 130 A.D.  That’s less than a 100-year time gap there.  Less than 100, compared to 1,200 years with Plato.

How many copies do you think we have, full manuscripts of the New Testament?  5,600!  So that’s just comparing it to one work.

ED:  Isn’t that great to know about the Bible?

BEN:  It’s phenomenal!  So, when people say, “I’m not going to trust the New Testament documents because they’re 2,000 years old.”  Well, if you believe that, then cut out almost all ancient history.  Cut out the works of Plato, Aristotle, all the others.  Just cut them out.

But again, they have a bias, because again Plato and those guys are not confronting you with the claims that Christ did in the New Testament.

ED:  Exactly.  And that word “bias,” Ben, and this presupposition is because of my sin nature.  I want to say that Christianity is not true.  I want to cast doubt and a shadow on the New Testament because of the towering implications in my life.  Because if God sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for my sins and rise again, if all that’s real and true, then I’ve got some serious accountability in my life.  So I’d rather read a wheels-off novel, or believe some bogus documentary by Peter Jennings or whatever as opposed to coming face to face with the holy God.

BEN:  Yeah, you’re exactly right.  And what’s interesting as we look at the whole issue of the New Testament is what he [Dan Brown] is saying in that quote there, through one of his characters, that there was a Bible before Nicea.  Constantine embellished or changed it.  Then there’s a Bible after Nicea.

Well, the bottom line is most of the New Testament Canon was virtually completed and accepted before the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D.  We have copies of the gospels that pre-date Nicea and copies after Nicea.  So it’s very easy to compare, and there’s no difference between them.  And the idea that you have Christians who suffered, who gave their lives or were persecuted, for about two centuries before Constantine, and all of a sudden they are going to allow some political ruler to change the game and change the stakes?!  And they’re going fall into that?

ED:  Ludicrous.

BEN:  That’s psychologically absurd.

ED:  But again, a writer like Dan Brown has a vested interest in trying to muddy up Christianity and saying that it’s this or that.

BEN:  Yeah, of course.  Because he had an agenda before he wrote the book and before he did his supposed research in the Christian faith.  And that is to try to diss on Christianity, if you would, and uplift this type of neo-pagan worship of the sacred feminine.

ED:  And do you see this in other thinkers of our day or modern day individuals that we might come in contact with?

BEN:  Of course.  I think you see that a lot in philosophy.  We have someone who has a certain lifestyle, a certain deviant lifestyle, and then they find a philosophy that allows them to justify their particular lifestyle.

ED:  Would you say some of these philosophers, for example, adopt a lifestyle and then they find something that kind of retro fits?  Would that be the word?

BEN:  Yeah.  Exactly.

ED:  To support, to applaud that everything’s cool?

BEN:  Right.  I’m sexually deviant first, and then I become an existentialist or something like that.  Again, I’m not saying all existentialists are deviant…

ED:  Right.

BEN:  …but there are a lot of people who have an agenda.

ED:  Okay, let’s talk about these books that are banned from the Bible— these books that Dan Brown says are supposedly the bomb—the Gnostic gospels.  We talked about Gnosticism last time.  Define it for me again.

BEN:  Gnosticism was a religious or philosophical movement that came about 100 years after the Christian faith.  And it’s a movement that focused on secret knowledge as a way to get in touch with the divine or discover the spark of divinity within.  Its works were written later, some 100-200 years after the gospels and the letters of Paul were written.  And it focused on brief sayings and not narratives.  So it does not have the historical context of a New Testament document.

Now, Dan Brown talks a lot about the Nag Hammadi Library in his book.  Nag Hammadi was a small town in Egypt where they found some ancient works of the Gnostics.  And he [Dan Brown] acts like the church is scared of that and that they have been trying to cover that up.  And that’s not true because you have the early church fathers from about—oh, I don’t know—A.D. 90, A.D. 100, all the way up to 325 refuting Gnostic heretics.

And so we didn’t know much about the Gnostics except from what we read from the Christian sources.  Now we have the actual Gnostic sources, so we can compare and find out if these church fathers were accurate in the way they critiqued these heretics known as Gnostics.  And they were.

So again, when you read Gnostic literature you can tell that it is written after the time of Christ, and it has nothing to do with the theology or world view of the Christian faith.

ED:  Gnosticism, Ben, you said last time, is kind of like a cafeteria mentality, isn’t it?  Tell me about that.  You pick a little here, pick a little there, and kind of mix it together.

BEN:  Yeah.  When we say Gnostic “gospels,” the word “gospel” is a proclamation of good news, something that’s happened.  Gnosticism is not good news.  It’s old news that you can pull yourself up by the boot straps, or through meditation or self-awareness, to discover the divine us that’s within.  And it’s eclectic in that it pulls from many different religions and world views.  Much like, as we said last week, the New Age movement which is so thriving in our culture today.

ED:  That’s interesting.

BEN:  It’s fascinating.

ED:  And so often, for example, the gospel according to Thomas, which is the big time Gnostic gospel, was not even written by Thomas.  Thomas, as we learned last time, was in India sharing the faith.  So they [the Gnostics] co-opted Christianity.

BEN:  Right.  What is so interesting about Dan Brown’s use of Gnosticism in “The DaVinci Code” is several things.  First of all, he says that the Gnostic gospels, the other gospels as you mentioned in the early quote, were much more pro sacred feminine in their work.

ED:  Let me stop you right there.  Say it again.

BEN:  Well, what he [Dan Brown] is saying is that the gospels that we have—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are very patriarchal, man-dominated, man-driven.  But these Gnostic gospels, they uplift the worship of Mary Magdalene, the worship of the sacred feminine.

ED:  Oh, well, let me read this quote.  From the gospel according to Thomas, page 114.  It’s the Gnostic gospel quote.  Because remember Ben said, the Gnostic gospels are all about worshiping the sacred feminine.

BEN:  Yeah.

ED:  Okay, and our gospels are just the opposite?

BEN:  Yeah.  You make the call; you judge for yourself.

ED:  Yeah.  You make the call, all right?  I quote page 114 from the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, quote: “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary go out from among us, because women are not worthy of the Life.’  Jesus said, ‘See, I shall lead her, so that I will make her male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males, for every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’”

BEN:  I don’t think Gloria Steinem would be proud of that quote.

ED:  NO!

BEN:  Call me jaded, I don’t know.  That sounds pretty anti-sacred feminine there.  So why he uses the Gnostic works to build up his case for sacred feminine is beyond me.

Also, he says in this work that the Gnostic gospels paint a more human picture of Jesus, and the gospels we have paint a more divine picture of Jesus.  Well, that’s also absurd because the Gnostic gospels and their literature present a more divine picture of Jesus.  Because Gnosticism is a dualistic philosophy that says matter—the body, the flesh—is bad, and only spiritual things are good.  So, it would be grotesque for a Gnostic person to want to have anything to do with a God who actually embodied human flesh.  So again, Gnostic material paints Christ as more divine, not more human.

ED:  Now, we have so much material we’re going to cover in the next several minutes.  Some of the stuff, Ben, we can’t get to.  I have here in my notes, we will have posted on our web site www.fellowshipchurch.com the big six questions there for people to understand, and also all of these other quotes and things.

We’ve talked a little bit about the Bible.  We’ve talked about Gnosticism.  Let’s talk about something else.  Let’s talk about the person of Jesus, because another argument that people will throw your way or my way is, “Well, did Jesus really claim to be God?  I mean did he really come out and say it?”

BEN:  Yeah.

ED:  And as a Christian, how can I prove it Biblically?  Because as believers, we should.

BEN:  Right.  Let me give you a couple of passages.  And these are very important passages to have down in your mind to be able to turn to.  One is, John 1:1.  It says, “In the beginning was the Word…”—and that is Christ, the “logos” in Greek—“…and the Word was with God…”—Christ was with God—“…and the Word was God.”

ED:  “Yeah, but the Word”—I’m playing the devil’s advocate here— “You’re telling me the Word is Jesus?”  Well, yeah, because John 1:14 says, “The Word became…”

BEN:  “…flesh and dwelt among us.”

ED:  And dwelt among us.

BEN:  Yes.

ED:  Emmanuel, God with us.

BEN:  Yes.  And that is what makes Christianity unique.  It’s the claim of Jesus Christ, who he claimed to be.  Who his followers worshiped him as.  They worshiped him as the unique Son of God, as God in the flesh.  And so that’s what separates the Christian faith from all the other major world religions.  And I think it’s important.

If you are here today and you are asking questions about the Christian faith, so many times people get hung up on the issue of textual criticism.  Or maybe you get hung up on, “How did we get here in the first place?”  Evolutionism vs. creationism.  Really, to me, the water shed issue is the issue of Jesus Christ.

ED:  Yes.

BEN:  Who did He say He was?  Who did His followers follow Him as?  And once you land on that, then you will be able to make your decision about the Christian faith.

ED:  How about John 8:58, Ben?

BEN:  John 8:58 is an extremely important passage because in the context of this passage, Christ is having a debate or a discussion with a group of religious leaders known as the Pharisees.  They were talking about Abraham, and Jesus says, “Well, you know, I knew Abraham.  He was a great guy.”  I’m paraphrasing it.  And they say, “What do you mean?  Abraham lived centuries before you did!”

And then in John 8:58, here is what Jesus said, “’I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was even born, I Am.’”

ED:  Now I’ve heard that before, “I Am.”

BEN:  “I Am” is the Tetragrammaton, the sacred name of God that God gave for himself when he revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush.  Moses said, “When I go to the Pharaoh and say, ‘Let my people go,’ who should I say sent me?  Why are you credible?”  And God said, “Tell them, ‘I Am that I Am.  Yahweh.’” And that is the sacred name of God.

So when he, Jesus, said that to fellow Jewish leaders and Jewish religious scholars, they wanted to kill him.  And I like that response.  That’s the right response.  I mean, if I stood up today after this talk and said, “By the way, folks, if you’ve seen Ben Young, you have seen God in the flesh.  Before Jesus and Abraham lived, I lived before all them.”

Now, either you believe that and you worship me, and if you do that you need to go see a doctor quick!  Or you say, “Hey, let’s go call the ha-ha house.  This Ben Young guy from Houston has had a little too much humidity over the years, you know?  Or, you lock me up.  I mean, there’s no other option.

ED:  Yeah.

BEN:  So, when they tried to kill him, that’s the correct response.  You either worship him or kill him or lock him up.  There’s no in-between.

ED:  How about Colossians 2:9?  It says, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.”

BEN:  Bodily form.  Yeah.

ED:  We don’t oftentimes like to think about the humanity of Jesus—fully God and fully man.  I’ve done series of messages on that.  And when I get into the teaching, people are like, “Whoa!  You mean Jesus got tired?  He was hungry?  He cried?

BEN:  He was tempted.

ED:  He was tempted.  It kind of makes people a little bit uncomfortable.

ED:  But as you said last time, you see some ants, how do you communicate to ants?  You have to become an ant.

BEN:  Right.  And, also, the incarnation of Christ was necessary.

ED:  Yeah.

BEN:  So, Jesus had to be 100% human so he could be our mediator, so he could be our High Priest, so he could be the go between, between us and God.  So it was necessary that he be fully God and fully man which brings up a tension there, I think, for a lot of people.  I can hear the people asking questions, “Well, that doesn’t make logical sense.  Isn’t that contradictory?  How can someone be God and man at the same time?”

ED:  Yeah.

BEN:  An example of that would be—let’s take something from the scientific world—there are a lot of scientists that can give you empirical evidence that light consists of partials.  There are other scientists that can give you empirical evidence that, “No, no, no.  Light doesn’t consist of particles.  It consists of waves.”

Now, how can both of those things be true?  How can light be particles on one hand and waves on the other hand.  Well, it seems that they can’t.  But they are.  So what do scientists do with this supposed paradox or contradiction?  They simply allow these two scientific truths to remain and live together on parallel lines.

We do the same thing with the doctrine of the full humanity and the full deity of Jesus Christ.  We can’t fully understand it with our minds, but we know they are both true because that’s what God’s word tells us.

ED:  And so often, Ben, people think to become a Christian or when you do step over the line of faith, you have to check your intellect at the door.  And that’s false.

BEN:  Yeah.  “You have to park your brain.”  I would say this to a lot of folks: If you feel you’re in a classroom setting and you’re getting bullied by a professor, don’t allow someone to intellectually bully you.  Because you may not have the answer to their question, but I guarantee you can find someone who does.  And so it’s a comfort to know that there are many scholarly intellectual Christians who are out there today.

And again, I’m not saying you have to have a PhD to believe in Christ and believe in the Bible.  But it’s a good thing to know that there are people in the world of microbiology, nanotechnology, and astrophysics who are born again Christians and believe just like you do.

But if you watch debates and talk shows, they’re going to pit someone like a Harvard PhD against Billy Bob the Baptist from Backwoods, Louisiana.  And Billy Bob is all red-faced and angry.  And so, you have one person who seems very calm and rational and one person who seems all emotional.

But again, there are people out there who have written books, who are engaging the culture in a very winsome way, who believe just like we do.  So don’t allow someone to bully you with the “truth” and to say claims like, “Well, the Bible was changed over the years.”  The Bible wasn’t changed over the years.  There was not enough time for the story to be changed.

ED:  Yeah.  And where are these aspects of the Bible that were in the process of change?

BEN:  Right.  No one has been able to produce these “unaltered” copies, these unaltered works.  And so that’s simply an opinion.  That’s like me saying, “I don’t believe that John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.”  If I said that, there would be people saying, “Now wait a minute.  I was there.  Or my dad or mom was there, and we saw the report.”

ED:  Yeah.  We have a member of our church who actually worked on President Kennedy and Senator Connelly in Parkland Hospital.

BEN:  So, yes, they would rise and say, “Wait a minute!  That’s a complete lie.  That’s a fabrication.”

The same thing is true when it comes to the New Testament.  You have people who were eye witnesses of the events there.  And so, the time gap between the assassination of John F. Kennedy and today is the same time gap between the events of Christ and when they were written down in Scripture.  So the idea there was this great huge time gap and people came in—scribes and monks—and they changed and altered the text, that’s simply not true.

ED:  Okay.  Was Jesus married, Ben?

BEN:  Jesus was not married.  He was not.

ED:  Dan Brown says he is.

BEN:  Well, Dan Brown is wrong.  He is wrong on that point, but the point is that even if he is right, it doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t affect our doctrine of who Christ was.

ED:  That’s right.

BEN:  But he’s not.  You cannot find a shred of Biblical evidence, extra Biblical evidence, or even Gnostic evidence that would say that Christ was married.  And again, you have John Dominic Crosson, who was a leader in the Jesus Seminar, who’s very liberal when it comes to understanding the New Testament.  And you have Karen King who is a feminist scholar at Harvard.  Both of them agree that Jesus Christ was celibate and was single.

So, when you have liberal scholars and conservative scholars agreeing on anything about Jesus, chances are that’s probably true.  I mean that’s like Michael Moore and Jerry Falwell agreeing on something.  That just doesn’t happen.  And so, yes, Jesus Christ was single.

Let’s just say, for argument sake, he was married.  That does not affect his person as being fully God and fully man.

ED:  Was he worshiped?  Okay.  A.D. 33—death, burial and resurrection of Jesus; 325 A.D.—Council of Nicea.  Was he worshiped as divine?  As the Son of God?  We’ve kind of touched on it.  But how about some of the early church fathers?

BEN:  Yes.

ED:  Because the early church fathers were disciples of the disciples.  Did they say anything, or do we have any documentation about what they felt about the deity of Christ?

BEN:  Yeah.  That’s one of the more blatant historical inaccuracies in “The DaVinci Code.”  It ignores church history from A.D. 33 to A.D. 325.  But let me read you some early quotes from some early church leaders.

Ignatius of Antioch, “Letter to the Ephesians,” 110 A.D.: “Ignatius, also called Theophorus, to the Church of Ephesus in Asia…predestined from eternity for a glory that is lasting and unchanging, united and chosen through true suffering by the will of the Father,” listen to this next phrase, “in Jesus Christ our God.”  That was written A.D. 110.

Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” 189 A.D.: “Nevertheless, what cannot be said of anyone else who ever lived, that he is himself (referring to Christ) in his own right God and Lord.”

Clement of Alexandria, “Exhortation to the Greeks,” 190 A.D.: “The Word, then, the Christ, is the cause both of our ancient beginning—for he was in God—and of our well-being.  And now this same Word has appeared as man.  He alone is both God and man, and the source of all our good things.’”

We have other quotes from Tertullian, Origen, and other early church fathers who obviously worshiped Jesus Christ as God in the flesh.

So the idea that Constantine invented this or embellished the gospels at Nicea is ludicrous.  You had the early disciples, Paul, early church leaders following Christ as divine for about 250 years pre-Nicea.  Plus you have copies pre-Nicea and post-Nicea that show that the gospels have not been altered.

ED:  That’s great.  The New Testament paints a very clear portrait of the person of Christ, and we have that portrait in the early church with the early church fathers.

A couple of years ago I did a painting during some of our Easter services and I called it a self-portrait.  I began to paint and people thought I was painting myself.  In reality, though, I was painting Jesus.  And I said, “As believers, that’s who we should reflect.  That’s who we should mirror.”

And basically, Ben, as Christians, we are painting a portrait of our lives by how we handle our relationships, friendships, marriage, parenting challenges, how we handle our finances, how we steward our time.  All that stuff, we’re constantly painting and painting and painting.

So often, people maybe won’t read two or three books of 300-400 pages each.  But they will read a believer’s life.  And we need to paint that picture.

BEN:  Yeah.  I remember talking to a guy years ago when we first moved to Houston in a class in high school, and this guy was completely un-churched.  He turned to me one time as we had a discussion about God, and he said, “Ben, you’re the closest thing to God that I have.”

ED:  Wow.

BEN:  And that is so true.  That was a very, in a way, haunting statement.  Because there are so many people in our lives that we work with, people that we associate with, and we’re the closest thing to God that they have.  They may never read the Bible.  They may never read a book on Christian apologetics.  But as you said, I guarantee you that they’re going to read you.

So we have to ask ourselves the question today, we don’t want to get all caught up on some, you know, head trip.  It is what kind of portrait of Christ are we painting with our lives.

ED:  And we are talking about Christians now?

BEN:  No doubt about it.

ED:  And I also believe believers should understand some of the basics that we’ve talked about today.  And they should feel confident to point to The Source Bookstore or to other Christian bookstores, to whatever resources [and say], “Hey, here is maybe what you can read.  Here is an answer to your question.  Here is someone else who’s kind of going after the same things that you are asking me about.”

BEN:  Right.  Exactly.  Because no one can know everything about different subjects and questions that people ask you about your faith; because you are talking about very intense and very personal issues.  The best thing to do when someone asks you a question that you don’t have the answer to right then is to say, “That’s a great question right there.  I really don’t know the answer.  Let me get back to you tomorrow or next week.”

Then you do your research and you help them out.  And again, if you are here and you are seeking, continue to seek.  Continue to ask questions.  Because there are people here at this church who want to listen to you and want to introduce you to the life they have in Christ.

ED:  That’s the cool thing about Fellowship, Ben, is that we’re a church that welcomes not only believers, but also seekers—people who are in this process.  And what I say to seekers is, “Hey, pray a prayer something like this.  Every day for the next 30 days, just go, “God, if you exist, show yourself to me.  If you are real, show up in my life.”

And then, I would have them take a book, for example, take the book of John and read like a chapter a day for 30 days.  If you are a sincere seeker, I’m telling you, God’s going to show up in your life in a huge way!  I think you’ll come to a point where you’ll bow the knee.

I don’t want to chase this rabbit, but here’s a good question: Do we believe, then know?  Or do we know and then believe?

BEN:  (chuckles) Well, that would take us a couple of months to figure that out.

ED:  So often people think, “Man, I can stack all these facts and historical data, you know, about Christianity; and if I know all this stuff, then I can believe.”  That’s what I’m saying.

BEN:  It closes the gap—I would say—for some people.  That’s the way they get there.  But I really believe that you believe in order to know.

ED:  I do, too.  Not that the other way can not be great too.

BEN:  Many people say that they came to Christ that way, by knowing first, then believing.  But I think that, again, if there is a God—and there is a God.  He has made everything, and he’s always existed—if he’s out here, then this God has complete knowledge of everything within the universe and everything in our lives and everything on planet Earth.

So once you get in contact with the true source of this knowledge, you believe in Him and then your eyes are open to understand this world view, once you’re inside that.  Because when you’re outside—as we talked about last week—though you do have some understanding of God, you want to run to this true knowledge because you need to be forgiven and made right with God through Christ.

ED:  That’s strong.  Well, it’s our prayer that this series, Ben, has really, really helped a lot of the believers, and also the seekers, continue down this track.  Because I think “The DaVinci Code” is a good thing, because we’re having these discussions.  I think many people will come into the kingdom of God because of this very book.

BEN:  I agree.  And I think it’s going to cause a lot of Christians to get on their toes a little bit and do a little more research.  And it’s going to help us out.

ED:  You know, in my own life, Ben, I think I am more at the top of my game, so to speak, when I am rubbing shoulders with people who are skeptics; when people do have serious questions and doubts about Christianity, as opposed to always rubbing shoulders with believers.

BEN:  Yeah.  I like that.  And one of the titles that people used, I guess, against Jesus, was that Jesus Christ was a friend of sinners.  And I am glad he was a friend of sinners because I am a sinner.  And I’m very good at sinning.  And I think so many times we forget that.

ED:  That’s right.

BEN:  We think that once I become a Christian, I need to hang out in my own little Christian club and get my Christian car and my Christian stickers and Christian t-shirts and Christian breath mints and all that.  And we don’t need to do that.  We need to be in the world, but not of the world.  We need to be redeeming the world.  And when we do so, present the gospel story in a bold yet humble manner.  Because again, the knowledge that we have—not that it’s total knowledge by any stretch of the imagination—is a free gift from God.

ED:  That’s right.  Totally free.

Well, Ben, thank you for proclaiming the gospel in a bold manner.  And we will bring you back, I promise you.  Ben Young.

BEN:  Thanks.

ED:  Thanks, Ben.