Continuing Pastor Kennedy's message: Third, the world needs Christ because the world is lost, and only Christ can save it. Jesus Christ said, “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). No one else has done that. There is no other Savior in the world. No one else died for the sins of mankind. No one else has risen from the dead—only Christ. No one else can save a lost world. The problem, however, today is that so many people don’t realize they are lost. Therefore, they don’t respond as the shepherds did when the angels brought that first proclamation, “I bring you good tidings of great joy . . . For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11). Who needs a savior but one who is lost, and if one doesn’t know that he is lost, he is not going to respond joyfully to the announcement of a savior, whether 2,000 years ago, or now.
That is why the world covers up the great Christian holidays with some trivial, insignificant secular meaning. Thanksgiving becomes a family gathering for “turkey day.” Christmas is about Santa Claus and presents. A survey showed that many children in our public schools do not even know whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas. Easter, of course, has something profoundly to do with “bunny rabbits” and colored eggs to hunt for. So, the truth is suppressed in unrighteousness, as the Bible said it would be.
People just don’t know they are lost. One minister said that the problem today is not getting people saved, the problem is getting people lost, because most of them think themselves to be saved already. A survey showed that 70 percent of Americans believe their chances of getting to Heaven are somewhere between good and excellent. Some of these people have a terrible shock waiting for them. Heaven’s gate is narrow and few find it.
I would ask you the question: Have you ever been lost in sin? If you have never been lost, you have never been saved, because Christ came to seek and save only one group of people: the lost (those who realize they are lost in sin). A man who has been lost in the woods for days on end, utterly despairing of finding his way home, would be delighted and thrilled if someone suddenly appeared and guided him out. A man who is in the midst of the ocean and going down for the third time, would thrill with joy if he saw a boat approaching. But a man dressed in a nice suit and walking down the street on his way to a comfortable home in this world is not going to respond very well if someone comes up and tries to save him, because he does not consider himself lost.
When it comes to our eternal home, since lostness means that we don’t know how to find our way home—though most of us should know that here on this earth—there are millions who don’t know how to find their way to their home in Heaven. Therefore, they are spiritually lost.
The Apostle Thomas was one such person, and he was willing to admit it. Christ said, “Where I go you know, and the way you know. Thomas said unto him, Lord, we know not where you go; and how can we know the way?” (John 14:4–5). Thomas was lost. He knew it and he admitted it. Wish to God that there were more like him today. “Jesus said unto him [Thomas], I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). As marvelous as those words were, in the ears of many modern day people, they are not greeted so hospitably as when Thomas received them, because there are many today who find those words to be very narrow and discriminatory.
I visited a man in his home recently who had this very view. He told me he had given the matter of religion considerable thought over the years, and he had arrived at his own conclusions. His conclusion concerning the “way” was simply this: If a man tried to do the best he could, kept his nose clean, stayed out of trouble, and tried to help his neighbor on occasion, then certainly he would at last end up in Heaven. That was all there was to it.
He really wasn’t interested in hearing anything else. He had thought about it and had reached his conclusion. He didn’t know that the Scripture says, “There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12), and this gentleman described it perfectly: It is the idea that if I will simply be good enough, I will go to Heaven. It is a way which has seemed right at some time in their life to every person who has ever been born on this planet.
But the Bible says, “There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (v. 12). And it repeats the text again: “There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (16:25). Does it seem right unto you that if you just follow the commandments and love your neighbor that all will turn out well in the end. . . . “but the end thereof are the ways of death” (v. 12).
The fact that this man and all those who hold that view, which is, by the way, the basis for all heathen religions, do not realize that they are acting contrary to Christ, contrary to the Scriptures, contrary to the Gospel, and contrary to God and His Word. As far as this man was concerned, if this was contrary to God, so much the worse . . . for God, because, you see, he had thought it over and had decided what was right and what was wrong. If God didn’t agree, that was God’s problem. What arrogance!
There is a spiritual principle I have discovered over the years. I hope you will write it down on the walls of your mind. It is this: The unregenerate man—that person who has never been renewed, born again, recreated by God—always tries to justify himself and condemn God, while the regenerate man, whose heart has been transformed by God, always tries to condemn himself and justify God. In John 3:5-7 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” Jesus came to make that possible.
Merry Christmas
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