    Christianity has evolved in the last 2000 years to look like something much different that what Jesus intended. Join us as we rediscover what it really means to be a Christian.    

<div> <div> <div> <div> <p>Christianity has evolved in the last 2000 years to look like something much different that what Jesus intended. Join us as we rediscover what it really means to be a Christian.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Vassar SDA Church

What Is a Christian?

Taylor Hinkle

What Is a Christian?- Part 1

The message that we have this morning, I believe we're going to need the Lord's blessing as we study together just like we do every morning.

And so before we study, how about we bow our heads for prayer and ask for the Lord's blessing.

Father in heaven, Lord, what a privilege to gather together as your people.

Lord, we thank you so much for the rain outside and for the blessing of watering the earth.

And Father, we think of the blessing and the promise of the former rain and the latter rain that you promise you'll send of your Holy Spirit.

Father, you know the desperate condition of each 1 of our hearts, the need that we have of Jesus in a new way.

And Father, we just pray that you would fill us this Sabbath, that you would give us clear glimpses of your character and the beauty of Jesus.

And Father, may you help us to know your will more fully for our lives.

Now the title of the message is 1 that I thought about changing because I figured when you saw it as a group of Christians you would think why in the world are you talking to a group of Christians about what it means to be a Christian?

I think the understanding is that if you're a Christian already, you probably understand what it means to be a Christian.

So don't take this message as a talking down message.

But there's something that I've been thinking about as you look at Christianity over the years it seems to me that in the last 2, 000 years since the beginning of Christianity that Christianity has evolved so to speak in the last 2, 000 years to become something now that it was never intended to be.

I'm hearing some people saying it's a little loud.

We know heaven's coming soon, but not soon enough to lose our hearing.

But as you look at the transition of the early church and the first 12 disciples that Jesus raised up, and then you look at modern Christianity today, have any of you ever seen some discrepancies between the 2?

In Acts chapter 11, we're told that the disciples were first called Christians in what city?

Now the reason why they were called Christians is we're finding out that during that time, Stephen was just stoned and that really raised an upheaval towards the Christians and now Christians were being persecuted and so the Christians started to spread throughout the then known world.

Well what would you do as a Christian if 1 of your leaders was just stoned to death, well, probably not the same thing these disciples did.

They went out throughout the world and still kept sharing their faith with those around them.

And as they were sharing their faith and the people identified that these must be followers of Jesus, the people wanted to taunt the believers in Jesus and so they started calling them Christians or little Christs.

Now the people meant this to be a harmful saying, you know, you look like Jesus, you're a little Christ, but the Christians thought well this if I have to be called a name that's probably a good 1 to be called.

If people look at me and I just remind them of Jesus, then that's probably what it should be.

And the Bible tells us in Acts chapter 11 and verse 26 I believe, that that was when the Christians were first called Christians in Antioch.

Now being a Christian, if you look at the etymology of the word, literally means just to be Christ-like or a follower of Jesus, which we understand, and that's a very clear understanding.

But what's interesting to note is that those Christians, their faith was so strong in Jesus that it began to move them in the midst of opposition.

If some of you have taken the time to read some of the early church fathers or history of Christianity in the first century, some of you might be familiar with the names of Pliny the Younger or Trajan, and if you're not I'll show you a little synopsis of what they talked about.

Trajan was a little governor of a province and the Emperor was Trajan at the time and Pliny wrote to Trajan and he began to say hey we're having an issue with worship in our governance.

He said you know that we believe in many gods and we offer worship to all sorts of gods, the God of Athena and Nike, but we hold supreme the Emperor as God.

But the challenge was is that Christians, how many gods can you worship as a Christian?

Okay, just making sure we've read our commandments, you worship 1 God.

And the Christians wouldn't bow to the Emperor.

And what this governor started telling Emperor Trajan is, you know, the temples are empty for worship because so many people are becoming Christians.

But the challenge was, is they wanted to regain their control.

And so Trajan and Pliny come up with a plan and they say, well we're going to start an interrogation process of sorts.

We're not going to seek out Christians, but when we find them, we're going to take them through some tests and those who fail these tests we know that they are Christians and they will be executed.

Well they would take the Christians to the Colosseums when they were caught and they would set up an altar with an image of the Emperor and they would tell the Christians just take a pinch of incense and put it upon the altar and light it in reverence and worship of the emperor and then we won't let the animals come in and take care of you.

But Christian after Christian after Christian decided to stay faithful to the Lord instead of bowing to the emperor and there sacrifice their lives for Jesus.

And we're told that the blood of martyrs was like seed and Christianity began to explode and expand.

Now within just a few short years there's a man who came on the scene by the name of Constantine, you guys are familiar with Constantine, and Constantine was the emperor known as the friend of the Christians, or the first Christian emperor, and we'll define that a little bit.

But the interesting thing about Constantine is he was really a pagan who became converted to Christianity, if you know his story.

He was out fighting a war and he saw a vision of a cross and he heard the words in this name, conquer, and he decided that he would become a Christian and have all of his men put crosses on their shields, march through a river and be baptized, and then go and conquer in the name of the Lord.

But what we find about that time, even though the church looked like it was in a pitiful state under persecution, it was even in a worse state when it became popular.

In order to make Christianity popular, Constantine thought if I can make the religion of the pagans fit into the religion of God, then we all can get together.

We solve our problems of emperor worship and all these different things if we can all just come together and worship.

So some of the things he started doing was they were used to worshiping the God of Jupiter or the God of Mars or the God of Venus or these different things, but instead now he gave them Christian names as Saint Peter and Saint Matthew and you know the story to some degree.

And before you know it Christianity even though the commandment says you shall have 1 God and number 2 you shall not bow down to any images.

Now there's images filling the church and the church starts to look less like God's original intent of Christianity and more like the world.

It continues on and during that time Greek philosophy was popular and 1 of the things in Greek philosophy which doesn't make sense to me, but made sense to all of them is that when you die, you don't die.

That you have an immortal soul that continues to live beyond the death of the body, that dwells in the heavens and all of these different things.

And so what they began to do is to find scripture to support these different pagan philosophies and bring that into the church in order to bring an alliance between Christianity and the world.

Now we can look back at that and you can think those are some foolish Christians.

You know how in the world could they be so deceived and thinking that you could worship idols and still worship God?

How could they think that you could bring in paganism and still keep Christianity?

But do you think there's a possibility today that Christianity looks a little bit different now than it did when Jesus first started it.

I want to share with you a few statistics from a research group known as the Pew Research Group.

This is a Christian organization that just researches all different denominations and Christian type things and they began to ask Christians what doctrines they believed in what things they thought were important from Scripture and After I share this list with you you can tell me whether or not you think Christianity has shifted at all in the last 2, 000 years.

This is a survey done in 2015, some other parts are from 2016.

It says 86% of Christians think that believing in God is important.

Now you might think, well that's pretty good, 86% of Christians.

Now let me just ask you a question, 14% of Christians think it's okay and not important to believe in God?

You can go to these links and I'll share that with you if you're interested to know if this, you can fact check it.

In other words, there's a quarter of people who come to church on any given weekend who don't even know if God really exists.

67% believe that you need to forgive those who have wronged you.

Now I don't know what happened to that 67%.

What about the others who don't think you need to forgive them?

Do you remember where Jesus taught if a man wrongs you how many times you forgive them when Peter asks and what does Jesus say?

490 times in Baal-Yeh-Yeh, we could get into all that.

But in other words, keep forgiving, right?

Keep forgiving those who wrong you, but well 33% of people don't think that's important anymore.

67% believe that you need to be honest at all times.

In other words, they think the commandment says something along the lines of, don't bear false witness against your neighbor unless it's convenient.

66% believe that there are many religions leading to eternal life.

In other words, you don't have to be a Christian to be saved.

I mean, you can be saved in any way, but what does Jesus say in John chapter 14 verse 6?

Now it doesn't say a way or a truth, but the way and the truth and we see that this is drastically shifting to fit in with modern culture and not ruffle any feathers when you're talking to your friends who don't believe the same way you do.

52% believe that you need to help the poor and the needy.

Do you remember where Jesus talks about those who make it into the kingdom and those who don't?

And he starts saying that as much as you've done unto the least of these my brethren you have done it unto me and those who had done it under the lease, that they entered into the kingdom, and those who had not done it under the lease, they were not in the kingdom, and they were shocked.

Well, 48% of Christians, almost half, don't believe that you even need to help the poor and needy.

What Is a Christian?- Part 2

Well, why don't we go ahead and study our Bibles?

I believe that's what we came here to do.

If you haven't met Denny yet, please meet him at the end of the service.

And I'm thankful that you came to join us today and it's a blessing to be able to worship together.

So why don't we stand for prayer if you're able.

If you realize after sitting a while it's easy to fall asleep and it's biblical to stand while we pray.

So why don't we pray and ask the Lord's blessing.

Father in heaven we stand here this morning seeking your blessing not standing because we think we have it but Lord kneeling in heart realizing we need your spirit.

Father I pray that you would please send your same spirit that inspired the truths of Scripture to inspire our hearts with understanding and to enlighten our minds.

Father, you have a message for us today that could easily be messed up by the messenger, and we pray that you would keep that from happening.

We pray that Your will would be accomplished, that Your Word would not return into void as promised.

Well, we're going to continue our series on what is a Christian.

If you remember, we looked at the first part last week.

Looking in Mark chapter 3, as the scripture reading was read, Mark chapter 3, we saw Jesus called his disciples for 2 very specific purposes.

We also recognize the fact that Christianity today has changed drastically from what God ever intended it to be in the beginning.

We saw Christians who believe a whole gamut of things that scripture never taught.

We see that It's without doubt that Christianity has changed face over the last 2, 000 years.

So we're trying to get back to the understanding of what was Jesus' intent in calling a Christian or calling a disciple.

Now we saw last week that Jesus calls us And the first thing that He calls us to do is to what?

It's to spend time with Him or to be with Him.

And we're gonna read Mark chapter 3, verse 14 to remind you of that this morning for those of you who weren't here and then move on into the second part of our series this morning.

Mark chapter 3 beginning in verse 14 it says, and he appointed 12, and these are the 12 disciples which we realize is the same as Christians today, that they might be what?

Now last week we looked at a little slide and we made a math equation out of this and we realized that time with God or being with God plus witnessing for God is what Jesus says equals a Disciple or a Christian Is that correct?

I had different challenges with math and some of it was good and some not so good.

If you take 1 of these 2 things away, do you still come up with the same result?

If 1 plus 1 equals 2, if I take away 1, what do I have?

Now this is very simple logic, but let me ask you a question.

If I call myself a Christian and I'm not spending time with God, am I meeting what Jesus was really calling me to become?

No, He wants us to be with him and to experience the blessing of fellowship in his presence, which we need.

And we looked at that last week and we see how spending time with God encourages our faith, causes us to be born again, and changes us into God's image, if you remember that.

If I take away witnessing for God, am I still in the biblical sense considered a Christian according to Jesus?

Am I meeting Jesus's original intent for calling the 12 disciples?

Now let me just get something really clear here from the beginning.

How many of you realize there's areas of growth in your own life that are necessary in your Christian walk?

And so as we analyze scripture and we look at Christ's ideals for our lives, we shouldn't take it as Jesus is trying to give us a spanking or step on our toes and just irritate us, but we realize that Jesus is trying to refine us because Jesus' perfect plan is what brings us happiness.

How many of you have lived long enough to realize that your own plan doesn't make you happy but God's does?

So if Jesus is calling Christians to spend time with him and to witness for him, how many of you think it's important that in our own Christian experience that God helps us by his grace to experience those 2 things?

Now let me ask you a question, in studying scripture do you think it's a good idea to build a whole theology or framework of understanding from 1 text.

Now we've spent a lot of time looking at Mark chapter 3 verse 13 and 14 and we can see that from the words of Jesus to the best of our understanding that being with God and then going for God or witnessing for God are the 2 elements that comprise the Christian life.

But do you think it might be good to look at a couple other passages to see if we're on the right path or if we have something incorrect?

I want to look at a couple things very quickly because I don't ever want to build an understanding of something that isn't biblical into my Christian life.

Now if you have your Bibles you can turn to Isaiah chapter 6.

We're not going to reread through this passage.

2 weeks ago we shared this as the first message here in this church, Isaiah chapter 6.

And Isaiah chapter 6 is a powerful passage for many reasons and we won't take time to read through it for sake of time.

But I would encourage you to take some time to look at it this afternoon or whenever you have a moment.

In Isaiah chapter 6 we see it's God's call to the prophet Isaiah and God is calling Isaiah for the first time into the prophetic ministry or into the ministry of being a prophet.

Now how many of you think you might be a little bit intimidated if God was calling you to be a prophet?

Notice the sequence of events that we find in Isaiah chapter 6.

We're not going to read through it all, but in Isaiah chapter 6 verses 1-8, the first few verses we see that Isaiah was given a vision, and what was he given a vision of?

That's what the center of the temple is all about.

And as Isaiah sees the throne of God and the temple of heaven, he hears the angels who are singing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, and Isaiah says this scene is so incredible that the very doors of the temple are shaken.

Do you think that would equal an experience with God?

Do you think having a clear vision, literally, of who God is in His holy place would be similar to what Jesus is talking about spending time with God.

Now as Isaiah spends this time with the Lord, he recognizes his own sinfulness and we see he cries out, Woe is me, I'm undone, I'm a man of unclean lips, dwelling in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen who?

And at that time an angel comes over with tongs from off the altar and brings a coal symbolically cleansing the sin of Isaiah, and Isaiah experiences the freedom and regenerating power of God's grace.

Now right after that happens notice what verse 8 says this is a conversation that Isaiah hears.

He says, also I heard the voice of the Lord saying whom shall I send and who will go for us?

Now do we find this to be a similar pattern to what we see Jesus talking about in Mark chapter 3?

He has a close encounter with God where he experiences the grace of God, and no 1 twists Isaiah's arm and says, Isaiah, you'd better witness now.

But it's a natural result flowing out of a heart that's converted that Isaiah says, here am I, send me.

What Is a Christian?- Part 3

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for the great privilege of coming together as your children.

Lord, what a joy it is to be here together with people who love you and love 1 another.

Lord, it's wonderful to see such smiling, happy faces.

And Lord, it's grateful to know that even in the midst of hard times, that we have a God who cares for us, and that we have brothers and sisters who support us.

Father, I pray that as we look at your word this morning, we're really praying that you would lead us into deeper truth and remind us of things that maybe we've forgotten.

Father, help us to see the things that are important to You, and I pray that the things that are important to You would become important to us.

Father, may Your Spirit teach us as only You can.

We're dependent upon You and reliant and expectant that You will speak to us this morning.

So Father, just help us to be open to Your voice.

I thought it would be initially 2 parts, but the reality is as I've continued to study, I realize that it's an important subject for us to understand, and the reality is this.

If I don't know what it means to be a Christian, it doesn't really matter anything else that I do know.

And I think it's good for us to take time to start to understand what does it mean to be a Christian?

When we started this series off, what was it, 4 weeks ago, because we had a gap of 2 weeks, we looked at how Christianity has changed drastically in the last 2, 000 years to become something that God never intended it to be, right?

And remember looking at those statistics of how what people believe today in Christianity is drastically different than what the Bible teaches.

And so we have the blessing and being able to look at Scripture to understand what Christianity really is.

Well we've taken some time and we've started looking through a passage of Scripture that I hope we will have memorized by the end of this series.

And the verse, as you can see it on the screen, it says that He appointed, or the King James says ordained, how many?

That they might be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach.

And we saw that Jesus here is telling us that this is really the two-fold call of the Christian.

And number 2, to go for God or to witness on His behalf.

And we've seen that this isn't an isolated passage, but all throughout Scripture, this is the same experience, right?

We see the woman at the well spends time with Jesus, and after her time with Jesus, does Jesus have to twist her arm to get her to go back into the city?

No, she leaves her water pot, runs back in, and joyously declares, here's the man that knows everything that I've done.

We see that this is consistent all throughout the experiences that people have in Scripture with Jesus, and should it be any different with us today?

Now we also looked at why it's important to spend time with Jesus, and we saw in 1 Peter 1, verse 23, that the reason why we need that daily time with the Lord is because the Bible tells us that we're born again not of anything else except by the Word of God which lives and abides forever.

So how many of you want to be born-again Christians?

But we can't be born again unless the Word of God impregnates us with the life-giving force that we really need.

And that's 1 Peter 1, verse 23, we were looking at.

But then we saw how many of you have ever been tempted, if you had an option between either spending time with God or going for God, which 1 would you choose?

I don't want to see a show of hands, necessarily.

But if you're anything like me, I would pick just spending time with God any day over going for God.

Some of you might be able to relate to me, you're not as outgoing as other people.

You know, I see those people who can talk to anyone and it really blows my mind and I praise the Lord for that.

But then there's others like us who feel intimidated by others and who don't really like getting up in public, which you might find ironic as a pastor.

But the reality is, is that the call of the Christian is not to pick whether you're gonna spend time with God or witness for him, but really the combination of the 2 is what a Christian looks like.

Now we saw that there are 5 major hindrances to why people don't witness for God, and I'm just reviewing this for the sake of those who weren't here or we've forgotten a little bit before we move on.

There are 5 main points why people don't witness for God.

Number 1, maybe we don't have an encounter with Jesus like we should.

The reason why we brought that up is because every time someone in Scripture has an encounter with Jesus, the natural result was witnessing.

It wasn't some new program or new ideology that changed that caused them to want to go be witnesses, but really it was an encounter with Jesus that motivated them to share with others the precious friend they had found in Jesus, what Desire of Ages tells us.

Number 2, many times the reason why we don't share our faith is because we're afraid of being rejected or we're afraid that we don't know enough.

And I think all of us can relate to those 2 fears.

If we knew that people were in the world looking to know more about God, then maybe we would be a little bit more prone to share Christ with others.

But Jesus does tell us that the harvest is what?

Plentiful or ripe, but the laborers are few.

So there are people, and the Spirit of Prophecy tells us that there's people all around the world looking to Heaven just waiting to be ushered in.

So really our fear of rejection because they might not want to know, what if we're actually missing out because there's people right around us who do want to know?

A side note of deviation, yesterday I went to get my hair cut.

Long story short, I sit down in the chair, This guy's about 30 years old and he starts telling me about his family.

He tells me that he has a daughter who's 8 months old named Paisley.

We have 2 kids as well, 1 who's 2 and 1 who's 10 months, or 10 weeks.

And so we're talking a little bit and he says, well, what did you name your kids?

Series

What Is a Christian?

What Is a Christian?- Part 1

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Our Greatest Need

42m

The True Medical Missionary

56m

The Most Important Work

47m

Fire in My Bones

42m

Restoration 2025: Revelation of Healing

02 By Their Testimony

54m

Sanctuary, Salvation & Our Savior

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: Fed at the Table

40m

Keys to Growing a Powerful and Vibrant Prayer Ministry

2. From Spiritual Laodicean to Daring to Ask for More: Melody’s Story

1h 13m

Plenary

The One Thing Jesus Can’t Give You

55m

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

07 The Altar of Incense

1h 11m

Hid in My Heart

Hid in My Heart- Part 1

45m

Hid in My Heart

Hid in My Heart- Part 2

45m

Prayer by Pavel Goia

02 Relationship Prayer

49m

Sound Doctrine