What about those who’ve never heard the gospel?

<p>What about those who’ve never heard the gospel?</p>

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Hope Channel

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

Sebastien Braxton

Felecia Lee

Joe Reeves

Paul Samuel

01 Why Apologetics?

Jonathan Walter

02 Climbing Mars Hill

03 Divine Design

04 The Problem of Evil

05 Jesus and Hinduism

06 Jesus and Buddhism

07 Jesus and Islam

08 Jesus is Different

09 The Resurrection: Evidence that Demands a Verdict

Joe Kretschmar

10 The Bible

11 Hellfire

12 Doomsday Cults

13 Hope for Non-Christians

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, Welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Joe Reeves, with Inverse.

Hello, my name is Joe, and welcome to Inverse, a Bible study program.

We're at the table with friends We open the scriptures and this is the last episode on Apologetics.

Hope for non-christians is what we're looking at today And this season we've been asking tough questions about the foundations of Christianity, questions that skeptics answer, and why should we believe and why should we have confidence in the Bible?

Glad to have you here and with Felicia and with Jonathan.

And so we are going to look at another very important question today.

Can God save non-Christians or somebody who's never heard the name of Jesus?

Just because somebody never heard the name of Jesus, does that mean that they are eternally lost?

How does God handle this in the judgment?

Very, very critical questions that many of you have thought about, and we want to get some answers from scripture today.

So we wanna pray for God's help as we do that.

Father in heaven, I thank you so much for the privilege we have to study your word and to go deep into the truths of the Bible.

I ask that you will be with us today as we ponder on this important topic and a big question that many have, that you will give us guidance, that your scriptures will talk, and that we will be able to come to a conclusion that is from you.

I pray that your Spirit will be with us here and those watching and listening.

And we thank you so much for this in Jesus name, amen.

We want to begin by reading from the scripture, a powerful story of Jesus.

An unusual story because so many of his miracles were in the area of Galilee, where there were many Jews, but now he takes a trip north and a little bit west to the towns or the area of Tyre and Sidon.

And there's 1 story from this trip that Jesus took with his disciples and we'll read this about this encounter right now from Matthew 15, Matthew 15 and starting in verse 21.

Then Jesus went out from there and departed to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

And behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to him saying, have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David.

And his disciples came and urged him saying, send her away for she cries out after us.

But he answered and said, I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Then she came and worshiped him saying, Lord, help me.

But he answered and said, it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs.

Yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs "'which fall from their master's table.' Then Jesus answered and said to her, "'O woman, great is your faith.

"'Let it be to you as you desire.' And her daughter was healed from that very hour." Thank you very much.

Paul, tell us a little bit about the background of this woman and the significance of this encounter.

She is from Tyre and Sidon, historically known as the place where Queen Jezebel came from.

A place steeped in idolatry and practices contrary to God's word.

Jesus comes to Tyre and Sidon outside Israel.

He meets this lady whose daughter is severely demon possessed.

Surprising things, She knows, she calls him the son of David.

And she comes to him asking for help, knowing that he can do this.

She exercises amazing faith in His ability to help her.

She's happy to be called a dog and accept the scraps that come from the children's table.

And Jesus meets her and there's a marvelous miracle performed in her life.

She reaches Jesus, despite the disciples trying to keep her away.

Okay, so if I'm trying to get to Jesus and the disciples are rude to me like they were to her, I might have given up.

I might have said, you know what, Jesus, I'll be back when you find some friendlier disciples and you can fix this mess of your followers.

It's shocking how it's those sometimes who are closest to Jesus that bar heaven from others.

And it's easy for us to think, well, I'm a believer, I'm a Christian, I wouldn't do that.

But sometimes we act just like the disciples.

We stop children from coming, we stop the heathens from coming, we stop people who we don't like from coming to Jesus.

I wanna apologize to those who are watching and listening, because like, you know, we laugh, but it's true.

And maybe, I hope I never contributed to it, but I have seen this happen.

And maybe someone has been hurt, you know, in that way and has been kept from Jesus because of other people.

So like, if that's your, you know, if that's your experience, I just wanna say, hey, sorry, this is not what Jesus is all about.

So- maybe apologetics is about apologizing after all.

We've been denying it all through the season.

It's embarrassing what happens in church sometimes.

But they treated her this way because they had their own set of prejudice and she was an outsider and they were gonna let her know it.

They couldn't fathom the idea of heathens, people who worshiped idols, possibly coming near to Jesus or even of course later being exposed to the gospel and having the possibility of being saved.

So there was a lot that Jesus had to work through.

So what does this tell us about Jesus' love or desire for people from far regions and the heathen and other religions?

Jesus is from Galilee which itself is a March land you know it's a borderland Jesus is someone who who who traverses the borders of of Israel and other nations he goes to other nations other nations know about him Jesus has come for them as well as Israel.

He's choosing to use Israel, but his mission is for the world.

Because the Bible says, he that believes in Jesus shall be saved.

He that confesses his name, many have never heard.

You know, I had this experience in eighth grade math class.

If you did not complete the assignment, you were going to be punished.

Sebastian should have been on this episode.

You are going to be punished if you did not finish your assignment.

However, a day before that this assignment was due, we had a new student come to the class.

So the day of the assignment is due and the teacher says, everyone who did not finish your assignment, come and stand up and line up.

And this 1 student who is new, who didn't of course know the assignment, stood on the line of those who did not finish the assignment.

I sat there and I thought, I wonder what she's going to do with this student.

Because those who did it got awards and those who didn't would get punished.

But now you have someone who is not in either, well, he is in 1 category, but when she just asked him to sit down, He didn't get a reward and he was not punished simply because he did not fall into that, in either category because his circumstances were different.

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Series

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

13 Hope for Non-Christians

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

01 Why Apologetics?

28m

02 Climbing Mars Hill

29m

03 Divine Design

29m

04 The Problem of Evil

29m

05 Jesus and Hinduism

29m

06 Jesus and Buddhism

29m

07 Jesus and Islam

29m

08 Jesus is Different

28m

09 The Resurrection: Evidence that Demands a Verdict

29m

10 The Bible

29m

11 Hellfire

29m

12 Doomsday Cults

29m

13 Hope for Non-Christians

29m

Sound Doctrine