Jump directly to the Content
Jump directly to the Content

Sermons

Home > Sermons

Exclusive Territory

God's demands of exclusivity are for our own good.

In my economics class, we finished studying agreements. At first glance, my students thought an agreement would limit consumer choice. They're surprised when the hidden logic of economic theory shows that an agreement might make consumers better off.

I want to talk about the term exclusive, but in a Christian context. As in the case with agreements, the word exclusive has some surprising properties. Exclusive is also one of the biggest terms in our culture.

Any institution that tries to be exclusive today is suspect. HSydney College in Virginia is controversial because it excludes female students. The military is controversial because it excludes practicing homosexuals.

Exclusivity is seen as the opposite of tolerance, the opposite of openness, the opposite of freedom. And along comes Christianity, a faith with a book that claims to be God's Word, that supposedly sits above all other books, in which Jesus says, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no man comes to the Father except through me or "exclusively through me.

Because we live in a culture that applauds diversity, this exclusivity is a scandal. It's the main scandal of the Gospel.

God places exclusive demands on our behavior.

God places exclusive demands on our behavior, but these exclusive demands can free us to

be all we can be. How can a commandment to not do something be the same as freedom and liberation? When God says, "Don't do this, how can that free us?

The Bible says in one of the commandments that you're not to commit adultery. When you marry, be faithful to your marriage partner in sexual relations. Refrain from having sex until you marry.

What could be more exclusive and binding than that rule? What can be more enslaving, more limiting? The opposite: no rule. The students I know who are sexually "liberated and active are not free.

Illustration: A former student of mine, Dave, was not a Christian when we first met. He came to talk to me in my office. He told me that he was frustrated with women because he couldn't seem to sustain a relationship. He tried. He fell in love. Then things fell apart. I asked him if he slept with these women, and he responded, "Yes. Wasn't that part of the process? I told Dave that I understood how he could think that sex was part of the process, but God designed relationships with men and women so that when they worked best, sex happened after the commitment of marriage was made. Perhaps since he was not following this pattern he really had not experienced the kind of freedom with a woman that his heart wanted.

I gave Dave a book by Walter Trobisch, I Loved a Woman. Dave decided to try my suggestion of dating women without sleeping with them, to get to know them as friends, to do things for them. Dave found that without the "freedom to have sex, he found a freedom to get to know a person of the other sex.

Dave and I didn't talk a great deal about who Jesus claimed to be. But Dave began to believe other parts of the Bible were true when he saw that the Bible was true about sexual ethics, and shortly before he graduated, Dave accepted Christ as his Savior.

He is now married to a Christian woman. I had the honor of being in their wedding. They have two daughters. I have no doubt that Dave and his wife, Lynn, are more free to enjoy each other in a physical way and in other ways, because each knows that it's God's plan for their physical relationship to be exclusive. It's as though they have an agreement with each other when it comes to sexual fidelity. That exclusivity sets them free.

Now here's the flip side: I have never known anyone, even somebody with the loosest of sexual ethics, who was in love with somebody and who did not mind if that person slept with others.

Illustration: Ayn Rand, the libertarian philosopher, author of Atlas Shrugged, and a strident opponent of the Christian faith, had an affair with a younger man who was her disciple, and told her husband that he was if he objected. Her husband retreated into alcohol. That was how liberated sexual ethics affected him.

But then this young man, Ayn Rand's lover, took a lover. Rand went ballistic with jealousy and rejected him as her disciple. The Ayn Rand movement tottered because she did not have the strength to live up to her libertarian principles.

This same ideathe benefits of exclusivityholds true for other commandments. When God commands you not to steal, it's because family, or school, or a neighborhood built on honesty will give you more things to enjoy, not less. When God commands you not to lie, it's because a family or a school or a neighborhood where people are honest gives you more opportunities, not less.

They're called the Ten Commandments, or the Ten Freedoms, because they free you to be what God intended you to be. God's exclusionary rules free us rather than limit us.

God does not want us to be exclusive of others.

Some exclusivity pertains to our relationships with people around us, particularly with our Christian friends and family. I want to talk about the kind of exclusivity that God does not want.

Illustration: Remember the parable Jesus told about the Good Samaritan? If you don't know this story, here's a quick . A man is beaten and robbed. Two people pass by afterward, but they don't help him. Then someone from a different nationality, a total stranger, comes along and helps the guy. He takes the man to get care, and, remarkably, pays the bill. Jesus uses this parable to answer the question of who our neighbor is. Jesus knew that if we were left to ourselves, we would think our neighbors are only the people like us.

For the Good Samaritan, his neighbor was the person who was in need, the person whose situation and beliefs and customs were different from his own. Here the gospel says to those who want to limit their religion to people in their neighborhoods, or their race, or family, or culture, that the gospel is open to all. Followers of Jesus are not to be exclusive to those for whom they care and whom they love.

Think about the person who dislikes you the most, maybe because you're a follower of Jesus. Or we can put a different spin on that: Can you identify the person you dislike the most, maybe because heor she doesn't like you? Remember why you dislike the person. I put that person in my mind when I wrote this sermon, and I can recall his name and face in an instant. Jesus says that person is my neighbor.

Jesus says the highest ideal of Christian love is to want the best for that person. How does that stir your cocoa? I don't know about you, but I find that hard. I'd rather exclusively love the people I like and for whom I want the best.

Illustration: One of the most effective Christians in the movement is John Rankin. Rankin has gone to women's colleges, like Wellesley, and given talks against abortion from a biblical perspective and gotten applause from people whose views are different from his. I think I know why. John Rankin doesn't hate the leaders of the National Organization of Women. He doesn't hate the people who heckle him. He doesn't hate his debate opponent. John Rankin prays for them.

When God makes exclusive demands on our behavior, and when Jesus claims to be the exclusive way of salvation, followers of Jesus don't have the right to exclude others because we're better. In fact, Christians are to be ambassadors to the unsaved world.

An ambassador is someone who represents his or her country in a foreign land. Imagine an ambassador who never wanted to be around the people of her assigned country. Imagine an ambassador who thought that he was better than the people of his assigned country. They would be terrible ambassadors.

How can we be a good ambassador for the kingdom of God instead of acting and exclusive? The process begins with a realization that we are as unworthy to be God's children as the people we dislike, or the people who dislike us. It is easy to have the attitude, "Sure, I've got my shortcomings, but God got a good deal when he got me. Ever think that? I do. But I'm wrong. That isn't the case.

Romans 5:8 is a key verse. It's an antidote to thinking I can exclude myself from those "terrible people over there. Romans 5:8 says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. I looked at probably eight translations of this verse, and I can't find one that says, "because you're so much better than the people you don't like, God chose you.

The gospel makes an exclusive salvation claim.

The gospel makes a exclusive salvation claim about itself. I know a lot of the people who say something like this: "My religion is Christianity. It's a wonderful religion. It meets my needs. But Christianity is only one of several ways to God. All the ways are good. If you'd like to know about the way I follow, I'll tell you; but I can't say Christianity is better than your religion. You'll have to decide what's best for you.

The problem is the world of faith doesn't work that way, nor does most anything else. We live in a country where we can be thankful all religions are to be equally tolerated. But that doesn't make them all equally true.

I'm always taken aback by anyone who thinks all roads lead to God, that all religions are equally valid. Nobody believes that about anything else. I wonder why anybody believes that about religion.

Illustration: Last summer I had to have a root canal. It wasn't as bad as I had been told it would be, but there are more enjoyable ways to spend a summer morning. If my endodontist had said, "You know, Mr. Elzinga, it really doesn't matter how I do the root canal. Eventually all roads lead to that problem tooth. I can go in directly to the tooth, or I can go in through your ear, or I can go in through your nostril, or I can drill into your neck and work my way back up to that gum at that point, I would look for a new oral surgeon.

Illustration: I have a friendhe's one of the smartest men I know in terms of sheer intellectual horsepowerwho thinks all roads lead to God as long as you're sincere. But he doesn't think that way about the van he drives. If a mechanic said to him, "The tires on your van need replacing, but I don't have your size in stock, he wouldn't reply, "Then let's put in a new ignition system. After all, as long as you're sincerely working on the van, any repair will solve the problem.

God never said all roads lead to him. He said just the opposite. If you aren't a follower of Jesusmaybe you're a seekerI hope you understand that it is not the followers of Jesus who decided the Christian faith is exclusive. We don't write the script. We don't author the plan of salvation. It's the Lord Jesus who does.

Is that an oppressive thought, that there's only one way? Maybe it is, unless you might be glad that there is a way of salvationeven one. Maybe it is, unless you realize that God doesn't owe you redemption, that you're a mess, that you can't make it on your own. Maybe you can relate to the Wesley hymn about how his soul was enslaved by sin and how his good deeds weren't enough to connect him to a holy God, and how miraculously God provided a way out through Christ. "My chains fell off. My heart was free, and I rose and went forth and followed Thee. Maybe you know that compared to God's holiness, compared even to the goodness of other people like Mother Teresa and Billy Graham, you don't measure up too well.

I recently heard Bill Hybels talk about the biggest competitor to Christianity. I probably would have thought that it would be atheism (atheists believe there is no God), or agnosticism (agnostics believe we can't know anything for certain about God), or maybe Islam or Buddhism or New Age. Hybels argued that it is moralism. That's the main rival to Christianity: The view that I'm good enough, I'm moral enough to earn my way into heaven; the view that says, "Hey, I'm not so bad, at least compared to other people I see or read about. I'm pretty good, really. I'm pretty honest. I'm certainly no axe murderer or serial killer.

There's an amazing statement. Just as God is willing to forgive people who are sorry that they lied or stole or sexually misbehaved, he will also forgive a serial killer who's sorry and puts his faith in Christ. For people who think they're such good people that they deserve to get to heaven on their own, the exclusivity of Christianity sounds like nonsense. They don't need a crucified, risen Christ.

But if you're the kind of person who knows you're a rebel against God, who knows how prone you are to wander from God, who realizes how much you ignore God in your everyday life, whose spiritual life has ups and downsin other words, someone like me who knows they do not deserve any blessing from Godthat there's even one way is good news indeed. So if you know that you don't deserve God's favor but you're willing to accept it as a gift, an exclusive way doesn't sound too bad.

The scandal of the gospel's exclusivity: It's not a scandal to those who have been broken, to those who are grateful that a holy God has offered one way of entering his kingdom. Those of you who are not followers of Jesus, there may be only one verse in the Bible that you've seen. It's in the book about Jesus written by a follower of Jesus named John. "For God loved the world so much that he gave not a bunch of ways, but "his only Son. So that anyone who believes in him shall not perish but instead will have eternal life.

So followers of Jesus believe today what another follower of Jesus named Peter said years ago: "Salvation comes no other way. No other name has been or will be given to us by which we can be saved. Only this one, Jesus the Christ. Thanks be to God.

Kenneth G. Elzinga is professor of economics at the University of Virginia, where for five years he held the Cavaliers' Distinguished Teaching Professorship.

Kenneth G. Elzinga

Preaching Today Tape # 179

www.PreachingTodaySermons.com

A resource of Christianity Today International

Related sermons

A Wonderful Night

God sent his son Jesus Christ as Savior even for unclean people like shepherds.

Heart Worm

What does God do with a self-righteous heart?
Sermon Outline:

Introduction

The exclusive claims of Christ in the Bible are scandalous in our society, which applauds diversity.

I. God places exclusive demands on our behavior.

II. God does not want Christians to be exclusive of others.

III. The gospel makes an exclusive salvation claim.