Apologetics 101: The uniqueness of Christianity

Romans chapter 5, and we're going to read verse 12. Wherefore, as by one man, now Paul is writing about the first man, Adam, one man, by him sin entered into the world, and death by sin, as a result of sin, and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned. The same concept is repeated in verse 19.

For by one man's disobedience, that's Adam, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one, that's Jesus Christ, shall many be made righteous. And when that verse talks about the obedience of Jesus Christ, it's not talking about the fact that he lived a sinless life, it's talking about one particular instance, it's talking about his death on the cross. So let's go back up to verse 6 and read about that.

Romans 5, verse 6. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Verse 8. But God commendeth his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

I think that'll do for our reading this evening, and we hope to be out of here by 9 o'clock. So what we've been trying to do this week, we've been focusing on exposing and undoing 400 years of very damaging so-called enlightenment thinking. And on Monday we looked at the subject of, does truth exist? And we came up with a resounding yes.

Truth comes from God. Truth is absolute, truth is knowable. And everything opposed to truth is false.

Tuesday night we looked at, does God exist? Not now does truth exist, but does God exist? And we got another resounding yes. By looking at the existence of the universe and the nature of the universe, all of these give clear voice and testimony to the existence of God. Wednesday night we looked at the subject of creation evolution.

What is responsible for us? And we found that Darwin's theory of evolution comes up short. It cannot do what it says on the tin. Whereas the design in nature lets us see that there must have been a God who made it the way it is and made us.

Then last night we looked at the subject of, is the Bible the word of God? And then we discovered that God has not only revealed himself in his creation, what we call general revelation, but he has revealed himself in a book, the Bible. And this book proves itself to be God's word. So you can see God's fingerprints in the universe and you know God made it.

When you read the Bible, you can see God's fingerprints in this book. And so you can discover who the author is from the contents. This, therefore, being the final authority.

Now, those four nights have laid a foundation for what we're going to do tonight. There's a reason why this is last. Because we've been building towards this night.

If I start on night one and preach to you salvation through Jesus Christ, and you don't believe God exists, or you think we evolved from a warm pond millions of years ago, or you don't believe the Bible is the word of God, it'll just go straight over your head and won't mean anything to you. So we sought to try and build a foundation. And now we come to the top stone.

The question tonight is the uniqueness of Christianity. Is Christianity unique? Now, when I talk about Christianity, you might be sitting there saying, which version of Christianity? You know, some people object as well. There's all these different churches.

Now, I'm not worried about different churches tonight. I'm talking about the core gospel concept in the Bible. You might be sitting there saying, well, Christianity has caused a lot of wars in the world and all those kind of things.

There's an awful lot of bad stuff been done in the name of Christianity. We know that. We're not talking about that.

We're talking about the core message in this book. I often say to people, people say to me, when we're out in the streets, they say, you know, Christianity has done this and Christianity. So forget about what Christianity has done.

Have you got any problems with the Lord Jesus Christ? Silence. A lot of people do some things in his name which should never be done in his name. So we're talking about the core message of Christianity.

Now, let me explain how I'm going to approach this tonight. I'm going to introduce a concept called a worldview. Everybody in this hall tonight has a worldview.

A worldview is perhaps best explained by by the idea of a pair of glasses. The fancy name for it is a meta narrative. In other words, it's the big picture.

And everybody in the world really has a worldview, whether they've even thought about it or not. When you wake up in the morning and go out into the world, you go there with a set of beliefs in your head. You have a way in which you view the world.

You have a way in which you view yourself, a way in which you view reality. And it all depends what glasses you're wearing, not literal glasses. It depends what philosophical glasses you're wearing, what scientific glasses, what theological glasses.

I have a completely different worldview to most people in England because I wear a completely different pair of glasses. This is my pair of glasses here. I look at the world through this book.

I see the world through biblical eyes. And I have a very different view to someone who sees the world through Darwin's origin of species. You see the point I'm making? We went on a Sunday school outing some years ago in a blazing hot summer's day.

And when we got back to the gospel hall, we all got off the bus and somebody had left a baseball cap in the bus. And I thought, oh, we need to find out who this is. So I picked it up and sort of stood out in the car park.

And there's just, you know, maybe 70 or 80 people all milling about. And I held it up and said, right, who, whose is this orange baseball cap? And I wasn't getting much response. I said, who, come on, whose is this? Somebody's left this orange baseball cap on the bus.

And there's quite a few people kind of looking at me as if, are you feeling all right? And eventually somebody had the boldness to say, Michael, it's not orange, it's pink. And I looked at it, I said, it's not pink, it's orange. Do you know what the problem was? I had sunglasses on.

And when I took them off, it was pink. But when I had the sunglasses on, it looked orange. Now, that's a little bit like your worldview, the way you view the world.

You see it one way, I see it another. But what is the real way? Now, the issue of worldview is very, very important. How you see the world is very, very important.

We say why? Because ideas have consequences. Tell me what a man or a woman believes, and I will tell you how they will live. It all depends what you believe.

And not only does it affect how you live. According to this book, what you believe affects where you spend eternity. What could be more important than that? So the issue of worldview, the issue of the way you see the world is critically important.

So the bottom line is this. It's absolutely essential that your worldview is true. You see what I'm saying? You need the right pair of glasses.

You need to be sure that you are correct. You say, well, how can anybody be correct? You should have been here on Monday. This is why we've done it this way.

You need to be sure your worldview is correct. Do you remember on Monday we looked at the law of non-contradiction? This is a basic law of truth and logic that God has built into the universe. It flows from his very nature.

The law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction says that A cannot be the same as non-A at the same time and in the same sense. If this man here asked me, are you married? And I say, yes.

And then this lady two seconds later asked me, are you married? And I say, no, I have broken the law of non-contradiction. They cannot both be true. You remember the story I told of Rabbit when Winnie the Pooh went to his house.

And Winnie the Pooh knocked on the door and Rabbit said, no one's home. That's breaking the law of contradiction because you cannot say you're not home and yet be at home at the same time and in the same sense. What this means is that if the Christian worldview is true, the atheistic worldview must be false.

If the Christian worldview is true, Islam must be false. If the Christian worldview is true, the Freudian worldview is false. We could go on with a very long list, I can assure you.

You say, well, why is that the case? That is the case because these worldviews are all very different. Some people think, oh, all religions are basically the same. They're not.

They may be superficially the same, but they are fundamentally different. For example, in the Koran, it says that Jesus Christ is not the son of God and that he did not die on the cross. If you want the references, just Google them.

If one holy book, which is apparently supposed to have come down word for word verbatim from the angel Gabriel, says Jesus is not the son of God and he did not die on the cross. And here's another book which claims to be by inspiration of God that says Jesus did die on the cross and he is the son of God. They cannot both be true.

Hence, the whole concept of multi-faith is really a typical British fudge because they cannot both be faiths. One of them has to be wrong. Which is it? Now, this is pretty critical because that's a billion people over there or maybe more.

And that's how many billion over there. These are big, big issues if they are what they claim to be. Now, let me just move on a little bit.

A worldview is a kind of a story in a sense. We tell ourselves these stories. And you grow up believing the story that usually your mom and dad tell you until you get to a certain age.

And then you have to make up your mind. Do I really believe this story or don't I? One of the features of our day is that children are being brought up in Christian families and going to Christian churches. This is happening all over the West.

And as soon as they hit university, they stop going to church. They stop going to meetings. They stop reading their Bible.

They stop praying. They give up all the commitment that they had to Jesus. And they're gone.

Disappeared. It's something like a 75% fall away rate. Why is that happening? Partly it's happening because this is not taught.

People do not understand these worldviews. They do not understand why they believe what they believe. They do not understand and have not been taught.

That's why I'm delighted to be here. That's why I'm delighted that you're interested in this topic. So a story has a beginning and a middle and an end.

A past, a present, and a future. And each story part in your worldview throws up what's nowadays called an existential question, a story about my existence. So every worldview is a three-part story.

It has an origin story to it. It has a present story to it. And it has a future story to it.

So the question about the origin is the where question. Where do I come from? So what do you believe? Let's say you're a Marxist, or a communist, or a capitalist, or you're religious, or you're an atheist, or you're New Age. There's so many worldviews now, it's hard to keep track of them.

But whatever your worldview is, you have an origin story. Where did I come from? You also have a, not just a where question, you have a what question. What went wrong? Why is there suffering in the world? What's the problem? Why can't we fix it? And then you also have not only a where question, where did we come from, and a what's wrong question, you also have a how question.

How do we fix it? How do we get to an end goal? What should we be aiming for? Now that's to be expected that it would go in that. Have you read a novel lately? Unless you like dystopian literature, your novel will begin by setting the scene, who the characters are, where they live, and what they're doing, then there'll be a crisis. And that's when you can't put the novel down, because you want to see what happens next.

And at the end, everybody lives happily ever after. That's how films work, that's how books work, that's how plays work. I wonder why that is.

Well, that's the way we think. It's sort of pre-programmed into us that there's a beginning, and there's a middle, and there's an end. So what you need to do with your worldview is test the beginning, and test the middle, and test the end.

Test it against the where question. Test it against the what question. Test it against the how question.

Now what I'm going to do in a second is I'm going to put up a chart on the screen. Now it may be too small print, but don't panic, we'll work through it. And down the left-hand side, I'm going to put some views.

Atheism, Marxism, Islam, and Buddhism. I've got four. And we're going to have biblical Christianity at the bottom.

And then we're going to have three columns. Past, present, and future. I'm just going to walk you through these worldviews.

So you can see. You can see for yourself. You can test what you believe.

You can test what the Bible says against these worldview columns. So let's do the first one. Atheism.

We've been talking about atheism quite a lot this week. And underneath the umbrella of atheism, we've got all sorts of things. Darwinism, and relativism, and secularism, and all the kind of isms that they're out.

Hedonism and postmodernism. They're all really under this big umbrella of atheism. What's their story when it comes to the where question? Does their worldview add up? Have they got the right pair of glasses on? You know what they say? Everything came from nothing by accident.

Life came from non-life. Mind came from mindless processes. Do you believe that? Well, you have to not only ask the where question.

You have to answer the what question. What's wrong with the world? Talk to an atheist who understands atheism. You say to him, what's wrong with the world? He says, that is a stupid question.

There isn't anything wrong with the world. We are just DNA. We crawled out of a pond of slime millions of years ago, and here we are.

We happen to have won the race to survive. And we have the biggest brain. Other than that, there is no reason for anything.

As Mr. Dawkins says, I think the quote is there. There is no good. There is no evil.

There is nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. But you say, I'm an atheist, and I don't believe that. That's because you're not a consistent atheist.

Atheism is so bleak. Atheism is so pitiful and pitiless that most people who say they're atheists can't carry it through to its logical conclusion. So they get rid of God and say, I'm an atheist, but they hang on to goodness, which comes from God, and truth, which comes from God, and reason, which comes from God, and meaning, which comes from God.

But they have nothing to get that meaning and that life and that goodness from, except DNA. DNA doesn't have any meaning. DNA just is.

The neurons firing in your brain, that's all they think it is. They don't even think you have free will. You think you came here tonight because you wanted to come here tonight.

Do you know the reason you came here tonight? Because the neurons in your brain fired at random and you're here. That's atheism. There is nothing wrong with the world.

It's just the way it is. What's the future story of the atheism worldview? There is no future. Heat death.

The sun is going to burn up. And every sun in every galaxy in the universe will burn up, and it will all be as if it never was. You might as well be thought of on the same level as a blade of grass.

What does it matter? You are nothing. Nothing you've ever said or done or thought, no one you've ever loved, no tear you've ever shed, has the remotest scintilla of meaning. You are nothing.

That's atheism. That is atheism. Do you believe that? That's the story.

That's the worldview of Richard Dawkins and a whole lot of others beside. Well, there's other worldviews. There's the Marxism worldview.

If Jeremy Corbyn was here tonight, he could tell you all about that and John McDonnell and a few others. What's their story of origin? Well, their story of origin is very similar. They would all be along those lines.

Darwinian evolution, it all came here. It's just material stuff. There's no God.

What's wrong with the world? Is it sin? Is it evil in the human heart? Oh, no, no, nothing like that. It's inequality. There's a class struggle.

As there is a class struggle in nature, survival for the fittest, so since we are animals, there's a survival struggle between the rich and the poor. And some people have private property, the rascals. And that's not proper.

And what should happen is the state should come along and what's the solution? What's the end? What do they want to get into Downing Street to do? This is not a political lecture, by the way. This is just telling you what Marxism is. They want a revolution.

A revolution where the state owns everything and spreads it all out, redistributes it, and we have this utopian classless society. That's the story of... That's the worldview of Marxism. The only problem is it doesn't work.

It's been tried. They keep saying, well, it's never really been tried. It's been tried, all right.

It's been tried in country after country after country after country. It doesn't work. Now, I'm not saying capitalism is... it comes down from heaven with bells and whistles.

I'm not saying that at all. We'll explain that later. But Marxism's story is a worldview all of its own.

I submit to you, it has failed. Islam. Islam says God created the world.

So far, so good. But then when he created man and woman, he didn't make them in his image. The link between God and his creation is different to what it says in the Bible.

What's wrong with the world, according to Islam? What's wrong with me? Well, if there's anything wrong with me, it's that I've done a few bad things. I've said a few bad words. I've been angry.

I've been unforgiving. I've been proud. But as long as I confess that to God, that's fine.

And if on the day of judgment, I've done more good things than bad things, I'll be fine. Try to keep the five pillars. Make sure you're a good Muslim.

Go to Mecca once in your life, and you'll probably be all right in the end. Jesus isn't the son of God. He didn't die on the cross.

That's Islam. Now, what about Buddhism? Buddhism and a sort of New Age, Hinduistic kind of Eastern philosophy, it's very mushy and difficult to get your hands on. But if you were to sort of tease it out of someone, they would say that we emerged many moons ago, many eons ago out of the Great One, this spiritual essence.

And the problem is we're trapped in this cycle of rebirths. We keep coming back and back and back. And what we need to do is build up enough karma and through meditation and other things, then we get out of this cycle of rebirths and we reunite with the divine essence and we become one with the universe again.

Nirvana. Interesting. These are the worldviews, the worldviews that are believed by billions and billions of your fellow travelers to eternity.

Now, the Bible has a worldview. This book which we showed last night is the Word of God. This book that has been inspired by God, this book presents a worldview.

That is to say, it's not just an isolated book with a few chapters about King David and a few chapters about Goliath and a few bits and bobs about Paul going around Asia Minor and the odd prophecy here and there. No, no, no. This is a story, a coherent whole story with a beginning, with a middle and with an end.

Oh yes, it meanders from here to there and there are different nations and there are different peoples and there are different eras and there are high points and low points, but the story flows on inexorably according to a preordained plan because God had a plan and made promises of that plan before even the world began. Now, we've already looked at the beginning box. It's very important we begin at the beginning.

If people would go back to the beginning, it would solve a lot of the arguments that atheists and others come up with. There was a man in the New Testament called Paul. He wrote the verses we've just read.

One day he went to Athens. I tell you, I wouldn't want to preach in Athens in those days full of these characters like Socrates and Plato, not that they were alive at that time, but they're types, very clever philosophical types and Paul gets up to them and he's got to preach the gospel. Where does he start? You can read it for yourself in Acts 17.

These are the first words that come out of his mouth. God who made the world. Why does he go back that far? Why not just go back to Bethlehem where Jesus was born? Well, you see, if you go right back to the beginning, you're beginning to pick up on the story because it is one whole story and it begins with God creating a perfect world.

One of the biggest objections I constantly come across in gospel work is if God is a loving God, why has he made the world such a mess? Why did God create the world where it's full of disaster and full of disease? And I have to say to people, he didn't. He didn't. Now on an evolutionary history, you've got nature red in tooth and claw.

You've got millions of years ago, dinosaurs ripping into each other. The Bible says that at the beginning, God created a perfect world, a perfect environment, a perfect climate. Perfect people.

You say, oh, come on. Do you really believe that? It's in this book. This is the word of God.

We showed that last night. In the original creation, there was no death, no disease, no disorder, no disaster. It was a perfect world.

And when God finished, he had a look at it. And he says, behold, it's very good. That's not a poem.

That is the comment of God on his creation. I know we can't imagine that, but that's what the Bible says. God made a perfect.

Well, then what he did was this. He created out of the dust a man called Adam. And for him, he created a wife, and he put them on that world to populate that world and to be in fellowship with him.

That's the Bible worldview of the beginning. That's the story that begins with where. Where did we come from? That's where we came from.

Now we need to fill in the next box. What goes in the next box? What went wrong? Look around you. There are about 40 wars being fought in the world.

There are 102 people dying every minute. A woman dies of abuse by a relative every day in Great Britain. Disease on every hand, disaster on every hand.

Pick up the newspaper. It's depressing. We're all slowly dying.

We're all getting sick. What went wrong? What's the Bible explanation for what went wrong? Well, we read two words in Romans chapter 5 verse 12. Sin entered.

That's the Bible explanation on the storyline of history for why we are where we are. Sin entered. Very simple but dramatic statement.

By one man sin entered. You know, there's been some dramatic entrances in this world's history. It was a dramatic day in September the 1st 1939 when Germany entered Poland.

It was a dramatic day on 9-11 when two airplanes entered the Twin Towers. But the worst catastrophe in all of history was when sin entered this planet. You say, how did it happen? You remember I said that God made Adam and Eve to have fellowship with him.

He's the creator. They are the creatures. The relationship was God is a necessary being.

They are contingent beings. God is because he is. They are because they're made.

Which means they're responsible to God. They are dependent upon God. They're not autonomous beings who are there to do as they please.

They're answerable to their maker. That's how God set it up. What was their response? To the love and the care and the providence that he'd showered upon them? Well, God put them to the test.

Gave them one command, not to eat of a certain tree. And if God is a God of truth, then the arch enemy of God, the devil, is a, well, the Bible calls him the father of lies. And he came into that situation and he said to them what atheism says to you effectively.

The first three words out of the devil's mouth in the Bible were this. Has God said? Has God said? Is there really a God in heaven who makes rules? Is there really a creator? Was there really a garden of Eden? Was there really an Adam and Eve? Has God said? Can you trust this book? Is it the words of God? Has God said? And, well, one thing led to another. And Adam and Eve decided, well, let me put it to you this way.

Maybe you think of Adam and Eve taking the fruit from the tree as a fable. Or even if you think of it as something true, you kind of think, ah, it was a bit severe for just taking an apple off a tree. I want to explain to you what's behind the taking of the, it wasn't even called an apple, but taking the fruit off a tree.

The big deal is not how much the fruit was worth or anything like that. The big deal was the massive shift of allegiances that took place at that moment. Because what Satan said to Adam and Eve effectively was this.

Look at you, look at you poor benighted human beings in this garden. God up in heaven, he's trying to spoil your fun. He's not allowing you to do this and he's not allowing you to do that.

He's keeping back knowledge from you. He's keeping back status from you. You don't need to listen to him.

You don't need to wait on him for what to do every day. Why don't you just plot your own course? Why don't you just exert your own will? Why don't you take things into your own hands? Instead of being dependent creatures who have to wait for God, just be autonomous. Follow your heart.

Create your own reality. Set your own rules. See that's what's really going on.

And when Adam reached out and Eve reached out and took that fruit, what they were basically saying was forget God, we're going to do our own thing. And in doing so, they turned aside from God as the object of supreme delight. And they rebelled against God as the supreme authority in their life.

And what happened was this. Something which theologians call the fall. F-A double L. The fall.

They fell from grace. They fell from innocence. And the results were absolutely catastrophic.

There were global results. There were personal results. There were eternal results.

Now the global results were things like this. Thorns and thistles. Disease.

Tsunamis. Pestilences. All the sort of natural disasters.

They didn't exist before the fall. The Bible talks about the whole creation being under a curse because of sin. But not only global effects but personal effects.

Adam and Eve died spiritually. They were cut off in their relationship from God. Verse 19 says they were constituted sinners.

Now one of the reasons I call this the uniqueness of Christianity is because what I'm telling you now, no other religion believes it. Do you understand what I'm saying? Your doctor doesn't believe it. Your psychologist doesn't believe it.

Most people even who go to church don't believe it. This is the doctrine of original sin. Islam doesn't believe it.

Hinduism doesn't believe it. Freud doesn't believe it. Darwin doesn't believe it.

The doctrine of original sin is saying that when Adam sinned in the garden he was the head and source of the whole human race. He represented what I would have done had I been there. And because he sinned his disobedience meant he passed that on to all of us.

And we have within us from birth a lawless principle exactly as Adam did in the moment that he sinned. We are fallen creatures. Do you believe that? That's the Bible worldview.

That's what the Bible teaches. Sin wrought a constitutional change of unholiness in the human heart. Every man and woman and boy and girl on planet Earth has an innate corrupting principle in their flesh which transmits itself to the next generation.

So your problem and my problem is not I've done a few bad things. My problem is I'm a sinner by nature and alienated from God. Now let me illustrate it.

I don't know whether your wife or your mother or your sister does any baking but perhaps I wouldn't be any good at the baking but I like to nothing better than some fresh bread or a fresh cake of some kind. So you have this tin. You pour in the constituents and up it rises and so on.

Maybe one day you drop that tin and there's a big dent in the side and you push it around a bit and you think I don't want to have to buy another one. I'll just keep using it. But there's a small dent there.

What's going to happen is this. Ever after because that cake tin fell every cake that comes out of that tin is going to have that mark of the fall in it. Because that's the shape of the tin.

It'll be the shape of all the cakes and all the loaves that come out of it. It fell. It was dented and everything that comes from it will bear the marks of it.

Now that's just a very faint illustration of what happened at the beginning. Adam and Eve sin and the Bible says in verse 19 by one man's disobedience many, that's all of us, were constituted sinners. Now, here's my question to you.

Do you think that's true? Do you think you could prove that? Is there anything that we could actually look at and say you know, that makes sense. Can we take away the question mark in that middle box and say, yeah, that's actually true. Well, let me give you some ideas.

Have you ever noticed that human beings on the one hand can do the most amazing things, the most altruistic amazing acts of devotion and sacrifice, running into a burning building, diving into save someone they've never met, they drown, the person gets saved, giving away a kidney, the most amazing things are done by human beings. Benevolent, philanthropic things and yet on the other hand, human beings are capable of the most horrendous, shocking, gut-wrenching crimes against humanity. I wouldn't even mention some of them tonight.

You're all adults, you know what I'm talking about. How is that possible? What explanation fits that? That human beings seem to be capable of doing wonderful things and yet they're also capable of doing desperate things. That fits exactly what the Bible says.

The Bible says we were made in the image of God, but the Bible says that image has been tarnished and marred and we've fallen into sin. It fits perfectly. Altruism does not fit with the evolution story.

Evolution story is survival of the fittest. I do what suits me, that gives me the biggest advantage and lets me have the most offspring. Altruism, which is I lay down my life for others at a cost to myself, doesn't fit with the evolution story.

It fits with the Bible story. Here's another evidence for original sin. Have you got kids? Have you got kids? You don't believe in original sin, you have kids.

Once that child gets about three, four weeks old, it has already worked out that the best way to get what it wants done is to scream the entire house down and it knows it can do it. It yells and it screams, it fakes that it's upset when it's not, it cries when it's got nothing to cry about, it whimpers, it kicks, it screams, it throws its arms about. Where did it learn to do that from? Is there a school somewhere where babies go to learn how to be bad? No, you see, it's inbuilt, it's in there.

Selfishness is in the very heart of the youngest child. That fits the Bible worldview. I'll tell you something else.

Man is not improving, women are not improving. Oh, but you say, what about science and what about medicine and what about the internet? Yes, all that technology is wonderful, but the heart of men and women hasn't changed. Not a bit.

Go back all those thousands of years, they were fighting each other and beating each other up and getting divorced and battering things and going to jail. They're doing exactly the same thing now. You say, what's that got to do with your point? My point is that we're all born sinners and every generation is the same, same problems.

There's never been a generation that didn't need prisons. There's never been a generation that didn't need law courts. It's always the same.

There's not a single exception and I'll tell you something else. Ten out of ten people die. You see the Bible said here, death came by sin.

The evolutionary theory says, oh, death's just part of life. The Bible says, no, death is an intruder. If you've ever been at a deathbed, you know that's true.

The human frame hangs on and hangs on and hangs on as if this isn't right. Death is an intruder. Why should DNA die? Why shouldn't it just keep on copying itself? Why is there built into us this principle of death? It fits the Bible story, my friends.

I believe the Bible story is true because the Bible says so, but I see evidence all around. Now, here's the conundrum. Here's the paradox.

Maybe you can tell me at the end what you think. Why is it that this issue of original sin is perhaps the most blindingly obvious fact in the world and yet at the same time it's the one that is most resisted? I've just given you the evidence. Why that there is in all of us this natural bent towards evil.

There's this thing in us. We try not to do it but we keep going back to it. There's this corruption within our hearts.

We have to fight against it all the time. Why is it then that when we preach the gospel or when we talk to people or when they read the Bible and they read things like this, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God? They say, well, I'm not a sinner. Well, I'm not as bad as him.

Well, I'm very religious and I go to church and I've been baptized and at least I haven't killed anybody. What's going on? Why is it that you've got this very obvious thing called sin like the elephant in the living room and yet there's this horrendously strong pushback and they won't accept it. I'm not a sinner.

I don't need to be saved. I don't need to be... Well, you see, that's all part of the problem. You remember Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

We're not going to listen to God. We're going to take the fruit. That's the very nature of what sin is.

Sin is lawlessness. Sin is like, I am not going to be taught. What was it Christopher Hitchens called God? The celestial North Korea.

I don't want someone bussing me around and telling me I can't do this and thou shalt not. Does God not say anything positive? Thou shalt not. Thou shalt not.

Now see if I care. See, that's the human heart and the human heart's not only very simple, it's very self-righteous. Always trying to pretend all is well.

So we've got the beginning story. We know what the Bible diagnosis is of what went wrong. Just before you move on, both of those things are unique.

The creation story in the Bible has no parallel anywhere. It is unique. The Bible diagnosis of the human problem is unique.

Isn't it a tragedy? I can't speak for every single one of them, but most of the 600 MPs in Westminster are trying to fix a problem that they don't understand. They're trying to solve the 72 million people's problems in Britain and we're all sinners and we've all got corrupt hearts, but the boys in Westminster think all we need is better housing, better education, better social care, better this, better that, and we'll all be wonderful. But they won't touch the heart.

It's not in their remit to do it. So what's the answer? What are we going to put in the final box? We know what's in the first box. That's the beginning of the story.

Where we came from. God created us in His image. We know what's in the middle box.

What went wrong? We messed up. It's our fault. We're sinners by nature and by practice.

We've got a kind of threefold problem. What we are by nature, sinners, what we've done, all the stuff that has come from that and what we deserve because sin doesn't just float around in the air and sort of disappear. Sin has to be accounted for.

Sin has to be paid for. Sin has to be punished. I often use the illustration when I talk to people in the street where they're basically saying, as long as I confess, I'm alright.

Muslims will tell me that. Nominal Christians will tell me that. A lot of people I meet, they get down on their knees every night before they go to bed and they say, Dear Lord, I'm sorry for what I did wrong today.

Please help me to be a better person tomorrow. And what they think is this. That means it's gone.

And I often use the illustration. Imagine if I broke the window of that shop over there and I go to court and the judge says to me, You broke that window and I say, I'm sorry. Does that mean I don't have to pay for the window? Does that mean the man who owns the shop will say, Oh, at least he's sorry? In addition to being sorry, the window has to be paid for.

So it is with sin. It's not just I say sorry, so I'm alright. There has to be a proper remedy for sin.

There has to be a payment for sin. You say, Is there an answer? Well, what are we going to put in that final box? If I was a psychologist, I would put self in that box. I would say, Well, the answer is you need to love yourself and you need to have self-esteem and your problem is you're just too hard on yourself and if you just had more positive thinking and an atheist would put science in that box.

What we need is to think more deeply about how we can solve all the problems of the world with science. We've been trying that for a long time. The Marxist would put the state in that box.

The government will solve all your problems. We just need to have an election. Bring in the next government and it'll be fine.

They seem never to tire of that and it never gets any better. Capitalists, they would put stocks and shares in that box. Money.

Money is the solution to everything. If we could just all win the lottery, everything would be happily ever after. If only that was true.

The pop culture would put sexual liberation in that. No rules. Invent various devices and let everybody just enjoy themselves.

Those that try it come up very empty very quickly. What are we going to put in that box? What about putting religion in that box? We have this wonderful beginning story. God creates the world.

We're perfect and everything's lovely and we mess up. We rebel. We sin.

We become sinners. The whole human race is corrupt and look at it. Graveyards everywhere.

Wars everywhere. Disease everywhere. Disaster everywhere.

What we need is religion. Religion. Let's put religion in that box.

How do we solve the problem? Religion. If everybody would just pray more and give more and go through some sort of ceremony and ritual and try your best. Well, I sincerely hope that you do try your best to be a good neighbour and I sincerely hope that you do seek not to be a nuisance and to keep a check on yourself.

I sincerely hope we all try to do that. That's what a civilised society is all about. But that's actually not going to solve the real problem.

Let me use an illustration. What time is it? I've got five minutes. Let me use an illustration.

Imagine there's a tree here, an apple tree. Beautiful time of year and there's all a full tree of apples. Lovely reds and greens.

There it all is. Let's just say I come to pick all those apples one day and take them all off and there's not a single apple left on that tree and you look up at it and say, well, well done. You've got the whole crop in.

And I say to you, is that still an apple tree? And you say to me, of course it is. Just because you've taken the apples off doesn't mean it's not an apple tree anymore. Do you see the point? There are some people that when they hear about sin and they hear about death and they hear about hell and they hear about judgment, they think, I need to take the apples off the tree.

So imagine you're the tree and the apples is all the bad stuff that you do. I need to work on my temper so I don't lose my temper as much. And I need to cut down on the smoking and cut down on the drinking and the gambling and there's other things I wouldn't want to mention.

I need to do a lot less of that. And I need to go to church more. It's all about apple removing.

But you can take off all the fruits of sin, but it won't touch the root of sin. I didn't become a sinner the first time I sinned. The first time I sinned it proves that I was a sinner.

I need something in that box that not only deals with what I have done but it deals with what I am. Can religion deal with what I am? Can religion change me? No, what religion can do is put a new suit on the old person. I think to myself, well I've made a right old mess and I need to patch up and I'll go to church and I'll get some religious clothes on, not literally, but I'll get some ceremonies and some good feelings and I'll sing some hymns and I'll confess and I'll do all that and I've got a lovely new suit but you see underneath it's the same old sixpence.

Do you know what the gospel does? Do you know what's going to go in that last box? God is able to put a new person in the old suit. It's called the new birth in the Bible. What it says in the Bible is this, that when a person is saved, they receive a new heart and a new spirit and God gives them that.

You say, how can he do that? Well that brings me to the core of the issue. Remember I told you about a man coming all those thousands of years ago and messing up and failing and plunging the human race into sin. Our verse here says there's another man came one time.

He's actually called the last Adam. His name is Jesus Christ but the Bible calls him the last Adam. Why does it call him the last Adam? The first Adam came and messed the human race up and through his one sin plunged the whole human race into disaster.

Says the Bible another man came called Jesus Christ. The son of God from heaven, sinless and pure unlike you and me. Lived a life to prove it.

Was rejected. Was despised. Was crucified.

And you look at the cross and you think an accident of history. A Roman crucifixion. One of many thousands.

No. The day Jesus died on the cross outside of Jerusalem was not an accident and was not any old Roman crucifixion. It was a deliberate self-sacrifice by the son of God to fill that box.

So that the story has a happy ending. So that if I'm going to be in heaven it's not because God says well I know you've done some bad things and I know you're a rotten old sinner but never mind. Come along into heaven.

No. That would make God the most corrupt judge in the universe. God says this.

When Jesus is on the cross I will lay the iniquity of sinners on his head. The Bible says it like this. All of us like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned each one of us to our own way and to do our own thing and no one's going to tell us what to do. And yet here's the wonderful grace that we were singing about. The Lord in heaven when Jesus was on the cross 2,000 years ago laid on him sin of us all.

And so it wasn't just the nails in his hands or the crown on his head or the lash on his back. I discover this when I read my Bible that when I was yet without strength right at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. God commends this incredible love towards us.

He fills that box with what? While I was yet a sinner Christ died for me. You say well okay I kind of think I think I've got that. So does that mean I'm going to heaven? No.

That's a fact of history. A wonderful the greatest fact of history that he died and then three days later he rose again. He's a living savior.

He's alive in heaven. But you say how does the story end for me? If I'm a sinner I'm in a mess right now. How do I get to heaven at the end? So I sort of believe in Jesus and keep going to church and try my best and say my prayers.

No no no no my dear friend. You're not qualified to do anything because you're the sinner. You've disqualified yourself by the fact that you're a son of Adam.

If you could get to heaven by something that you do he never would have come. What's the cross all about? Why did he have to die on the cross? If you could get there by your good works. Oh I don't believe that.

I need Jesus and I need faith and I need grace and I need his blood and I need him to die for me. But don't I have to do anything? Isn't it what he does and I really really believe it and I keep trying and between him and me we get there in the end. You know what the bible says? When Jesus died on the cross John chapter 19 verse 30 he said these words It is finished.

Not I'm finished. Not the days finished. It's finished.

What's finished? The sacrifice for sin. The payment for sin. The propitiation.

This is a very very fancy word that means this. The justice of God and the demands of a holy righteous God against sin were met in the death of Jesus Christ the sinless saviour. Which really means this.

There's only actually two worldviews. There's a big box of worldviews that says I get my sins forgiven by something that I do. It might be five pillars.

It might be an eight step path. It might be some sacraments. It might be a pilgrimage.

It might be baptism. It might be going to church. It might be confession.

Every religion's got something. There it is. That's the worldview.

Attainment. Attainment. Here's the other worldview.

Atonement. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross. Here's the worldview.

I need a new start. And I'll keep trying with a new start. Here's the other worldview.

You need a new heart, my friend. You need a new heart. Here's the big worldview of all the religions in the world.

I need to turn over a new leaf and another new leaf and another new leaf. God says, no, no. Because my son died and rose again, what you need is a new life.

You need to be born again. Not through something you do, but by resting simply on what he did for you. And so the last verse we read says this.

Being justified by his blood. We're saved. Have you got that? Let's fill in those final boxes.

The fall. By Adam's disobedience we all became sinners. How can I end right? Justification.

Cleared from all of my sin. Set free from my guilt. How? By faith alone.

In what? In the church? No. In the person and work of God's son from heaven. You talk about unique.

The uniqueness of Christianity. I haven't come all the way from England to tell you some old story that's been round and round the houses. Some concocted thing by human beings to climb the ladder of success.

This is heaven's unique message. There's nothing like it on planet Earth. That we fell.

That we are guilty. That God sent his son to be the saviour of the world. I challenge you as I finish and pray that you will turn from your sin and all your efforts to save yourself and everything you've ever trusted in up to now.

Abandon it once and forever and trust alone in Christ and you will be saved.