GET REAL
DR. JIM DIXON
1 THESSALONIANS 5:1-11
JUNE 12, 1994
Rush Limbaugh is on television every weeknight at 11:00 p.m. on Channel 2. I never watch Rush Limbaugh’s program, and I must say I am not really a Rush Limbaugh fan. There is something about his deal that rubs me the wrong way. Yet I must confess that many times he makes accurate observations concerning events and situations. Wednesday night, shortly after 11:00 PM, Barb and I could not sleep, and so we decided to watch a little television. We were going to watch David Letterman on Channel 7. We turned the television on, and it was the Rush Limbaugh Show. I could not believe what I was seeing. It was a film of President Clinton walking along the Normandy Beach in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of D-Day. President Clinton was walking along the Normandy Beach, apparently in solitude, seemingly contemplative, almost meditating, as he walked.
He came to a place on the beach where in the distance behind him you could see an American battleship. President Clinton stopped. He knelt down in the sand and began to take some of the rocks that were there. He began to configure the rocks, placing them in the form of a cross, perhaps in remembrance of the many men who gave their lives on that beach so long ago. It was a touching moment.
According to the narration that accompanied the film, which was I assume from the White House, it was in happenstance that the film crew captured these pictures of Clinton walking along the beach. Then Rush Limbaugh took the film. He slowed it down into slow motion and stopped the action. He showed that President Clinton was not really alone. The shadows of other people were there. And there were no rocks on the beach, anywhere. It was just a sandy beach. There was this one little pile of rocks that had obviously been put there. The whole thing was contrived. The rocks had been placed on the Normandy Beach and the president had been instructed to walk to the rocks. When he was in front of the American battleship, he was instructed to kneel down and make the image of the cross with the rocks.
It does not matter what your political persuasion is. It does not matter whether you are a Democrat or whether you are a Republican. It seems to me that most of us just want to say to politicians, “Get real.” It also occurs to me that God, as He looks down on our world and looks at all of us, wants to say, “Get real.” As God looks at humanity the world over who claim to believe in Jesus Christ, God wants to say, “Get real.” This morning, that is God’s message to us. “Get real.”
I have two teachings. The first teaching is this: Get real about God’s Son. Get real about Jesus Christ. We live in a nation where most surveys show that the overwhelming majority of people in our country believe in Jesus Christ. Yet most people do not follow Jesus Christ. Therefore, God says, “Get real.”
Perhaps you have heard of the minister who graduated from theology school. He was fresh out of seminary, was at his first church, and was ready to preach his first sermon. He was really nervous. He decided he would preach on the second coming of Jesus Christ. For the sermon, he had memorized a verse out of Revelation 22. He planned to start the sermon with that verse. He began his message that Sunday morning saying, “Behold, I am coming soon.” Suddenly he had a mental blank, and he could not remember the words that followed. He started a second time. He said, “Behold, I am coming soon.” Again, his mind went blank. He could not think of the words that followed. He decided to try a third time. And so he said, “Behold, I am coming soon.” In his nervous tension, he tripped himself, fell off the stage, and fell on the front pew where he came to rest on the lap of an elderly woman. He was horribly embarrassed. He said, “Ma’am, I’m so sorry.” She said, “You don’t need to be. I should have moved out of the way. After all, you warned me three times.”
Jesus Christ is coming soon, and He has warned us more than three times. The verses in Revelation 22 are these: “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, to repay everyone for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Jesus Christ is coming soon. The Bible says, “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, everyone who pierced him; and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him” (Revelation 1:7). In Matthew 25, Jesus Christ tells us that He will come and will sit on his eternal throne. He will separate the sheep from the goats, and He will say to the sheep, “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” But he will say to the goats, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” This is serious business. God wants you to get real regarding Jesus Christ. Do you really believe in Him?
There is a book that is widely read today. It is a New York Times bestseller, one of the bestselling books in America today. It’s called Embraced by the Light by Betty Eadie. Many of you have read this book. It focuses on a near death experience that Betty Eadie allegedly had many years ago. She claims that in this near death experience her soul and spirit left her body, and she was aware of looking down on the bed. There was a moment when she felt enraptured heavenward. She was taken through a dark tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel she could see a light. The light grew brighter and brighter as she came nearer and nearer to it. She realized that the light was Jesus Christ. She claims that she met Christ there, that Christ showed her around heaven and all of its glory, taught her many wonderful things, and then sent her back to earth. This is what she claims to have seen and heard.
The book is touching at times. It is very moving, and there is some truth, for sure, in the book. She speaks of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, as Savior and Lord. She stresses the need of all people to love God and to love each other. But there are a lot of problems that I found in the book. The book just does not square with holy scripture. It has a mixture of strange doctrines from the Mormon doctrine of pre-existent spirits to the mind over matter beliefs of the Christian Science Church in Mary Baker Eddie. Ultimately, the book creates a kind of teddy bear God, a Jesus Christ who is all lamb and no lion. Jesus Christ is portrayed in this book as using all the religions of the world to embrace all the people of the world, ultimately, leading all people heavenward. In Betty Eadie’s interview with 2020, hosted by Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters, she said that she seriously questions the very existence of hell.
Eadie’s book is the ultimate feel-good book, but is not real. God says, “Get real. Get real with Jesus Christ.” Jesus Christ said, “The gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14). Jesus said, “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. Do not marvel at this. The day is coming when all who are in the tomb will hear my voice and come forth, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting death” (John 5:22-23a, 28).
That is reality. Get real. Get real with Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us how Nicodemus came to Jesus Christ. He said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.” Jesus responded by saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:2,3). That is a strange response, at least to me. Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher come from God; for no one could do the works that you do, unless God be with him.” You would think Jesus would respond by saying, “Thank you.” You would think Jesus might respond by saying, “That’s very nice. What can I do for you?” But Jesus responds by saying, “Get real. Truly, truly, really, really, I say to you, unless a man is born anew, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Get real.”
The rich young ruler came to Jesus Christ. He said, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18). He wound up telling Jesus that he had kept all of the commandments of God from the moment of his birth. Of course, Jesus knew that was not true. Jesus knew that this man was caught up with self and with all of his stuff. Jesus said to him, “Get real.” Jesus said, “Take all that you have and sell it. Give the money to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven. Come and follow me.”
“Get real.” That is Jesus’s message to each and every one of us this morning. It is God’s message. Get real with my Son. Get real with Jesus Christ. Do you really believe in Him or do you not? Jesus said, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do what I tell you to do?” (Luke 6:46). Jesus said, “In that day, many will say, Lord, Lord, and I will say, depart from me. I never knew you” (Matthew 7:22, 23). This morning God wants us to get real.
Secondly, God wants us to get real with His word. He wants us to get real with His Son, and He wants us to get real with His word. The Bible says, “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, through whom also he created the world” (Hebrews 1:1-2). We have the Bible. We have the word of God as delivered by the prophets, by the patriarchs, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by those apostles whom Christ chose. We have the word of God, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. Do you really believe this book? Most surveys show that most people in America claim to believe in the Bible and in the infallibility of holy scripture, but they do not submit to holy scripture. God says, “Get real.”
There are twenty rabbinical scholars at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem who have just completed a 5-year computer study of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. They claim that the Torah, the Bible, has hidden codes so complex that it has taken thousands of computer hours to unmask these codes. They claim that key names in the book of Genesis, such as the name of Adam, are used exactly seven times in the book of Genesis and this is a number of mystical significance. They say the name Noah is used exactly seven times in the book of Genesis. No coincidence. A number of mystical significance. They say the divine name, the name of Yahweh, is used seven times in the book of Genesis. The number of mystical significance. They say if you start with the first “T” in the book of Genesis and count every forty-ninth letter, seven times seven, every fortieth letter in the book of Genesis begins by spelling out the word Torah.
They say if you start with Exodus and you begin with the letter “Y” and take every seventh letter, the Tetragrammaton, the divine name of God (YHWH), is spelled out. They have done a computer study of all 125,000 words in the Torah. They say that of the 43 words in the Bible that describe the Garden of Eden they have found the names of 31 trees encoded in those 43 words, which they claim were apparently part of the Garden of Eden. They say that the Bible is actually a kind of time capsule that contains encoded truth that is just waiting for a generation with the technological sophistication to decode it.
I think God would say, “Get real.” You can do almost anything with numbers. You can do almost anything with statistics. Even if there is a certain amount of numerology in the Bible, even if God has encoded certain things, even if He has done that, you do not need a computer to understand the messages of the Bible. The messages of holy scripture have been clear to every generation, and they are clear today. The only question that faces us today is this: Do you believe the scriptures? Do you really believe that what the Bible says is true? If you do not, admit it; but get real.
We live in a time when there is this theology called neoorthodoxy. Neoorthodoxy, in its view of scripture declares that the Bible is not the Word of God. Rather neoorthodoxy declares that the Bible contains the Word of God. Under neoorthodoxy, you go through the pages of scripture and some of it is the Word of God and some of it is not the Word of God.
Who decides? Perhaps you decide. Perhaps you allow some liberal scholar to decide for you. Basically, you have authority over the Bible. The Bible does not have authority over you. As you go through the pages of scripture, if you like what it says, it is the Word of God. If you do not like what it says, it is not the word of God. But the Bible says of itself that it is all the word of God. Second Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All scripture is inspired by God, God-breathed, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” All scripture is God’s Word, and God wants us to understand this. That does not mean that all scripture is binding on you. That does not mean that all scripture is God’s word to you. Let me explain. I hope you will listen to this.
In the Bible we have the Levitical dietary codes. We have the Jewish sacrificial systems and all the laws that pertain to that. We have the ritualistic rights of purification in Judaism and the details and laws that pertain to that. It is all the word of God, but it is the word of God as given to a specific people at a specific time. How do we know that? We know that because in another part of the word of God, in the New Testament, the New Covenant, those prior statements are no longer binding on us. Do you understand the word of God has authority over the word of God? This is very important. What gives you the right to take something out of the word of God and say it is not binding on me? Only the word of God can give you that authority. When you read a statement from the Bible and you understand its message properly, you need to submit to it unless some other part of the Bible tells you clearly that it is no longer binding on you.
Take the subject of homosexuality and what the Bible says about homosexuality. There are a lot of people today who are saying the Bible says homosexuality is wrong and the Bible says do not eat pork. If you believe homosexuality is wrong, but you go ahead and eat pork, you are a hypocrite because you are believing one thing in the Bible and not believing something else. They are misunderstanding holy scripture. The admonition in the Bible that says not to eat pork is part of the Levitical dietary laws.
We are clearly told in the New Testament that those laws have been superseded in the new covenant of Christ. We are no longer subject to the Levitical dietary laws. They were the word of God for a particular time in a particular place. The Jewish people needed not to eat pork because they did not know how to treat it medically. It was dangerous to eat it. It was God’s word for those people at that time. But the statement that homosexuality is wrong is nowhere superseded in the New Testament. It is nowhere. It is not said to be non-binding. In fact, in the New Testament, it is reaffirmed that homosexuality is not right. So the only issue that confronts us is, do we believe the Word of God or do we not?
That is what God is saying to his people today. Do you believe my word or do you not? When you read the scriptures and use proper methods of interpretation, proper exegesis and hermeneutics, do you believe the message? Do you submit to it? Once you understand it, get real. This expression, get real, in a sense is actually found in the Bible. It is a rendering of the Greek word “nepsate.” The word “nepsate” is an exclamation used again and again in the New Testament. It is oftentimes translated “be sober,” but in the Bible it is used metaphorically. It means be serious, get real. It is an eschatological word. It is used in our passage of scripture for today. It refers to the end times in a sense. All generations of Christians need to get real; but if any generation of Christians needs to get real, it is that final generation. We may indeed be that generation.
God says, “Get real. Get real with my Son. Get real with My Word.” God wants us to get real with our money and use our money to support those things that proclaim His word. I am probably going to get in a lot of trouble here, but it will not be the first time. Should I preface what I am going to say with this remark? I really believe in higher education, both Christian and secular higher education. There are many fine colleges and universities in America. There are outstanding teachers and professors across this country in our colleges and universities, and Christians should seek to become teachers and professors in the secular colleges and universities. Now, having said that, I want to say that I really believe that the colleges and universities across this country, the secular institutions of higher education, are hostile towards Christianity and the Bible. While they claim neutrality, it is bogus.
Read James Davidson Hunter’s book Culture Wars. James Davidson Hunter is professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. Or read Allan Bloom’s book The Closing of the American Mind. Books like this reveal that although secular institutions of higher education in America pride themselves in their diversity and their plurality the truth is they are highly selective in their diversity and plurality. God is conspicuous by his absence from their curriculum. When God is mentioned in a positive way, it is usually a monistic or pantheistic Eastern religious concept of God. The Christian concept of God and the Judeo-Christian values from the Old and New Testament are constantly held up for mockery. The Bible itself is constantly ridiculed by secular institutions of higher learning, and that is only natural because our secular institutions of higher education are run by the intelligentsia. They really believe they are the source of light, the source of enlightenment, the source of truth, the hope of the world. But the Bible tells us God is the source of light. God is light. He is truth, and He is the hope of the world.
The Bible is not anti-logic. God created our minds. He wants us to use them. But pseudo-intellectualism is dangerous. The Bible says the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. It is no coincidence that our Lord Jesus Christ did not go to the Jewish institutions of higher learning when he picked people through whom he would build his church. He did not go to the Hillel school. He did not go to the Shammai school. He did not go to the great synagogue. He picked common, ordinary people. He did pick one highly educated man, the Apostle Paul, who had been educated in the so-called great synagogue at the foot of Gamaliel. Yet when God picked Paul, God had to reeducate Paul. He had to transform Paul’s mind so he would learn to think right because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God.
Our son Drew just took his pre-SATs. He scored very well, and we are receiving brochures from secular colleges across the country, colleges I did not even know existed. I am amazed as I go through these brochures from the secular institutions and universities and get to the section under endowments. They all have massive endowments. Some of them are only schools of 1,000 or 2,000 students, and they have endowments of $200 to $700 million. Some of the most outstanding universities in America are endowed to the tune of billions of dollars. Many of these institutions (and I believe this with all my heart) are degrading Christianity and the Bible. If you have nostalgic feelings about the secular university you went to and the experiences you had in the classroom, it is not likely that you are aware of what is going on in the classrooms today. Get real. I am amazed by the number of Christians who are funneling dollars to secular institutions of higher learning, their alma maters. Get real. You are subsidizing darkness.
There are Christian colleges that preach Christ and His word faithfully, and they are struggling for money across this country. There are Christian churches that are seeking to preach Christ, proclaim His word, and they are struggling for dollars. We have our groundbreaking today, a great moment in the life of our church. I am so proud of this church. I am so grateful to be on the staff of this church. I am so proud of our staff. We have men and women who love Jesus Christ and seek daily to live for Him, to honor Him. We have an elder board like that. We have fiscal responsibility. We are financially accountable. We proclaim the word of God, the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. We stand up for moral truth as revealed in scripture, but we also stress the compassion and love that Christ calls His people to demonstrate.
I am proud of this church. I cannot understand why we struggle financially. The dollars ought to be pouring in for the sake of the ministry. I tell you, I do not understand it. We break ground today. If you think this is the end, you are mistaken. This is only the beginning. A massive challenge is ahead of us. And if we do not get real, we are going to be in a whole lot of trouble. Get real with God’s Son. Do you really believe in Him? Get real with His Word. Do you really believe the holy scripture? Let us close with a word of prayer.