Jesus—The Solution to the Human Dilemma (Selected Scriptures)

• Well, those of you who are a part of Grace  Church, you know that I’ve been in a rut for   years and I just keep teaching the Bible  week after week after week after week,   verse by verse. But every Christmas I try to  do something different. It’s like variety time   for me.
• And so I thought, “What can I do this  Christmas to share with you some things on my   heart that might be a fresh look at some  things we probably ought to understand?” From time to time I’m invited  to speak on university campuses,   college campuses or to groups of people  who are detached from a church setting.   And usually you can’t just go diving in at the  point of chapter and verse because they need to   be kind of convinced that they need to even look  at the Bible because there might be something   important there. And so I thought, “Well,  maybe that’s what we ought to do this time.”
• And so I want to share with you what I think is  simply a very simple picture of the human dilemma,   and then I want to offer you the  solution that comes in Jesus Christ. You know, I’m fully convinced—I guess  I get more cynical every Christmas as I   get older. And I’m very young. I want you to  know that.
• But as I get older, I get cynical   about Christmas. But I’m fully convinced  this year that even if Jesus was invited,   He wouldn’t come to the birthday party  the world is currently throwing for Him. You see, it isn’t honest. Very hypocritical.  They don’t really care about Jesus. It’s very   tongue in cheek. It’s very patronizing.
• It lacks  two things that I think everything ought to have,   and that is honesty and integrity. And,  frankly, I don’t even like to attend it,   but I don’t know how to get out  of this world to avoid it. It   seems to be everywhere and it’s a  party I’d just as soon not be at. It reminds me when I was in high  school one time, a friend and I   went to a party.
• We didn’t know what  kind of a party it was but there was   a girl there that my friend liked. I didn’t  particularly care for girls for awhile after   that. Football was what I worshipped  but I grew out of that eventually. But anyway, there was a girl he wanted to  see or be with so we went to this party and,   of course, I was raised in  a sheltered pastor’s home   and got to this party and it was very dark and  there was music playing very slow.