There Are Many Ways To God Series

Urban Legends #1

[Video, Eerie Sounds] There is an urban legend that this house is haunted because a little girl supposedly was murdered. It is not that I am afraid to go back there or anything, but I just kind of like standing here. Now, for the record, I don’t believe in ghosts or anything like that, but last week as we were shooting a video, my friend, Mark, went back to edit it, and he noticed some weird things. We tried to keep all this under wrap, but somebody uploaded it on U-Tube, and it has just gone crazy, so we will just go ahead and address it and talk about it here. Let’s go ahead and look at the video, and you will notice, behind me, there is a strange image that moves from the right to the left. Watch. Here it is. It is just … see it. Okay, uhlllll, let’s look at it in slow motion. Okay? There it goes. Freaky. Now, if that’s not weird enough, later on in the video, there is an image that actually moves from your left to your right on the screen. If you watch it carefully, you’ll see it. Okay? Yeah, one more time, slow motion. Okay? Weird, isn’t it? Now, I don’t believe in ghosts or anything, but we do have a guy who’s actually looking at the video frame by frame, just to tell us exactly what is going on. I’ll tell you more about that next week. For now, I’ll stay outside of the house and we will deal with week number one of “Urban Legends”.

Well, welcome today to all of you at all of our campuses as we are in a series called Urban Legends. Speaking of the haunted house, you know, I don’t get into that kind of stuff, but my friend and video guy, Mark, we actually went there to shoot another video. This one was for our LifeGroups, which you will see in your life if you are here, in a few weeks, and were actually in the house again … until Mark heard something and saw something, dropped his camera, screamed, we both ran off like little girls. So, that’s just uh … tell you more about the video next week as we do more homework on it. Today, though, we will start a brand new series, and of all the series that we’ve ever done in the church, I would say that this one has potential to be the most important. Today, we will look at an urban legend that, in reality, all of our eternity’s hinge on the possibility of this being legend or being truth. Very, very important. Next weekend, I will talk about what I consider to be the most dangerous spiritual legend in the American church. The majority of Americans believe this very dangerous teaching, and we will talk about that next week. I cannot wait to get into that.

Today, though, we are going to look at one of the most common world-wide beliefs today. You can see this on talk shows, television, radio, you can see your favorite movie star talking about this, and in this very politically correct world, it is very common to hear that there are many different ways to God. People will say as long as you are sincere, and you are sincerely seeking, all roads lead to God. This message, it feels good. It is easy to believe, but the question is, is it an urban legend, or is it true?

What is funny to me is, this is different than years past, but today, you can talk about just about anywhere, you can talk about God. You can talk about God on Oprah. You can talk about spirituality. You can talk about karma … positive feelings coming your way, right now. You can talk about all these different things, but you can’t talk about Jesus. You talk about Jesus and everybody freaks out, I mean, even in public schools you can’t talk about Jesus. I like the story of one fourth grade little girl that was trying to talk about Easter, and her teacher said, “You can’t talk about Christian things here at school,” and the little girl said, “But it is Easter, and Jesus rose from the dead,” and the teacher said, “You Christians are so foolish. Jesus did not rise from the dead.” And the little girl said, “Yes, He did.” And the teacher said, “No, no, the Roman soldiers stole the body of Jesus.” And the girl said, “No! They didn’t.” And the teacher said, “Prove it,” and the little fourth grade girl was frustrated. She said, “I can’t prove it, but when I die and I go to Heaven, I’ll ask the Roman guards and they will tell me they didn’t do that.” And the teacher said, “Yeah, but what if they are not in Heaven?” And the little girl said, “Well, then, when you die, you ask them.” [laughter]