Life United Sunday – Karl Fasse

Introduction

Thanks, Craig. Friends, we’re privileged this morning to have Carl Fasse come. Welcome, Carl. It’s great to have you here. Thank you. Let’s take a seat. Carl might be well known to you. He’s been a pastor for 30 years. He’s a well-known Australian communicator, media presenter. He’s a leader and social commentator. He’s presently, if I get this right, the CEO of Olive Tree Media, an organization which produces a number of resources and programs of excellence to churches, as well as internationally.

Carl, you might know, is a prolific writer, and he’s written a number of books, of which there’s a bookstore up the back after the service. Some of the books are “The Stuff of Life: Making the Most of Every Day,” “Jesus the Game Changer,” or “Faith Runs Deep,” and some earthly stories of faith in Australia. He’s presented numerous documentaries, and Carl is probably best known in our community over the last 10 years. He has presented a daily nudge spots on the local radio, Hope 103.2, and those have been a great encouragement to many. Carl also holds many positions of leadership in Australia, and we’re very blessed to have Carl come and open up the word of God and speak a bit about what he’s doing and what we need to know.

But first of all, Carl, where’d you grow up? It’s great to be here. Just wonderful to hear that story, Jeff, the work you guys have been doing. As somebody who’s led a church, I’m so impressed with your work and so impressed with being here. It’s a privilege. I grew up in the country. I actually was born in a place called Gunnedah, and I grew up my first eight years in a place called Tambar Springs. Anybody heard of Tambar Springs? I should give you guys a prize of some description because you know, it’s a tiny place. So that’s where I grew up, and then I went to Armidale. So my early years were in Regional New South Wales.

How did you become a Christian? I actually wrote an article that was in Eternity magazine when I spoke at my dad’s funeral a couple of years ago, and I often say that when people ask me how I became a Christian, I often say, let me tell you about my dad. His journey to faith in that tiny place, Tambar Springs, is quite remarkable. Because I want to not reduce my preaching time, I won’t tell you the story, but you need to watch “Faith Runs Deep,” which we’re going to talk about in a minute because his story is in that. I actually made a personal decision. His decision was really significant for our family, and then when I was 11, I went forward at an Alan Walker Crusade, I guess you’d call it, down in the entrance. We’re never perfect after that, but it’s been a long journey for me since then. That’s wonderful.

It’s been a heavy week for you on another personal matter, is that right? My mum died last Tuesday morning early, and Jeff has some connections with my family. It’s not easy, is it? But she’s 95. She knew Jesus, and I’m not going to say anymore other than, yeah, it’s been an interesting journey. Good, good. Now, Kyle, you’ve got a new series here, and I’ve got books I can hardly hold together here, but these are books. Let me hold them up for you if you could hold them and explain them. This is your new series. Can you tell us a bit about it?

We’ve created a new series called “Faith Runs Deep,” and we’re going to show you a trailer in a minute. That’s a couple of minutes trailer just to give you a picture of it. We drove a six liter 2013 VF SSV Holden Ute. For those of you who don’t know what that means, that’s okay. For those who did know, that’s a cool car. We actually just wanted to drive around the country to collect stories of faith, and this is the stories of faith of our nation. There’s a story about faith of our nation that’s told that’s inaccurate, and that is we started with a bunch of convicts. We’ve been pagan from the beginning. We’re still secular now, and nobody cares. That’s simply not true.

We’ve created this series, 12 weeks, 26 minutes. We shot it around Australia. When we finished, before I speak, we’ll show you the trailer, and then we created this book, which is 23 stories out of the series. We’re actually creating this for schools. We’re developing this in camping ministry, all sorts of stuff, and there’s 23 stories of wonderful stories of faith from our history, our nation, our story. These are just slightly longer than in the series because we had 42 interviews, and we couldn’t put them all in, but there’s a bit more in that. That’s available today. If you can still find your DVD player and you have one, Kurong tells us that people still have DVD players, but it’s also on a streaming platform on Olive Tree media.com, our streaming platform.

Anybody that little book of mine, “Stuff of Life,” you could buy anything this morning, you get one of those free. It’s going so well, we’re giving it away. We’d love you to have it. It’s a gift into the church. That’s our new series. We’re really excited by it, and we know it’s going to make a difference across our nation. What a great resource that is. Good on you. I look forward to what you’re about to say in a moment, Carl, but before you bring to us the word, let me pray for you. Thank you. Right now, dear Lord, we ask that you would speak through our brother Carl, a word that we need to hear. May we also receive this word with joy and be better able to serve you in our lives, and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you.

What is the Difference that Jesus Made?

Everybody Matters

I’m biased, but you’re going to love that series. That’s a great series. We shot that during covert, and that was a stretch to run a church during covert. It’s a stretch to try and make a serious shot across Australia during covert as well. It was just released in May this year, and I hope you see it, enjoy it, and it speaks into your life. It’s a great thing to share with the people around you. I’ve done a lot of interviews over the years. If you can imagine, for those who don’t know, we did “Towards Belief,” then “Jesus the Game Changer One,” and “Geez the Game Changer Two,” “Faith Runs Deep,” probably between all of them, there’s over 150 interviews. One of my favorites that sticks in my mind, my wife says I’ve got a man crush on this guy. That may or may not be true. There’s a guy called Tom Holland. Now, not the actor from Spider-Man, it’s the other Tom Holland.

Many of you, some of you, if you read widely, you might know the name Tom Holland, but Tom Holland’s a really interesting guy. Right up front, and this hasn’t changed as far as I know, he’s not a Christian, which is actually important for what I’m about to tell you. Tom Holland, when I talked about the fact what he grew up and he loved dinosaurs, just loved dinosaurs, absolutely committed that he just followed dinosaurs, researched dinosaurs when he got older, and as he started into academic life, his love for dinosaurs actually morphed into a love for the Greco-Roman world. He reckons that the Spartans were a bit like dinosaurs, this overwhelming powerful group of people that are now extinct, and he just loved the Greco-Roman world. He studied the Greco-Roman world. He wrote books about the Greco-Roman world, did some documentaries about them.

This is this notion of just studying the Greco-Roman world, and then he’s written an article. You can see this online, “Why I Changed My Mind About Why I Was Wrong About Christianity,” or you can write, which is three pages, or you can buy his 400-page book called “Dominion.” Interestingly, in both of these, the “Why I Was Wrong About Christianity” and his book “Dominion,” they kind of have the same theme because as he’s looking at the Greco-Roman world, and he loved the Greco-Roman world, loved everything about them, he started to feel really uncomfortable. This took a while, but he’s watching this world, he’s looking at this world, and he started to ask, why am I uncomfortable with this group of people? He realized he was really uncomfortable because their morals and their behaviors and their values were morally abhorrent. What was accepted then would be totally abhorrent now. The values that they lived by, like Caesar, who killed, is written that he killed a million goals and then enslaved a million more and was accepted as almost a point of their virtue that they would be able to do that. He’s like, that’s awful.

He actually quotes, there’s a quote that he uses in this little article. He says this, “It’s not just the extremes of callousness that I find shocking, but the lack of a sense that the poor or the weak might have any intrinsic value.” He asked the question of himself in his research as an historian, what changed? The answer was Jesus of Nazareth. His whole point around his book “Dominion” and his article was that we are deeply impacted by the person of Jesus Christ in the West, in Western Democratic free Nations. He wrote these words, “To live in a western country is to live in a society that is still utterly saturated by Christian Concepts and assumptions 2,000 years on from the birth of Christ does not require one to believe that he rose, that he died and rose from the dead.” In fact, what’s inescapable is the influence of Christianity.

What is his point? He’s still not a Christian as far as I know, but if you read the last chapter of his book, he’s awfully close. What he’s saying is, put aside the religious nature of what you do or do not believe about Jesus, the West is utterly saturated by Christian faith. At the end of his article, he talks about the fact that the pews of churches around the world, this is in the western world, not in other parts of the world, failing in their size. He says what he’s come to realize is who he is in his morals and his values. He’s not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian. He’s not saying I’m therefore a Christian. He’s not saying I believe in everything about Jesus. He’s saying that who I am as a person, my values and my morals are deeply influenced by the person of Jesus. It seems helpful for all of us to remember as an aside that surrounding us here is a growing population, an expanding population, and that expanding population may never come to one of your church services or may never go to any church in this area. It is helpful to remember those people are already influenced by Jesus because their foundational values are influenced by Jesus.

People Need to be Treated Kindly

The question to ask is, as we look at what is, so what did Tom Holland discover? What is the difference that Jesus made? What difference did Jesus actually make, and how did that difference occur? What difference did Jesus make? What does Tom Holland look at? What can we see within our wider community that points to the teaching of Jesus? One of the things that we miss today, all of us, is because we’re in a society, as Holland says, that’s utterly saturated by the values of Jesus, we miss the difference that Jesus has made. One of the things that a person like Holland can do that we miss is to look at that Greco-Roman world and say, what was that like as a society, and what are we like now, and which are the bits that Jesus made a huge influence in? We did a whole series on this. You’ll be pleased to know in my message this morning, I won’t regurgitate the series for you, but let me just give you a couple of things: one, that everybody matters, that people are equal, that people all have dignity and worth.

Some of you will be thinking, get out of here, Carl. We pop out of the womb thinking everybody’s equal. Everybody thinks that everybody’s always thought that everybody around the world thinks that everybody’s equal. That thought is wrong. People have not always thought and treated people equally, and they still don’t in some places around the world today. In Jesus’ day, people weren’t seen as equal at all. The great philosopher king Aristotle actually referred to the slave class as a sub-human class. They weren’t actually equal with everybody else. They weren’t worth the same as everyone else. They were actually treated quite differently. Aristotle talked about them as if you owned a slave, it was a bit like owning a tool. It wasn’t actually a kind of person that we would deem as a person. There was something happened in the teaching of Jesus that actually talked about, which actually reaches back into the Old Testament, that said everyone’s worth the same. Everybody has dignity and worth.

If you think about where does that idea come from, it comes from Genesis 1:27 and 28. In the beginning, God created man and woman. He created them in His image. What did Jesus teach? What did the church teach? What do we believe today? That every one of us has the spark of the divine within us, and that changes everything. It’s not about what you can do. It’s not a matter how much you perform. It’s not what you’re worth. We all have dignity and worth. We actually believe now, some of you will be gone, well, I don’t think we do that, Carl. That’s absolutely true. We don’t reflect this in our own lives. We don’t necessarily reflect it in every part of our community, but there is this essence that we are worth something, and we are worth, we have dignity and worth. We actually believe that the billionaire has the same dignity and worth as the disabled child. When you went to the polls, and we’ve got the polls next March to elect a New South Wales government, when you go to the poll and you stand in your polling booth, when you tick that box, your tick is worth exactly the same as Dominic Paradise, the premier of New South Wales. Think about that. Why is that the case?

Yes, he might have more influence because of his political position, but in essence, there’s this idea that we are worth something that’s the same. That was unique that brought a change that shifted how we thought about the world. There’s a guy called Larry Sedentop. We didn’t interview his Larry Sedentop because he was unwell. He taught rather at Neville College at Oxford for a couple of decades. He wrote a book called “Inventing the Individual.” It’s like 400 pages that you don’t probably have the time to read, but here’s Larry Siebentop. What he says about Christianity, again, hear what I’m saying here, exactly the same as many writers like Tom Holland. He’s not speaking from a religious point of view. He’s speaking from an historical point of view, and historically, this is what Larry Siebentop said. Christianity changed the ground of human identity by emphasizing the moral equality of humans, quite apart through any social roles they might occupy. Social rules became secondary and had to be understood as subordinate to a god-given human identity, something all humans share equally. What are we saying? The concept that we are worth the same, the concept that we all have dignity and worth, the concept that we should treat people equally is a Christian concept.

Enlightenment thinkers who thought like Voltaire that we need to push Christianity out because we’ve got this bold new world didn’t recognize that most of their foundational values actually came from Christian faith from the person of Jesus. Take a second way that Jesus changed the world, that people need to be treated equally, but that we deal with people that we treat kindly those are in need. In the Greco-Roman world, if you didn’t have family, if you didn’t have family around you to look after you and you are in desperate need, you’re on your own. You did not really, you didn’t care for those in need. You didn’t care for the desperate around you. There was this notion that every person for themselves, and if you were wealthy and in power, you grabbed that for yourself. You did not care for people around you.

One of the passages in the Bible that we tend to, well, not skip over, but we don’t think about a great deal, but the influence and interviewing Rodney Stark, who’s since passed away, he’s written a number of books about how Christianity changed the world. The end of his life, even when I interviewed him, I’ve got to talk to somebody else who said he doesn’t believe he’s a Christian. Again, he’s coming to this historically, and Rodney Stark talked about the values that Christians had in those early years in the first decades after Jesus and the first centuries after Jesus. One of the passages that people point to that was incredibly influential is Matthew chapter 25. In Matthew chapter 25, there’s this parable of the end of time, and the parable of the end of time is that all humanity is stretched out in front of God the judge. In this parable, which you’ll know well, the judge is separating the sheep from the goats, the sheep on his right, the goats on his left.

When he’s separating the sheep from the goats, he then explains the Sheep are going into his eternal glory, the goats will be pushed away. He explains why they’re going into his eternal glory. The King will say, come, you are blessed to my father, verse 34, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsting, you gave me something to drink. I was a strange and you vitamin. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. Now, a loose translation was that the Sheep are about to go into their eternal glory with the father feeling great that they’re not goats. They turned back to the king and they say, we are so pleased to be sheep, not goats. We are looking forward to your eternal glory. Just one question, when do we see you sick? When do we see you naked? When did we visit you in prison because we think we might remember and we don’t remember? What does the king say, verse 40? Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.

When there were two huge plagues in the first three centuries after Jesus that wiped out between 20 and 30 percent of the population, when those plagues hit, Rodney Stark talks about that everybody ran from the towns. The politicians ran, the Physicians ran, the Pagan priests ran, everybody ran to save their lives. Who stayed? The people who remembered that they followed a guy that said, whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me. Change the world. You’ll know that Constantine, a Christian of sorts, allowed Christianity to be a recognized religion in the Roman Empire in the third, fourth Century, the beginning of the fourth century. He had a kind of nephew that was the Caesar, the head of the Roman Empire, a sort of a generation after him called Julian. They called him Julian the apostate, not a great term to be remembered over history by. Julian the apostate was called that because he wasn’t a Christian like Constantine was of sorts, and he wanted the pagan fights, the Pagan religions to come back in, and he wanted to push Christianity out. He sketched the Pagan priests together, and he sends an edict out of the Pagan priest, and he tells them this, look, you guys, you need to get out there and look after the poor, the sick, and the needy because the Christians are doing that and they’re making us look bad, and we don’t like looking bad. To make us look better, get out there and care for the poor and the needy. Now, it never happened for two reasons. First, Julian died drawback. You know why it didn’t happen? They didn’t believe it. It wasn’t a part of their moral, ethical, religious framework. It wasn’t a part of their values. It was the persons of people who followed the guy who said if you served the least of these, you serve me.

What Made the Difference?

The Cross Made the Difference

We could multiply this through humility and Leadership, through education, through Medical Care. The first universities were all started by the church. We could multiply it into the influence in democracy. We could multiply it through the influence in science. We can change, we can multiply this through all parts of our society. The question we need to ask as well is, so what was the difference? If Jesus changed the world and these are the difference that he made, what made the difference? What caused this to happen? What you can tend to start to think is that Jesus came with different set of values and that’s what changed the world and that’s what made the difference. That would not be true. I don’t think that’s why the world was changed by Jesus. Jesus was a great moral teacher, but it wasn’t his teaching that made the difference. Jesus lived a great moral example of a fabulous life, but his moral examples not what made the difference. Jesus cared for people even healed the sick miraculously, but that’s not what made the difference. What made the difference? The cross made the difference. Jesus death and Resurrection made the difference.

I want to jump forward a number of centuries and tell you about a guy called John Newton. Some of you will know the name John Newton. I’ll tell you one of the reasons you’ll know the name John Newton. He was a slave trader. He went to see at the age of 11. He was in the The Merchant Navy all of his that part of his life. He annoyed the people, the other Sailors on one of his boats so much they left him in West Africa as a slave. His dad had to go and get someone to save him. He becomes the captain of the ship, and he becomes the captain of a slave ship. As a captain under a slave ship, he’s out in the Irish sea. There’s this massive storm. Remember, this is not a guy that’s never been to see before. He’s been to see all his life. This massive storm hits. He thinks he’s going to die. He stared. He cries out to God in the middle of the storm and said, God save me, and if you save me, I will serve you. He survived the storm. He’s kind of a little stuck now. He was interestingly part of the story. He actually continued as a slave trader as a captain of slave ship for another seven years. He eventually became a minister, a church leader in the Anglican Church, of course it was then known as the Church of England. He was in Buckingham Shia and then went into London. You can go and visit the church that he was the minister to at in the middle of London just near the bank of London Saint Mary’s in the middle of London. He became a most prominent, passionate, influential follower of Jesus.

What changed his life? He wrote it down in a hymn. He wrote it down in the hymn that was the original, not the one with the new hipster verse. He wrote down these words, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found. I was blind, but now I see.” The world knows that hymn now. It wasn’t just a bit of poetic license where he thought it’d be nice to write a new hymn. Let’s put these words together. If you’re on the slave ship, if you’re selling, if you’re trading in human flesh, what do you think about yourself later when you come to be a Christian that you were lost and blind? He went on to work with William Wilberforce. There couldn’t be two people further apart in the world. William Wilberforce, who was a member of parliament, grew up in a wealthy family, went to Cambridge University, good friends of the Prime Minister William Pitt. William Wilberforce comes to Faith on a tour of Europe with a friend of his in a basically a horse and carriage discussing a book about the Bible. Newton and William William were before so it couldn’t be further apart work together to end slavery.

What changed them? Was it the moral teaching of Jesus? Was it his example? Was it his care for people? I think that John Newton’s hymn gives us a hint of what changed them both of them because that’s what they were committed to and that’s what we see in this passage in Ephesians chapter two what was read to us. You may have read this before. If you haven’t, what did Paul say? Paul’s right into a church at Ephesus and he says this, you as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. In the way you used to live, you followed the ways of this world. When Paul says you were dead in your transgression, she doesn’t mean you were dead as in you as bad as you could possibly be. What he’s saying is that you can’t respond to God. You can’t save yourself. You can’t get back there. You’re not going to do it yourself. I’m no doctor, but when someone’s pronounced dead, it means that they are unable to respond. Nobody comes in the room and says what’s a little harsh, just give them more time. The doctor say no, they can’t get back. They do not have the ability to respond. That’s what dead means medically. That’s what dead means spiritually. Newton and Wilberforce recognize as Newton wrote, I was lost, I was blind, I was dead as it were.

Why does Paul tell the church at Ephesus that made the change for them for Newton, the Wilberforce for us that because of God’s great love, He sent Jesus into the world and we’re saved by to quote John Newton Grace. We don’t save ourselves. Some of you might be here today feeling like I really shouldn’t be here. All these people around me look at them. They’re well dressed. They’re great people. If they really knew what I’m like, I’m not, I’m just not good enough. Guess what? You are the right person to be here because this is not about how good you are. It’s about how good Jesus is. It’s not about how hard you try. It’s about what Jesus done through his death and Resurrection. Newton and Wilberforce changed the world because Jesus changed them. They were not great humanitarians because they were good-hearted. They were great humanitarians because Jesus changed their life. One of the mistakes as I said before about Jesus the game changes the series is to think that it’s about oh Jesus changed the values of the world and that’s what changed the world. No, Jesus changed the world one person at a time one life at a time one individual at a time and that’s what changed the world. Change the world because Jesus came in and changed lives.

Do You Need a Change?

As a band come up to join me, I’m just going to ask this one question, do you need a change? Is this your moment? Have you been living your life faking it but not really knowing what you believe? Have you lived your life turning up the church and never really understanding what it was about? Have you lived your life looking fantastic to everybody else but knowing here you’re a fake, a lion, Thief? God comes to you this morning in this moment and says to you, come home. You were lost, but you can be found. You’re blind, but you can see. You go dead and you can be raised, and that’s all through Jesus. What if I lead us in prayer? I’m not going to ask you to do anything other than bow your heads and close your eyes only because that makes I know I concentrate more if I do that. At this moment, God’s speaking to you. If you at this moment you need to know what Newton and Wilberforce experienced. If this mean that you know that you need to know that God loves you, has extended his grace to you and once you do it receive it. Why don’t you pray with me? This prayer is really a prayer that’s saying I’m really sorry God I’m coming back to you. I want to be renewed. I want to be a new person that’s true for you in this celebration of a church. You know you need a fresh start. Why don’t you pray in your head? This is not for anybody else. This is just you and God. Won’t you pray with me? Lord Jesus, I come to you. I’m really sorry for how I’ve lived. Please forgive my sin. Please make me a new person and help me to live out what I say I believe.

Father, we all come to you this morning because we need your grace. We need your kingdom to come into our lives in this world. We thank you for the difference that Jesus made in this world, and we thank you that he made that Difference by his death and resurrection. We thank you that we can be a part of that. We commit ourselves to you as individuals and as a church to you today as we serve you, follow you, and seek to make a difference in this world for you. Amen. Thanks, guys.