Telling The TRUTH
072812 Telling The Truth 28 Minute Program
[music] You're listening to Telling the Truth from Triple T Christian Youth Ministries, Telling the Truth to and through teenagers. Here is Triple T founder and president George Dooms. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. God has something specific for you to do. There is something that you can accomplish for His glory that would be unprecedented in the world in which you live. You were important to God, ask Him what He would have you to do. Ezra did that. Listen to Nehemiah, 8-2, New King James Version. So Ezra the Priest brought the law before the congregation of men and women and all who could hear with understanding on the first day of the seventh month. Yes, Ezra responded to God's call. He stood before the congregation. He brought the law to them. He read it. He shared it. He exposed it. Maybe there is something that you could do for your congregation. Maybe you could challenge them to reach their friends for Jesus. A lot of our churches are wonderful places for fellowship, but very few are involved and engaged in ongoing evangelism. That means reaching the people with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, who do not know Him. There is someone that you know that you can pray with. You can read God's Word together. You can do what the Word of God tells you to do. And then you can go before your congregation. And you can say, "Let's go win souls for Jesus." He who wins souls is wise. Souls for Jesus is our battle cry. Listen to what Ezra did when he followed God's guidance. Nehemiah, 8-3, New King James. Then he read from it in the open square that was in front of the water gate from morning until midday, before the men and women and those who could understand and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. Yes, Ezra was obedient. Are you being obedient to what God would have you to do? Are there people with whom you could share a challenge to go to those who don't know Christ and take the gospel, present God's plan of salvation and watch people come to know the Lord? There is something you can do. Pray. Ask God to show you to help you know and to do His will. Read God's Word. I would challenge you today to read Romans chapter 12 and let God speak to you if you are indeed a believer. And then fellowship with other believers and determine how you together can reach more people with God's glorious gospel and then go. Take the gospel to people today. Somebody is waiting for you to tell them the truth. You have to make the determination. You have to make the decision. You have to decide. You're going to go. Ezra has a platform. What's your platform? And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people for he was standing above all the people and when he opened it, all the people stood up. Nehemiah 8.5, New King James Version. A little aside, but when I am opening the Word of God before a congregation of a large group or even a small group of teenagers, I try to say, let's stand in respect for the Word of God. God's Word is holy. God's Word is powerful. God's Word is unprecedented in what it can do because it is God speaking to us. So read the Word of God and do it publicly if you have that opportunity. Another thing we try to do is to pray in Jesus' name and we are teaching youth that God will hear an answer prayer when they do it His way. Jesus said, "If you ask anything in my name, I will do it." At the name of Jesus, one day, every knee shall bow. So let's take that name of Jesus and respectfully share what Jesus has done. That he died for our sins, that he was buried, that he rose again, and he wants to save people who will believe. Will you tell someone what Jesus has done for them and invite them to receive his gift of eternal life? Nehemiah 8.6, New King James Version. "And Ezra blessed the Lord the great God. Then all the people answered, Amen, Amen, while lifting up their hands and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Have you ever been in a very awesome worship atmosphere where you understood the presence of the Lord, where the person or persons who were leading, were blessing the Lord God and people were saying, Amen, Amen, in total agreement and then bowing their heads before Almighty God. Worship the Lord, praise God from whom all blessings flow. God wants us to humble ourselves before Him. He is God and He wants us to understand the need to respect Him, but also to respond to His challenge, to go into our world and take the gospel to people who need to know Him. Consistently read God's Word, constantly pray and then continually fellowship with other believers and communicate Christianity. Pay the personal cost to reach the lost for Jesus. Listen to Nehemiah 8.9, New King James. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, "This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn nor weep for all the people wept when they heard the words of the law." Sometimes what God says overwhelms us. Sometimes we think there is no way we can do what God wants us to do. This awesome God loves you in a very personal way, and He wants you to love Him in return. Yes, certainly worship God, but the greatest way I believe to worship the Lord is to, after being in His presence, listening to His Word in your heart, talking with Him from your heart, is to go with a heartfelt need of sharing God's wonderful plan of salvation to people who need the Lord. One of the wonderful things we can do as Christians, if you indeed are a believer, is to tell someone else how to get to heaven. Will you? Tell them to admit they have sinned, to believe on the Lord Jesus, to confess Him personally. There is someone waiting for you to take that good news to them today. Will you? I hope you will. "Stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise." That's Nehemiah 9.5b, New King James Version. So let's do that. Let's stand up and bless the Lord, the Lord our God, and let's do it forever and forever, and know that He will last in our hearts and lives as long as we will let Him for all of eternity because God is God. Let's bless His holy name, which is exalted above all. Let's praise the Lord. At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Let's help people understand that before that day happens, that they by believing on the Lord Jesus can have a relationship with Him, an eternal relationship that God can be not only their heavenly Father, but their constant comforter through the Holy Spirit. And as we share Jesus' love, the love that caused Him to give His life, to die for our sins, to be buried and to rise again, let's tell people how they can bless the Lord by receiving His gift of eternal life through Christ Jesus. Tell them how. Tell them now. Time after time in the Bible, we are in on the fact that our heavenly Father put the whole thing together. He divinely designed everything. Nehemiah 9-6, New King James Version says, "You alone are the Lord. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth and all things on it, the seas and all that is in them." There you have it. One more time, a passage in Scripture about creation. Yes, God did create it all. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And we need to not only know that, we need to share that with people who don't believe it. There's such an awful thing going on in our world today, in classrooms, teaching kids falsehoods, and hiding the truth. Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." So tell people about creation, God did it. He did it deliberately. He did it out of love. He did it for you and for me and for everybody else. And he did it so that we could fellowship with him forever. How? By believing in the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, God the Son, who died, was buried, and then rose again. Every Saturday at 7.27 p.m. you are invited to attend a live youth event at Triple T, 13,000 US-41 North at Boone Building Harmony Road, midway between I-64 and Evansville Regional Airport. Every first Saturday, a good news club for those in first through fifth grades is available in a separate area. For more information call 812-867-2418 or visit www.tripletchristianyouth.org. ♪♪ One of the hallmarks of Triple T Christian Youth Ministries is Bible distribution. We like to give Bibles to people, especially if they're between the ages of 10 and 19. We've given away hundreds, actually thousands. Nearly 10,000 Bibles have been put into the hands of kids who need to know about Jesus. Our vision is every youth to have the opportunity to hear the gospel with an invitation to respond by His or Her 20th birthday. Our mission to communicate Christianity to and through teenagers, to win them to Christ and train them for Christ, teaching them how to share their faith through their local churches, on their campuses, throughout their communities, and into their world where ever God leads them in their future. Target audience, youth, ages 10 to 19. Did you know that within 100 miles of Triple T's headquarters, 4 miles north of Evansville Regional Airport, 4 miles south of Interstate 64, that according to the 2010 U.S. Census data, there are 413,443 youth, ages 10 to 19. 93 counties in this geographic area, again within just 100 miles of where I sit speaking to you today. Tiger team. Tiger means teens involved, going, evangelizing regularly. All Triple T activities involved Tiger team, peer evangelism, and leadership training, and evangelistic youth efforts. Youth are trained in biblically based peer evangelism, leadership, and creative Christian communications. Training includes Scripture memory and personal application and is designed to equip and prepare participants to share their faith effectively with their peers and to challenge them to commit to a lifetime of serving Christ with moral purity. The key action plan provides biblical and practical youth evangelism training and resources for adult youth workers. Evangelistic youth efforts are conducted in local communities in partnership with local churches and Christian organizations. Right now we're in the middle of fair share. We've been out in county after county, fair after fair, sharing the gospel with person after person. Our first two weeks, we were in six counties and had the privilege of sharing the gospel with 680 people plus one-on-one. And of these, at least 63 said, "I admit that I have sinned. I'll believe on the Lord Jesus. I'll confess Christ publicly." What a wonderful privilege it is to teach and train teenagers how to share their faith and to watch them and even some preteens doing precisely that. God is great. God is gracious and we're excited about what He has done and is doing and what we anticipate He's going to continue to do. When a teenager earns 3,000 Tiger Team Points and they earn points by going to their local Bible-believing Sunday school, their local Bible-believing worship service, their local Bible-believing youth group, and when they go and the pastor or the teacher or the leader signs a checklist verifying the fact that they've been there, they earn 100 points each week for each one of these events. And so, they can earn 300 points a week just by going to church, Sunday school, and youth group. And when they acquire 3,000 points, we give them a Bible, the transformer Bible. Now, the first time anybody comes into the building, if they're between the ages of 10 and 19, they get a New King James Bible with a special triple T cover, with the message, a picture of our billboard, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." John the truth is two and through teenagers. But when they earn 3,000 points, they get the transformer and with it, a beginner's guide to reading the Bible by our very special friend, Elmer Towns. Dr. Elmer Towns has been our guest here at Triple T on several occasions and he serves as Tammy's mentor. She has been wonderfully blessed by taking his courses, by getting to know him personally, and by his interest in this ministry. We're glad that God has made those connections. So we give this book by Dr. Towns to everyone who earns 3,000 points along with their transformer Bible. The introduction talks about what is the Bible. We're going to be sharing this with you. And then there are several chapters. One, read the Bible with everything you've got. Two, let God tell you how to read the Bible. Three, there are lots of good reasons to read the Bible. Four, getting ready to read the Bible. Five, reading about people in the Bible. Six, reading stories in the Bible. Seven, reading the Bible devotionally. Eight, reading the Bible one book at a time. Nine, reading prophecy in the Bible. And ten, reading the Bible doctrinally. Dr. Elmertown says, "He has written this book to help you read the Bible." You may be puzzled at this statement. You might think that since you already know how to read a book, you can read the Bible. It's true you can read it like any other book because the Bible was written by authors and is made up of normal words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters. On the other hand, you must read the Bible differently than any other book. The Bible is God's book. It was written in a special way with a special message. Even though the Bible looks like other books, it's unique because it tells the true story about God different from what other books say about God. The Bible is a revelation, which means God has revealed Himself to us in its pages. We have not been left to imagine what God is like, nor may we create any new theories about what He is like. Other religions have holy books that describe what their leaders think God is like, but our God revealed Himself to us in revelation through the Bible. Also, the Bible was written in a unique way. "Holy men of God wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." Check 2 Peter 1-21. That means that God's Spirit moved human authors to write the Bible. When you thumb through the pages of the Bible, you're looking at the message that God has put there for you to know. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. That's 2 Timothy 3-16. The word inspiration means God breathed. God breathed on the authors as they were writing the Bible. Take a deep breath right now and then exhale. You can feel it. Your breath is your life. When God breathed on the Bible's authors, He put His life into the words of Scripture. The words Spirit and life are the same. This means the Bible writers used ordinary words but filled them with the life of God, the Spirit of God. Therefore, when you read the message of the Bible, you're receiving both the message of God and the life of God in your heart. This book has been written to help prepare you spiritually to discover the life of God's eternal life as you read the Bible. Now, let's return to the other idea, that the Bible is an ordinary book. When you read the Bible, you do the same thing as when you read a newspaper, television listings, a memo, or something like that. Bosecular reading and Bible reading involve recognizing words and getting information from words. Therefore, when you read the Bible, you must know the meaning of its words to find out what the message is saying. While the Bible has a supernatural message, you will find within it the styles of other literature, stories, poetry, biography, history, and family trees. As you read, you will learn about God from the stories and you will feel God's passion from the poetry. The biographies will tell you how people lived with God and history will show you how God was working behind the scenes. These natural things will tell you about a supernatural God. One more note. If you read the Bible at a superficial level, you will get a superficial understanding of what God says. If you read the Bible analytically, you will get analytical results. If you look for evidence of a certain idea, you'll likely find it, but not much else. You will get out of the Bible reading just what you put into it. When you embark on reading the Bible, it's a wonderful adventure. You'll be reading about people like yourself. You'll see how God called one man Abraham and from him came the nation Israel. Since God is an honest author, the sins of Abraham and Abraham's children are recorded. Why does God include these embarrassing faults? Because as people attempted to live for God, none were perfect, just as you and I are not perfect. You'll cheer Israel's victories and weep at its defeats, and one hopes learn from them how to be an overcomer. You'll read of prophets who spoke for God and of kings and queens who ruled for God. You'll meet courageous people who fought for God and some who died for God. You'll hear stories of shepherds, teachers, carpenters, fishermen, businesswomen, and parents. The greatest story of all will be about Jesus. Born a stable? Bethlehem. He fulfilled the Old Testament prediction. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and he'll be called Wonderful Counselor Mighty God. God became flesh. The divine was visiting mankind. Jesus grew in the normal ways that boys grow, but he was no normal boy. He lived without sin and was a personification of pure love. He healed the sick, he forgave sins, and he did miracles such as calming a thunderstorm on Lake Galilee as well as feeding 5,000 people with two small fish and five loaves of bread. Why? To show us what God is like. The centerpiece of history was the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. He died on a cross. Jesus, the sinless one, took our sins dying to forgive us of them. You'll say with the Apostle Paul, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me." The life which I now live in a flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. The death of Jesus is good news that our sins are forgiven because of Christ's death on the cross. And we can go to heaven when we die because he was buried and rose again. The word gospel means good news. So, you'll read about Jesus from his followers and you'll be able to follow him effectively yourself. A couple of dozen of us have been taking the gospel out to county fairs across the tri-state Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky. We have kids here from across America and Canada. Two from Saskatchewan, two from Vermont, several from Florida, one from West Virginia, one from Texas, one from New Jersey, one from Wyoming, one from Michigan, and we have one who has come all the way to us here at Triple T Christian Youth Ministries from the home, state, and hometown where that particular person grew up. It's wonderful to have these people here from north and south and east and west. And this one particular person came from Texas. Well, it's good to have them here because they're learning the Word of God and every one of them got not only the first Bible that we give them, the New King James Bible, with the Triple T billboard on the front, but they also got the transform because they earned 3,000 points. And then they got the beginner's guide to reading the Bible. What is the Bible? We call it the Holy Bible. The name comes from tabibla, which means the books or a collection of books. The one book called the Holy Bible is actually a collection of 66 books that are accepted by Christians as uniquely inspired of God. And thus, it is authoritative for what Christians believe and how they act. Each of the 66 books has a primary thrust, such as biography, history, letter, poem, or personal testimony. The Bible is divided into two major sections known as the Old Testament and the New Testament. While the word Testament usually refers to a person's will, in the original language it meant a treaty or covenant. Therefore, you will sometimes find written in the front of these two sections the Old Covenant or the New Covenant. The Old Testament was written between the approximate dates of 1500 B.C. to 500 B.C. in the Hebrew language except for a few selected passages in Aramaic. The theme of the Old Testament is the preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ. The New Testament was written between the approximate dates of AD 36 to AD 96 in the Greek language. Its theme is the birth of Jesus Christ, his life, his ministry, and the growth of the New Testament Church. And so as you read the Bible, you will find things out about the Bible. When one of our tigers earns 6,000 points, they get a book called Where to Find the Bible. Where to find out about the Bible, about Scripture, about fellowship, about the Church, and so forth. Well, we invite you to be a part of this ministry, and we hope that you'll be praying about participating. Hope you'll be praying for us, and if you want to send something or come by tonight, that would be wonderful. Christ, through you, can change the world. [music] Every Saturday at 7.27 p.m., you are invited to attend a live youth event at Triple T, 13,000 US-41 North at Booneville and Harmony Road, midway between I-64 and Evansville Regional Airport. Every first Saturday, a good news club for those in first through fifth grades is available in a separate area. For more information, call 812-867-2418 or visit www.tripletchristianyouth.org. [music] For your free copy of The Telling the Truth newsletter, call 812-8672418 812-8672418 or write Triple T, 13,000 US-41 North, Evansville, Indiana, 47725. Tune in to Telling the Truth next week at this same time, on this same station. [music]