Case 1: Not long ago, a dean at Stanford University began to pressure evangelical Christian groups on campus to stop sharing their faith and evangelizing other students--"proselytizing" as he called it. What angered the dean was not the content of the Gospel message, but the practice of sharing it. He believes that in approaching someone with the Gospel, you are implying that the person's beliefs are inferior to your own, and such an implication, he says, is self-righteous, biased, bigoted, and intolerant.

Case 2: Graduate student Jerome Pinn checked into his dormitory room at the University of Michigan to discover that the walls of his new room were covered with posters of nude men and that his new roommate was an active homosexual who expected to have partners in the room. Penn approached the Michigan housing office requesting to be transferred to another room. Penn later reported what happened: "They were outraged by this (request). They asked me what was wrong with me--what my problem was. I said I had a religious and moral objection to homosexual conduct. They were surprised; they couldn't believe it. Finally they assigned me to another room, but they warned me that if I told anyone of the reason, I would face university charges of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation." They viewed Jerome as self-righteous, biased, bigoted, and intolerant.

Case 3: Recently the Southern Baptist Convention published a series of pamphlets on how to win Jews to Jesus Christ, how to witness to Muslims, how to witness to Hindus, and so forth. The media got wind of it, and you would have thought that the Baptists had advocated dropping nuclear bombs on those groups of people. How dare Christians target other ethnic or religious groups, screamed the headlines. What makes them think their beliefs are superior to anyone else's? They are self-righteous, biased, bigoted and intolerant.

Christians today, especially evangelical Christians, are finding themselves on the defensive over the tolerance issue. So today's question is "What's wrong with tolerance?"

I have two answers. The first is: Nothing! Nothing is wrong with tolerance if, by tolerance, you mean loving people and respecting their opinions. I may not agree with a Communist or a Muslim or even another member of my own denomination or my family. But I love them and respect their right to their opinion. I don't agree with my staff all the time. I don't agree with my wife all the time. But I love all these people and I respect their right to have their opinion.

As Christians, we don't seek to force our opinions on others. It was Christians, after all, who worked the hardest to insure Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion in our early national history.

But that isn't what many people mean anymore when they use the word "tolerance." A funny thing has happened to this word. It used to mean being patient with other people, recognizing and respecting their beliefs. But in the last few years the cultural pundits have forged a new meaning. Tolerance is not longer viewed as recognizing and respecting the beliefs of others. It means considering everyone's beliefs as being equally valid.

James Dobson put it this way in a recent newsletter: Because our nation is composed of people from widely diverse cultural and ethnic groups, each having its own unique value system or ethical code, we must conclude that there is no such thing as "truth" or moral certitude. In the final analysis, "anything goes." Somehow, the existence of many different standards proves that there is no standard. For obvious reasons, amoralists and atheists are attracted to that position and promote it with vigor. Nothing, they say, is really right or wrong. What is true depends entirely on one’s point of view. The highest form of good, therefore, is tolerance to anything and everything except traditional Christianity, which is the chief source of what they call "intolerance."

Do not judge, or you too will be judged.

Recently People Magazine was interviewing a well-known actor who was defending the moral indiscretions of our President. "Why should we be upset over such a thing?" asked the actor. "We're all sinners, and it just shows that President Clinton is just like the rest of us. The Bible says, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.'"

Whenever Christians warn against or condemn a particular sinful tendency in our society, someone is liable to throw this verse back in our face. But such use represents a twisting and distorting of this passage.

What did Jesus mean when He said, "Judge not that ye be not judged"? I want to say two things about it. First, He obviously was not forbidding us from making moral evaluations about things. That's the way the world wants to interpret this verse. Do not judge. Do not make moral evaluations. Do not condemn anything. But we know that isn't what Jesus is commanding here, for all the way through the Gospels He tells us that we must continually and constantly be making moral judgements about both issues and people.

Just look down at verse 13. He says: "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them."

If we interpreted verse 1 the way the world wants us to interpret it, we couldn't obey verse 13 the way Jesus expects us to obey it. In order to obey verse 13, we have to look at another person and do a moral and spiritual analysis. It involves a certain kind of judgment on our part if we are to conclude a person to be true or false. Jesus told us to beware the Pharisees and hypocrites. How can we obey that without exercising some kind of judgement.

What, then, did Jesus mean by His words in verse 1? Well, the number one rule of good Bible study is that you study a verse in its context. So let's read the entire paragraph and see if we can locate our Lord's emphasis:

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Some people go around with a judgmental, critical, fault-finding attitude, always being negative, always carping about things, always being aware of minor problems in the lives of others while oblivious to the major fault they are demonstrating in their own attitude. Jesus said, "Don't be that way. You can make Spirit-led moral judgments, but never be unloving. You are never to despise others or regard them with contempt.

We are to make sound moral judgments, but we must be humble and loving in our attitudes as we do it. Nothing is more harmful to the cause of Christ in our society today than Christians who march around with a shrill voice using harsh language and condemning others with an angry, unkind attitude.

But having said that, I also want to say with equal vigor that, given the right attitude in their hearts, Christians are called upon to unashamedly confront the world, the flesh, and the devil with the truth of Jesus Christ and with the Word of God. As we do that, we're going to be persecuted. And in America at the present time, that persecution is going to be the sort that I referred to at the beginning of the message. We may be labeled as being self-righteous, biased, bigoted, and intolerant.

A recent poll estimated that 72% of Americans between the ages of 18-25 do not believe in absolute truth or in moral absolutes. Daniel Taylor, a professor at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota, put it this way: "(Relativism) takes the clearly observable fact that we have a multitude of views and values and practices in the world--pluralism--and draws the illegitimate conclusion that there is no justifiable way of choosing among them. Truth is merely opinion, goodness only what the majority says it is."

So when Christians say, either publicly or privately, that certain things are wrong, what happens? Something akin to what is happening right now to the Boy Scouts. We are censured as being self-righteous, biased, bigoted, and intolerant.

But we will not be silenced. Some things are truly wrong. And some things are truly right. There is a moral law in the universe, and that moral law flows from the character of God Himself and is reflected in the teachings of the Bible.

The second Christian distinctive that produces cries of intolerance is the insistence that Christ is the only way of salvation. Some time ago, the Vatican announced a papal visit to India, and you should have heard the outcry. Hardline Hindu leaders demanded that the pope cancel his trip unless he was ready to publicly disavow Jesus as the only means of salvation.

Recently a young man named Scott Scruggs, a student at Stanford University, had a conversation with a friend about Christianity. The response was bombastic. "You're just being too closed-minded," said the man. "Jesus works for you, just like Buddha works for someone else. So if you want people to respect what you have to say, you need to be more tolerant of beliefs unlike your own."

The pressure of that argument is causing some Christians to back away from the exclusiveness or exclusivity of the Christian message. Recently I read a quote in the Wall Street Journal. Rev. Bruce Robbins is the ecumenical staff leader for the United Methodist Church, and he was explaining that Methodists are encouraged to share their faith in the community in which they live. But, he said, we must be very careful about trying to target other groups for evangelism. He said, "We have to honor diversity. We believe that God's call through Jesus is universal and that other people know God through their religious traditions."

But the whole message of the Bible is that God loves us all. And, knowing that we are separated from Him by our sinfulness and moral failure, He Himself became a man to die in our place on the cross, so that by His shed blood we may be forgiven. And the Bible teaches: "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

Look on down from our text today, at the end of Matthew 7, verse13-14: Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Jesus was so narrow-minded on this point, that he used the word narrow here to describe the one and only pathway to eternal life.

And later, in verses 21-23: Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Apparently the Lord Jesus did not assume everyone was going to heaven carte blanche. This is one of the most frightening verses in the Bible to me, for it tells us that even many people who profess to be followers of Christ are self-deceived. It isn't a matter of outward profession, but inward faith and obedience, that saves us.

John 14:6: Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Jesus said there are not many roads to the top of the mountain. He said, "I am the only pathway."

Romans 3:10ff says: There is no one righteous, no not one; there is none who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one... All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

1 Corinthians 3:11 says: For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. There is no other foundation for a holy or happy life. No other basis for an abundant or eternal life. Only Christ.

1 Timothy 2:5-6 says: For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men... How many mediators are there? How many who can forgive our sin and reconcile us to God? There is one-Christ Jesus.

Hebrews 2:3 says: How shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?

Neither Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Mohammed, nor any other founder of a religion ever claimed to pay the penalty for the sins of the world. They couldn't even pay for their own sins. They are still in their graves. Only Christ died and rose again for the sins of the world.

What would you think of someone who said this: "Mathematics can not possibly be true because it is too narrow-minded, too restrictive, and too dogmatic. It claims that two plus two equals four. Always four, and never three or five. It claims that its laws are universally true. It claims absolute precision. And I refuse to believe anything that is so dogmatic, narrow-minded, and exclusive. Therefore mathematics must be false."

David Hunt wrote, "Sincerity won't get astronauts to the moon, nor will it prevent arsenic from killing the person who ingested it by mistake. Yoga won't even pay a traffic ticket. It makes no sense to set out from Los Angeles to New York without a map. What folly it would be to refuse to follow a map because maps are so restrictive, and to insist that any road in any direction will do! How much greater is the folly of insisting that any road sincerely followed will take one to heaven!"

On the other hand, this narrow, exclusive, blood-bought message can take a person's life and change it forever. This narrow, exclusive, blood-bought message can make bad people good, and good people better. This narrow, exclusive, blood-bought message is designed to fit perfectly into that vacuum in the middle of your heart. It is exclusive, but it's exclusively powerful.

Finally he became so miserable that he tried to detach himself from the organization and get out of organized crime. But the mob stuck back and murdered his wife. Then Bill Saye himself was charged with murder and imprisoned.

But in prison he remembered that his mother and father, who were Christians, had been praying for him for over 40 years and one day he seemed to hear the voice of the Lord saying to him, "Son, you've had everything the world has to offer and look where it got you. Now, turn your life over to Me. I'll set your free." He took the Bible that had been placed in the prison and turned to the only verse He knew about--John 3:16 and read it, putting his name in the verse: For God so loved Bill Saye that He gave His only begotten Son, that if Bill Saye would believe in Him, he should not perish but have everlasting life.

From that moment, something wonderful happened in side of him. He began spending every spare moment reading and studying the Scripture. And today he is a free man in every sense of the word, and a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We're to be tolerant people in that we are called on to love others, to bear with them, to forgive easily, and to respect the rights of others to hold opinions different from our own. But we also know that the Bible teaches that there are moral absolutes that stream from the character of God Himself, and His Word teaches us that only Jesus Christ can save a men or women from sin and give them eternal life. That message may not be politically correct, but it's true.

And it's a wonderful truth, and it's for you and me.