This Sunday we are starting a new series on Christianity and Islam. We will examine the teachings of the Bible and how they contrast with Islam. This morning we will start with the background of our faith, or the unspoken assumptions that those with a biblical faith make about God, and how they differ from the perspective of Islam. Islam came upon our radars in the West only at the end of the Cold War. The background of the Cold War was atheistic - communism vs. freedom and belief in God. In this aftermath, some have naïvely assumed that any belief in any kind of god is acceptable. Some have gone as far as to equate the god of Islam with the God of the Bible. Now, slowly, the background is being changed, shifting from atheism to terrorism, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. My goal in this series is to establish the basic foundational beliefs of the Christian faith. Today we examine Grace - what does it require for us to be acceptable to God? What are the foundational truths about grace that are proclaimed in the Bible? Why does it require the death and resurrection of Christ for God to forgive us and accept us? What does it mean that "in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed" (Romans 1:17)?
