Ask-A-Pastor.com (4 Out Of 4) Series

Ask A Pastor

Is Jesus the Only Way?

By Pastor Mark McNees

This message was originally given at Element3 Church in Tallahassee FL. To download this message’s corresponding PowerPoint, audio, and artistic elements for free please visit www.element3.org.

Alright, so, we are on the tail end of our series ask a pastor and I hope it has been challenging and hopefully it has opened your mind to some different ideas and hopefully expanded your idea or understanding of who God is.

After last week we had a lot of feedback and a lot of people wanting more information and we have a growth group that is going to be starting and it is called the path to sexual healing. If you desire to be healed by Christ and start on a pathway to healing, we have 3 ways you can sign up, you can go to the pathways booth, you can just write sexual healing on your connect card or you can email healing@element3.org so you can get more information. I want to really challenge you to seek out healing in Christ and to do it in community.

This is our fourth week in this series, the first week we looked at is the Bible reliable. The second week we looked at why if there is a God, why is there so much bad in the world and does God really care. And obviously last week we looked at sex and what is God’s plan for sex.

Here are some of the questions we’ve received:

1. How much grace is too much, is there a point where you can give or show too much grace to those in your life to those who have wronged you? To where do you put yourself in danger? Does God have a grace threshold?

2. If God knows every hair on our head before we are born and he knows what we are going to do, why does he give us free will? Does this mean that God is not certain what we are doing or going to do and is hoping that we make the right decisions

3. If I am hanging out with people who don’t believe and I don’t feel comfortable telling them not to talk bad about my religion, should I stop hanging out with them or should I tell them how I feel and hope it makes them change?

4. If a person is living in sin but do not believe, have not been taught, and are totally unaware that they are living in sin, will grace cover them on this? They will go to heaven when they die by believing that Jesus died for their sins, right? Can we just talk about this?

5. How should Christians relate to their close friends of many years who still refuse to be Christians?

6. How do I get to heaven?

7. Christians throughout history have brutally killed others in the name of God. Most of the world’s cultures believes in God, how do we know whether we serve the one true God? Does this make their belief in God invalid?

8. How did people in the Old Testament go to Heaven?

9. Why did Jesus have to be crucified?

10. If a man lives in the middle of a jungle away from all civilization, living a Christian life and serving others will he go to heaven when he dies even if he hasn’t heard of Jesus Christ?

How concerned we are about that person living away from all civilization. It seems that it takes a lot of mind time. As we are looking at all these questions, it really comes down to: Are all religions the same? That is a big theme in a lot of these questions. The other thing is, is Jesus the only way? These questions are great and it hurts my brain to think about them and the reality is it hurts my soul more not to think about them. I just really pray that as we go forward on them we can bring some healing to our souls that have been hurt and put aside some of the craziness that people have speculated about and be able to turn to the Word of God and get some clarity on this.

Let’s Pray:

Dear God there has been so much said and done in your name and a lot of those things couldn’t be farther from you. God I just pray as we just turn to this subject: different religions, different gods, is Jesus the only way, that we can just be open to views other than our own and we can see what you communicate about this to us. We love you Lord, in Jesus Name, Amen.

I think a lot of us don’t realize that a lot of times when people ask this question, that a lot of times Christians feel backed into a corner and we get really defensive and we don’t understand how that is being received. I think that as we look at this we need to look at scripture like when Jesus says, “I am the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Farther except through me.” We can see what Jesus is communicating to us about this. As we look at these questions, they are all asking an important question. It is more about God and the question is does God care about people more than we care about people? Does God care about the guy in the forest if he has never heard about Christ and he is serving others and doing his best to live a good life? Does God care about him more than we do? It is almost a statement that says if God doesn’t care more about that guy in the forest than I do, than I don’t want to give my life to that God. If God doesn’t care more about others than me, maybe God should be worshipping me. I think it is important in this journey that we strip away the different types of questions and get to the core and it is: Does God care about others more than I do?