[This sermon is contributed by Hal Seed of New Song Church in Oceanside, California and of www.PastorMentor.com. Hal is the author of numerous books including The God Questions and The Bible Questions. If you are interested in The Bible Questions Church-wide Campaign, please visit and watch Hal’s video at www.PastorMentor.com.]
Let’s pray. – Lord, most of us who have grown up in a performance-based society find the truth of that drama very hard to fathom. God, could it really be that we to you, even if we’re not good looking or smart or popular? Could it be that you really love us just for who we are? My prayer this morning is that you would bring clarity to this question. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Good morning everybody!
Just out of curiosity, are their any mountain climbers among us?
Have you ever heard of “Hill-huggers disease?” How about “Crab hands”?
Prior to moving here to start New Song, the Seed family lived on the western slopes of the Colorado Rockies. We had lived there for 4 years, and during that time we learned that one source of bragging rights for every Coloradan is how many 14,000 foot peaks they have climbed.
There are 42 of them in the state, and people who have done all 42 of them are held in very high esteem.
Personally, I had climbed none of them. But two weeks before Lori and I were going to move away, I got the fever to climb at least one of those mountains.
So I went to a friend of mine, told him what I wanted to do, and asked if he’d be my tour guide. “Sure!” He said. So on the appointed day, we drove to the base of one of the most famous mountains, Long’s Peak [picture]
After hiking all morning, we came to the base of the boulder field, at about 13,000. From there, the hike becomes a climb. But, the sun was shining, I was working out regularly, so I felt great as we pulled our bodies up and over one boulder after another after another after another.
Finally, 300 feet from the summit, we burst through a rock formation called, “The Keyhole,” and all of a sudden, we were looking out on the other side of the mountain.
It was then that I developed Hill-Huggers Disease.
The view as spectacular. Between that, the step climb, and the lack of oxygen at 14,000 feet, my breath was taken away.
Actually, I think what took my breath away was the spectacular 2000 foot drop just in front of us.
Once we passed through the keyhole, my friend led me onto a 10 inch wide trail on the side of the ridge. We were less than a quarter mile’s walk from the summit, but I couldn’t go on.
My claws were dug into the side of the mountain, and I couldn’t get them out. Looking down, all I saw was air, and a valley way below. Looking ahead, there was this thin trail that led me farther and farther from safety. All I could think of as I was leaning into the peak was, “every step you take, you’re going to have to retrace on the way back.”
So my little hands became crab hands and just stood there hugging that hill. I can still remember thinking to myself, “There has got to be another way up this mountain.”
I said real calmly to my climbing partner, “Are, are you you sh-sure there is no other way up this mountain?”
“Yep.” He said. “I’m sure.”
“There’s no other way?”
“No.” He said, “By August you can climb the chimney, by right now there is ice in all its crevices.”
I looked around and tried to release my bear hug on the mtn., but I couldn’t do it.
So now you know the truth about me. I’m a hill hugger. I’ve got crab hands.
And I bring this up because, as a result of the disaster that befell our country on Sept. 11, all kinds of people are asking questions about the paths they’re climbing up these days.
For the past two weeks, we’ve been looking at the path up the mountain called, “Islam.”
The 19 terrorists involved in the 911 horror are all thought to have been Muslim fundamentalists, climbing their way up the mountainside of Islam to get to Islamic paradise.
The fact that they were all religiously motivated has not only put the fear of God into all of us, but has also sparked a lot of curiosity about the Islamic faith.
What does their mountain look like? And what steps do they need to take to climb it?
We looked at those questions in some depth the past two weeks, and that mode of thinking made a lot of us wonder, “What about the other religions of the world?” If Muslims believe in a Five Pillar Path, what do other people believe in?
So this morning I want to tackle that topic.
Over the next 30 minutes, I want to describe for you the basic paths of what have been called THE FIVE CLASSIC RELIGIONS:
CHRISTIANITY,
ISLAM,
JUDAISM,
BUDDHISM, and
HINDUISM
I want to talk to you about where they come from, what they believe, how they describe their mountaintop (their afterlife), and how they believe a person gets to that mountaintop.
To keep you on your toes, I’m going to cover them in reverse order.
And my hope is that what we learn together in the next 1/2 hour won’t just be brain candy for you. You won’t just say, “Oh, that was interesting.” But that you’ll think about these spiritual pathways and come to some conclusions for yourself about what you believe and what really makes sense in terms of who God is and your spirit requires to communion with him and experience eternal life.
One time in the N.T. Jesus said to the people around him, “…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” – John 8:32
That’s my hope for you this morning, that by talking through each of these truth-options, that you will decide what really is true, and what isn’t, and that truth will set you free.
Because our topic is so massive, I’m going to move a little faster than normal this morning. So take out your message notes, and let’s get at it.
The first spiritual pathway on our list is HINDUISM.
Hinduism has roughly 900,000 million followers around the world.
Unlike the other 4 options we’ll be looking at, Hinduism has no one specific founder. To understand Hinduism, it helps to know something about a closely-related belief system called, “Animism.” Animism is the belief that each piece of the earth, and all life on is “animated,” by a spiritual force. In other words, by a god.
For instance, if an animist saw a stream, he or she would believe that that stream had an animated force behind it. That there was a god of the stream. So if he wanted to cross the stream, or get along with the stream, he might talk to it, or make a sacrifice to it.
If there was a tree nearby, he would believe that the tree had a spirit, and that that spirit had power, and should therefore be pleased and communicated with so that it wouldn’t harm him. And on the positive side, because of its mystical powers, the tree god might actually do his worshipers a good turn.
Those of us who have western European ancestry are all descendants of tree-worshipers called Druids. It’s where our practice of bringing a tree into our home at Christmas time comes from.
An example of animism today would be Hawaiians who still worship Pele, the volcano goddess of their islands.
Animists see a god or goddess in every mountain, tree, lake, stream, and animal you can imagine.
Between 1800 BC and 1000 BC, the animists of India began to sophisticate their beliefs, codify their codes, and develop systems to please them, evolve to a place where they could join them, and ultimately, to surpass all earthly spirits and become one with the ultimate spirit in the universe. The spirit called, BRAHMAN.
According to Hindu belief, Brahman is the universal spirit which was are all about of. It is an unconscious force that governs everything. Rent Lion King and you’ll see this kind of thinking all through it. The great force, the circle of life that ordains everything and puts everything in its place. That’s Brahman.
Which makes Hindus what sociologists call PANTHEISTS. “Pan” is the Latin word for “all.” So Hindus believe that God is in everything.
PANTHEISM = GOD IS IN EVERYTHING.
Hindus are also, Polytheists because they believe in many gods.
POLYTHEISM = MANY GODS
Over the centuries, many Hindu holy men and written down their thoughts on how to get along in this world and the next. Those writings are held sacred by Hindus today. Although they point to many sacred books and writings, among Hindus, the most universally recognized and studied of these books would be
THE VEDAS
THE UPANISHADS
THE BHAGAVAD-GITA
As ancient Hindus looked around their landscape, they noticed that there is a certain hierarchy to our world. – The worm is eaten by the fish, the fish is eaten by the cat, the cat is eaten by the coyote, the coyote is eaten by the mountain lion, the mountain lion gets captured by the game warden and transported to a safer place so that he won’t eat the game warden’s children.
They also noted that even this hierarchy tends to go through a predictable cycle: the game warden dies, is buried in the ground, his body is eaten by worms and the whole thing begins over again.
From this, Hindu people’s developed the concept of the transmigration of souls. They believe that all life has an animating force, and that that force inhabits certain physical forms, based on its level of goodness, as earned in previous lives.
So a worm, if it lives a good life, or, in Hindu parlance, if it has good karma, gets to come back as a fish in the next life. And the fish, if it lives a bad life, or has bad karma, comes back as a worm the next time around.
This transmigration of souls is also known as “Reincarnation.” In this century, when Hindu holymen began immigrating to our country, most Americans didn’t like the idea that we could slide backwards. And because we’re generally an optimistic people who believe that life can always get better, we developed our own version of Hinduism in which we believe that we’re all gods, but that the god part of us can’t go backwards, only forwards. This belief system has become known as “The New Age Movement.” The New Age Movement believes in reincarnation, but never downward. Only upward, ever upward.
Hindus also notice that there was a higher form of life than just the physical. That there are spiritual forces in this world. They taught and still teach that these spiritual forces are also souls on the transmigrational highway.
So, the intermediate goal of every Hindu is to live a good enough life by doing good deeds and treating people well enough that in the next life, they’ll take a step upward on the reincarnational path towards heaven.
Here’s how that path works:
If a normal caste Hindu lives his or her life really well, they’ll accumulate enough good karma to make the leap up the ladder to the next higher Hindu caste.
If they do poorly, they’ll come back as an untouchable. Which is why you wouldn’t want to touch them – they’ve got bad karma because they did evil things in previous lives.
If they do really well, they’ll eventually make it to the highest caste in Hinduism: the cast of the Brahmans.
If a Brahman does really well, eventually he’ll be elevated out of a physical existence in to a state of semi-godhood. He’ll become a spirit. And if he does real well with that spirit life, he’ll be able to advance to the next higher spirit life.
His ultimate goal is to become absolutely spirit. Absolutely one with the Brahman of the universe. Achieving this state is called, “Nirvana,” which literally means, “blown away.” NIRVANA = BLOWN AWAY. Because at that point, the person looses all sense of consciousness and has been absorbed into the unconsciousness of the universe.
That’s Hindu heaven.
In terms of our mountain analogy today, the top of the mountain for a Hindu is to become one with the cosmic whole of the universe. Their path up the mountain involved multiple lifetimes of living well and dying well and being born again and again and again and again.
Hindu scholars estimate that, on average, it takes roughly 600,000 lifetimes to make it to Nirvana.
Next to Hinduism is its younger cousin belief system, BUDDHISM. Buddhism has roughly 360,000 million adherents today.
Buddhism was founded in 525 BC by a man named Siddhartha Gautama, a high Hindu caste member who was troubled about this idea of multiple reincarnations, and the fact that living for such a hope didn’t seem to be working for him, nor the people around him.
In sheer desperation Siddhartha mediated under a fig tree for 40 days and nights.
During this time of intense meditation, he became enlightened. And then for the next 50 years, he was known as “the enlightened one,” or “The Buddha.”
He began teaching others what have become the basic tenets of Buddhism which are “the Four Noble Truths.”
Under the fig tree the Buddha discovered that suffering is universal.
The very act of living brings about pain and suffering. If you are human, you will suffer.
So that’s the first noble truth: 1. Life is basically suffering
The second noble truth = 2. Craving is the root cause of suffering. After all, if we didn’t crave, if we didn’t want, if we didn’t care, then we wouldn’t feel deprived or lacking or like our lives weren’t exactly what we want them to be.
So, if we never wanted anything, if nothing ever affected us, then we wouldn’t feel like we had any problems in this world.
The third noble truth is that 3. The cure for suffering is to eliminate craving. That makes sense, doesn’t it? If the cause of suffering is craving, the way to get rid of suffering is to get rid of craving, huh?
The fourth great truth contains the solution: How does one someone eliminate craving? The enlightened one taught that4. You eliminate craving by following an eightfold path.
Some of you have heard of that.
THE EIGHTFOLD PATH is you need to have
1. Right views of life (which means you need to accept the four noble truths.)
2. Right resolve - you need to commit yourself to renouncing all pleasures of the senses. You have to become detached from this world.
3. Right speech: no lying, no slander, no cruel words.
4. Right behavior: no killing any living creatures, no stealing, no sexual misconduct
5. Right occupation: you need to seek gainful employment
6. Right effort: (this is a very important part of the process. ) You need to strive to rid yourself of all your bad qualities. You need to seek human perfection. You need to be on a constant crusade to rid your life of all bad qualities.
7. Right contemplation: you need to be alert and observant of all that’s going on around you in this life
8. Right meditation
Through following this eightfold plan, and through periods of intense meditation (a very important factor) the Buddha taught that finally a person could achieve a oneness with divinity that would mean a detachment from this world and its cares. - Which means an elimination of suffering, pain, and discomfort. (For yourself. And Buddha taught that the best way to help others over their suffering, pain, and discomfort was not to do anything about it, but to model for them what a perfectly detached life looked like, so that by seeing your example they too could be inspired to give up their cravings.)
There are several different strains of Buddhism, but the unifying factor, and what initially separated it from Hinduism was that it clearly outlined the problem of mankind, and it clearly laid out a plan to remedy the problem: this eightfold path which leads to total detachment to everything and every one.
Because of its emphasis on detachment, many strains of Buddhism don’t focus much on God or the afterlife, but those they do believe roughly what their Hindu brothers believe about becoming one with the universe by the transmigration of souls.
In mountaineering terms, the path of the Buddhist is a path of disengagement from the cares of this world through the Eightfold Path. And the mountain is either absolute disengagement, or for those who believe in an afterlife, it is Nirvana, like that of the Hindus.
That leads us to our third belief system. JUDAISM.
Judaism is considered one of the five classic world religions, although its relative number of adherents is smaller than even many cults nowadays. Current estimates are that there are roughly 16,000,000 Jews on earth today. 6,000,000 in the Unites States, 5,000,000 in Israel, and the rest scattered throughout the world.
As most of you know, Judaism is a race as much as it is a religions. Except for rare converts into Judaism, almost all Jews trace their roots back to Abraham and his call by God in 2000 BC.
Within modern Judaism there are actually three widely diverging branches:
Orthodox Jews (17%)
Conservative Jews (33%)
Reform Jews (22%)
Along with them are a large percentage of ethnic Jews who really don’t practice their religion much, if at all. These are loosely called
Unaffiliated Jews (28%)
Orthodox Jews and some conservative Jews believe that THE TANAKH, or what Christians would call, ‘The Old Testament” is the inspired word of God.
To an Orthodox Jew, God is all-powerful, eternal, and compassionate. To a Reform Jew, God is unknowable and reduced to a set of ethical speculations.
Because they believe the OT, Orthodox Jews believe in a physical resurrection after death, either into the presence of God, or into utter darkness, depending on whether you’ve been righteous or unrighteous. Reform Jews don’t believe in a conscious afterlife. They believe that salvation is about improving current society. So like Buddhism, theirs is a very here-and-now religion.
So the Orthodox Jewish mountain is a mountain of prayer and repentance and obedience to the Law of Moses. And the mountaintop is the presence of God. For Reform Jews, the there may not be anything of top of the mountain. The best one can hope for is to make a contribution to society while you’re a part of it.
We’ve already covered ISLAM over the last two weeks, but for those of you who weren’t here, real quickly, Islam has 1.2 billion adherents, and was founded by Mohammed in 610 AD after he heard what he believed was the voice of the angel Gabriel while he was meditating in a cave outside his hometown of Mecca.
Mohammed began teaching his animistic clansmen that there was only one God, not the 360 they were then worshiping. And that the true God’s name was Allah.
As we learned last week, tough Allah is said to be merciful, he tends to be a severe judge who requires strict obedience from his followers. Mohammed dictated what that obedience looked like in what Muslims call the Koran, their holiest book and guide to living.
Mohammed taught that Jesus was a prophet, though a lesser one. According to Islam, there have been approximately 124,000 prophets throughout history. Jesus has a special place in Islam, though, in that Muslims believe that Jesus will one day return and preach to the world again. There belief is that, upon his second coming, Jesus will appear as a Muslim, urge all of his followers to convert to Islam, and then he will unleash his sword, destroying all churches and synagogues, and killing all Christians and Jews who have not converted before he turns the leadership of the world back over to Mohammed.
Good Muslims practice the Five Pillars of Islam, which are
1. Reciting the shahada:
“There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.”
2. Praying five times a day towards Mecca.
3. Giving alms to the poor.
4. Fasting during Ramadan.
5. Taking a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Doing these things does not guarantee elevation to Paradise, but according to Mohammed, Allah is merciful. So, with a little of his grace thrown in, most Muslims will eventually make it there.
When Mohammed describes his mountaintop, it is full of water gardens and luscious foods and sensual delights, mostly appealing to males. The path up the mountain is five fold: recitation, prayer, alms, fasting, and pilgrimage.
Have I lost anybody?
Can you see how different all these systems are?
Their descriptions of heaven, and how to get there are all different. Which raises the question, why would God do something like this? Why would He go over to one side of the word and whisper to people, “This is what I’m like, and here’s how to get to me.” And then whisper a completely different thing to another section of the world?
Doesn’t seem very loving of Him, does it?
So, unless God really is a cosmic prankster who likes playing jokes on people, (in this case, jokes that either cost them huge efforts their whole lives long, or huge sorrow for all of eternity) unless God is a God of deception, then probably only one of these systems can be true, wouldn’t you agree?
It can’t be both Nirvana and heaven. It can’t be both couches and fruits and absolution oblivion of self into the cosmic order.
So far, which mountain seems most plausible to you? If five minutes from now you had to make a choice between these paths, which one would you take?
Before I ask you to do that, let me add one more: CHRISTIANITY.
Christianity is the largest eastern religion, being founded by a Jewish carpenter who grew up in Palestine and claimed to be the Son of God.
Jesus began his ministry in 30 AD and taught and healed for 3 1/2 years before being nailed to the Cross by a Roman centurion.
The Roman centurion was a professional executioner. He had seen hundreds of people die. After watching how Jesus faced death, this is what happened, When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” – Matthew 27:54
For three days Jesus’ followers mourned his death, because they’d seen it with their own eyes.
And then on the third day, according to eyewitnesses both secular and sacred, Jesus rose from the grave, an action that so motivated his followers that they went out and told the entire world about it, risking their lives in foreign lands to tell people about the truth of Christianity.
Unlike Hinduism, the Bible’s description of heaven is not a blending in with the whole. It’s become all that God intended you to be, accompanied by satisfying relationships and stimulating responsibilities. It’s a place of great pleasure, like Muslim Paradise, but it’s not a one dimensional place where pleasure is the only fulfilling sensation available.
And finally, the Bible teaches that God’s plan for reaching heaven isn’t based on what we can do to earn it, it’s based on grace.
You know what the truth of Christianity is?
Here’s how I try to summarize it when I’m asked that question.
If you want to understand Christianity, you have to understand three things:
1. The nature of love (it’s others centered)
2. That God is love (he wants better for you than you want for yourself)
3. The principle of substitution (explain)
He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. - Titus 3:5,6
(Because God is love, he doesn’t force us into relationship. He holds it out as a free gift. One he’ll never force, but one he offers with nail-scarred hands.)
Do vs. Done (use whiteboard) – Religion is spelled, “Do,” because you have to do and do and do and do, and there’s a problem with that – you can never do enough to earn your way into the favor of a perfect God. Christianity is spelled, “DONE” because Christ DID what was necessary for you – he paid for your sins on the Cross, which is why his last words there were, “It is finished.” – In Greek that word is “tetelestai,” literarlly, “paid in full.”
Which makes sense? Which is attractive to you? (line them out). Which holds logical sway in your mind? (expand) Which one seems like the way God would act towards His children?
Do any of these seem achievable to you? (Do you think you’ll get to Nirvana in 600,000 lifetimes? – The Bible says,
Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment. – Hebrews 9:27
Judaism’s promise wasn’t that they could get to heaven by good works. From the very first Jew, in Genesis 15:6 it says, Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. – Genesis 15:6
Abram was saved by faith in what God was going to do for him, not by what he was going to do for himself.
How plausible is Islam?
Do you think the Five Steps is the right path up the mountain?
The Bible says, He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. - Titus 3:5,6
Friends, you know what happens when someone asks Christ for his mercy? (describe – eternal transaction of forgiven sin, plus temporal fellowship with God/Holy Spirit, transformation, hope, direction, meaning, church) I have watched this happen over and over and over again.
And here’s Jesus’ promise. He says, …whoever comes to me, I will never drive away. – John 6:37
Unlike Allah, who may except you if you do the right thing, Jesus’ promise is, “I guarantee I’ll accept you, even if you haven’t done the right thing, if you’ll just come to me, if you’ll just trust me, if you’ll just let me in to lead your life.”
So how about it, friends? If you had to chose between these paths, and you do. Maybe not today, but someday, or the choice will be made for you.
If you had to choose, would you choose one of the good works paths, or the grace path?
Right now, Jesus is saying, “Choose me. You matter to me. I chose you. I gave my life to pay for your sins and demonstrate that my love is trustworthy and to show you just how valuable you are in my eyes. Come to me. I will never drive you away. Come.”
Bow your heads with me.
Friends, any of you want to come to Him right now? Any of you willing to choose to trust Christ? Raise your hand if you do, because I want to lead you in a prayer.
Prayer.
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