ENGAGE
Here in the United States we worship the ability to make choices. We choose our political leaders, the kind of movies and TV show we watch, the kind of music we listen to, the products we buy at the store and even the people we associate with. And if you have any doubts about our addiction with the ability to make choices, just go to the Cheesecake Factory. If you’ve been there recently you may have been overwhelmed by their menu, which is really not a menu; it’s actually a 21-page book with 250 different items to chose from.
So it’s not entirely surprising that when it comes to our religion that people want to make their own choices. Therefore, when Jesus claims that He is the way, the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him, most people find that to be “too exclusive” and “intolerant”. And surprisingly that is even true among some of those who claim to be born again believers in Jesus.
A Barna Group survey completed in 2011 found that 59% of adults agreed with the statement that “Christians and Muslims worship the same God even though they have different names and beliefs regarding God”. And 43% agreed that “the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths”. But what is really troubling to me is the fact that 26% of those who identify as born-again Christians believe that it doesn’t matter what faith you follow because they all teach the same lessons and 40% indicated that they believe that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
TENSION
That leads me to believe that in a group like the one we have assembled here this morning, there are likely many of you who are struggling with the question that I’m going to address today:
Is Jesus really the only way?
Like the question we covered last week – How can a loving God send anyone to hell? – I think we tend to ask that question, not so much because we don’t personally believe that Jesus is the only way to God, but rather because we think of all the people we know who seem to be really good people, but who have not put their faith in Jesus. And we just want to believe that for them that perhaps there is some other path they have taken that also leads to God.
Some of you may have heard of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. There are a lot of different versions out there, but they all tell basically the same story.
Six blind men visit the palace of the king and encounter an elephant for the first time. Each touches the animal and then announces what he has discovered.
The first blind man puts out his hand and touches the side of the elephant. "How smooth! An elephant is like a wall." The second blind man puts out his hand and touches the trunk of the elephant. "How round! An elephant is like a snake." The third blind man puts out his hand and touches the tusk of the elephant. "How sharp! An elephant is like a spear." The fourth blind man puts out his hand and touches the leg of the elephant. "How tall! An elephant is like a tree." The fifth blind man reaches out his hand and touches the ear of the elephant. "How wide! An elephant is like a fan." The sixth blind man puts out his hand and touches the tail of the elephant. "How thin! An elephant is like a rope."
An argument ensued, each blind man thinking his own perception of the elephant was the correct one. The king, awakened by the commotion, called out from the balcony. "The elephant is a big animal," he said. "Each man touched only one part. You must put all the parts together to find out what an elephant is like." Enlightened by the king’s wisdom, the blind men reached agreement. "Each one of us knows only a part. To find out the whole truth we must put all the parts together."
This story is often used to illustrate the idea that every religious faith represents just one part of the larger truth about God. Each one has only a piece of the truth that ultimately leads to God by a different route. On the surface that sounds very reasonable, but this morning we’re going to see the obvious flaws in using the parable in that way and show why it is just not possible for many different paths to lead to the same God and why, in fact, Jesus is the only way to God.
TRUTH
6 REASONS I CAN BE CONFDIENT JESUS IS THE ONLY WAY
1. Conflicting ideas can’t all be true
Let’s look at the first of many fatal flaws in the parable of the blend men and the elephant. That parable presumes that Christians reject the idea that there are other roads to God because they are blind to those other religions. If they had just taken the time to check out the entire “elephant”, then they would have seen that they were just part of a larger whole in which all religions are just different roads to the same God.
This idea that there are more than one equally valid ways to God is known as pluralism. But as I’m going to demonstrate this morning, the concept doesn’t stand up to even the most basic logic and reason, either when it comes to religion or to any other part of our lives.
Unfortunately, our education system has contributed to this idea that somehow there can be different versions of the truth or that something can be true for you and not for me. I can remember when our children were probably in first or second grade and were informed that their teachers were using “inventive spelling” in the classroom. Instead of being held accountable for correct spelling, the students were encouraged to write and to just spell words however they wanted and the teachers would not deduct any points for misspelled words. The theory was that this would encourage the kids to write more since they knew they wouldn’t be penalized for wrong spelling. I kid you not!
But the truth is that there is really only one correct way to spell “dog” or “cat” or “and” or any other word that appeared in their writing. And just because the teacher didn’t mark it wrong or take off points doesn’t mean the word was spelled correctly, regardless of what the teacher or the student might have thought.
Or let’s think about math. If I ask you how much 2 + 2 equals most of you would hopefully reply “4”, But what if someone were to say, “well I think it’s 6” and someone else claimed that the answer is 8? Only one of those answers is correct, right? That is of course unless you are using the “new math” that some schools use where the questions are something more like this: “If there are 10 birds on a telephone line and 4 of them fly off, how do you feel about that?”
Or let’s suppose that you aren’t feeling well so you go to the doctor and after running some tests he tells you that you have cancer. But you want to get another opinion so you go to the other doctor in that same office and she tells you that you don’t have cancer. They can’t both be right can they? Certainly you’re hoping that Amanda is right and Gerald is wrong, but either you have cancer or you don’t. Only one diagnosis is true.
So in almost every area of our lives, we have this innate understanding that competing or contradicting ideas can’t both be true at the same time. But for some reason, when it comes to our religion, people are willing to make an exception.
One way people justify that thinking is to claim that the differences between religions really aren’t all that significant. And it is true that there are some similarities. They all recognize a spiritual dimension and they all have moral codes that are similar. And when it comes Judaism and Islam there are even more similarities to Christianity, like the belief in one god and even some common history.
But even though there are some similarities, the differences are huge. In a moment, I’m going to go into much more detail about the most important difference – how these different religions view Jesus. And the fact is that among the world’s major religions there are some widely varying views about who Jesus is.
Or think about how different religions view God. Pantheism, which is the basis of many eastern religions like Hinduism, as well as for the present day New Age movement, holds that there is divinity in everything rather than believing in a personal deity who is separate from His creation. Although I will admit that there is certainly some mystery when it comes to the nature of God, I think most rational people would agree that He cannot be both of those things. Either God is a personal transcendent being who is worthy of our worship, or He is not, in which case we end up believing that objects like the stars, rocks and crystals have the ability to influence our lives and we worship the creation rather than the Creator, just like Paul wrote about in Romans 1. Only one of those can be true about God.
Probably all of you know somebody who has said something like this: “That’s fine if you want to believe that Jesus is the only way to God, but I believe that all religions actually lead to God. So you choose your way and I’ll choose mine.” But think about what that person is saying. Essentially he or she is saying that Christianity is true while at the same time denying its central tenant, which is that Jesus is the only way.
If we look at this whole idea that all religions are just different paths to the same God logically and rationally, then we must conclude that either all religions are wrong or that one of them is true and the others are wrong. They can’t all possibly be true given the fact that there are such significant contradictions among them.
So it’s not surprising at all that almost every single major religion claims that they are the right way to God and that all other ways are wrong. So that means that so far, all I’ve done is prove that not all religions can be true at the same time, but I haven’t yet shown why Jesus is the only way to God. We’ll spend our remaining time doing just that.
2. God’s revelation
The second of many fatal flaws in the parable of the blind men and the elephant is that the elephant, who is supposed to represent God, doesn’t speak. So in order for the blind men to understand what the elephant is like they go groping about in the dark. But God does speak. So instead of trying to learn about God through our own efforts, we can discover God through His own self-revelation.
As we saw last year in our study of the Old Testament, from the time that Adam and Eve sinned, God has been revealing His plan to provide a Messiah who would save people from their sins. He has constantly been revealing that plan in a number of ways – through His creation (Romans 1:19-20), through His Word, and through His Holy Spirit. But the final and clearest revelation of that plan came through Jesus:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
(Hebrews 1:1–3 ESV)
Jesus is the fullest revelation of God that we have. When He came to earth and put on a body of flesh, He demonstrated what God is like and confirmed what God had been revealing to man about salvation since the day Adam and Eve sinned.
But not only did Jesus come to give us a fuller revelation of God, He was also the means by which God was going to carry out the plan He had put into motion from before the creation of the world. That is why only a few hours before He went to the cross, Jesus spoke these familiar words:
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
(John 14:6 ESV)
When Philip still didn’t understand what Jesus meant by those words, Jesus gave him a further clarification:
Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
(John 14:8–9 ESV)
So because God, in the form of Jesus, does reveal that He is the only way to God, we don’t have to go around blindly searching for other ways to God because God had told us plainly that Jesus is the only way.
3. The nature of Jesus
Every religion has a different view of who Jesus is:
• To the Jews, He is an imposter
• Muslims believe Him to be a human prophet
• Many religions consider Him to be a good moral teacher or one of the many incarnations of God, like the Hindus
• Mormons believe He is merely the physical son of God, who as a man ascended to deity in the same way they believe they can also do.
• Jehovah’s witnesses see Jesus as God’s first creation, a kind of “super angel” distinct from the Creator.
But the Bible reveals to us that Jesus is fully God and that he took on flesh and became man in order to save us from our sins. Many people have maintained that Jesus never claimed to be God, but their assertions fly in the face of what we see in the Bible.
On one hand a number of people worshiped Him (Matthew 14:33, 28:17; Luke 24:52; John 9:38, 20:28) and Jesus never once told them not to do so. Were he merely a rabbi or a good Jew, He would have never accepted the worship of man.
And on the other hand, the Jewish leaders accused Him of blasphemy because He claimed to be God. So Jesus was killed because those religious leaders were convinced that Jesus had claimed to be God.
When Jesus says that He is the way, the truth and the life and that no one come to the Father except through Him, there are only two possibilities. Either He is who He says He is and therefore what He says is true or else He is a liar, a lunatic or a legend, in which case you can believe nothing of what he said. He is either God in the flesh or He is a fraud. He can’t possibly be just a moral man or a good teacher or even a prophet.
4. The nature of man
Every religion other than Biblical Christianity teaches that man is basically good and that through his own good works he is capable of earning or meriting his way to God.
But the Bible tells a different story from cover to cover. Because of his sin nature, man has a long history of rejecting God and choosing to live according to his own ways. And in both the Old and New Testaments we consistently see what man’s heart looks like from God’s perspective. Let me give you just once example from each:
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
(Jeremiah 17:9 ESV)
The apostle Paul not only reveals what man’s heart is like, but he also describes the consequences of man’s evil heart:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
(Ephesians 2:1–3 ESV)
If we are intellectually honest, we have to admit that the picture of man painted by the Bible is much more realistic than the idea that man is basically good and that He somehow deserves or merits God’s favor. And because a dead person is incapable of brining himself back to life, we have to rely upon God doing that for us. And among all the religions of the world, only Biblical Christianity provides a plausible way for God to deal with the wickedness of the human heart. It is only through the sinless life, death and resurrection of Jesus that we can be made alive spiritually.
5. Testimony of the apostles
The apostles and others who had been with Jesus and had observed His life, death and resurrection certainly believed His claim that He was the only way to God. When he got up and preached on the day of Pentecost, Peter confirmed that he certainly believed that Jesus was the only way:
And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
(Acts 4:12 ESV)
Most of the apostles, as well as many other disciples, died horrible deaths because they continued to testify all the way to the end of their lives that Jesus was the only way to God.
But, you may ask at this point, “Don’t many of the other religions have their own sacred documents that claim that their way is the only way to God?” And the answer is yes, they do. “So why should believe what the Bible has to say over those other religious writings?” Hopefully we did a pretty good job of talking about the reliability of the Bible in the first sermon in this series, but there is one more reason that proves that Jesus is the only way. And it’s probably the most important…
6. The resurrection
This is the one event that sets apart Biblical Christianity from every other religion in the world. Every other great religious leader in the world, whether that be Mohammad, or Joseph Smith, or James Jones is dead and still in the grave and Jesus is alive.
The apostle Paul certainly understood how crucial the resurrection is to our faith:
And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
(1 Corinthians 15:14ESV)
But the good news is that Jesus is alive. That is a fact that was testified to by over 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus and by both Biblical and extra-biblical historical accounts. And ultimately it is the resurrection that proves that Jesus’ claim to be the only way to God is true. A lot of other people made that claim throughout history, but He is the only one who is still alive today.
APPLICATION
So what does this mean for me? Let me quickly share…
2 IMPORTANT IMPLICATIONS FOR MY LIFE
1. I need to go “all in” for Jesus
Have you ever watched a poker match on TV or a movie where there is a big poker game? Almost always there is a crucial point in that game where one of the players goes “all in” That is the point in the game where the player is so confident that he has a winning hand that he is willing to risk all the money he has left. He will either lose everything he has or win the game based on the results of that decision.
I believe there are some of you here this morning who need to do that with Jesus. If the surveys I talked about earlier are correct, there are likely some of you here this morning, maybe even quite a few of you, who have put your faith in Jesus, but you’ve never really gone “all in”. You’ve kind of hedged your bets, so to speak.
You believe in Jesus, but only as one of many possible paths to God, so maybe you still dabble in things like astrology, or yoga, or crystals. Or maybe you think that Jesus is your way, but that there are other ways that are OK for others. Or maybe you’ve gotten caught up in the idea that if you want to have a relationship with God that you still need to somehow earn or merit it through your good works.
When Jesus said that He is the only way to God, He meant it. So if you’re not all in with Jesus this morning, you need to make the decision to do that today.
2. Exercise “Biblical tolerance”
Today in our culture it seems like the most valued character trait is “tolerance”. While the word “tolerance” is never found in the Bible, there is certainly a concept of tolerance found there. But it is far different from the way the world largely defines the term.
When it comes to religion, our culture largely defines tolerance like this. [Show COEXIST bumper sticker]. In our culture, tolerance means that all different viewpoints are right. But in my experience, many of the people preaching tolerance are some of the most intolerant people I know, especially when it comes to the idea that Jesus is the only way to God. But as we’ve seen clearly this morning, it’s just not possible for all religious ideas to be right because they contradict each other in so many significant ways.
So then what do I mean by Biblical tolerance? It means that I hold to the one truth that Jesus is the only way to God, while still maintaining respect and dignity for those who disagree. It means that, like Jesus prayed for me, that I can be in the world, but not of the world. It means that I can still be friends with people who have different religious beliefs or those whose lives don’t line up with what the Bible teaches. It means that I should treat those from different cultures who don’t talk like me or dress like me with respect. It means that I pray for and serve others in the name of Jesus regardless of what they believe.
INSPIRATION
Those of us who believe Jesus when He said that He is the only way are often accused of being “narrow minded”. But, based on what Jesus said, we ought to wear that accusation as a badge of honor:
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
(Matthew 7:13–14 ESV)
But the more important question is not whether this is a narrow-minded position, but rather whether it is the right position. And based on what we’ve learned this morning I’m 100% confident that it is and I pray that you are too.
[Prayer]
ACTION
As you probably noted, the songs that we sang earlier focused on the fact that Jesus is the only one we need because He is the only way to the Father. And so as we close, we’re going to sing a couple more songs that reinforce that idea. As we sing “No Other Name” and “Christ is Enough”, my prayer is that you’ll really think about the words as you sing them and use these songs to proclaim your faith in Jesus alone.
If you are one of those people who have never really gone “all in” for Jesus and God is leading you to do that today, we’d love to talk to you more. Or maybe God is putting something else on your heart today and you have some other decision that you would like to make or maybe you just need someone to pray with you. So during the last song, I’ll be at the back along with some of our Elders and we invite you to come and share what God has put on your heart.
Discussion Questions for the Bible Roundtable
1. What are some things that people do or think in their lives that might indicate that they are not “all in” for Jesus?
2. How would you try to explain to someone that not all religions can be different ways to the same God?
3. For you, what is the most convincing proof that Jesus’ claim to be the only way to God is true?
4. What are some practical ways to practice “Biblical tolerance”?
