A. As you are well aware, we live in a day that can be described as an age of pluralism.
1. Pluralism has many meanings, but one meaning has to do with there being many different options from which we can choose.
2. Just like there are many channel choices in cable television (200 or 300 or more different channels), similarly when it comes to religion, people have a lot of options.
3. There are a lot of different Christian churches - there are a lot of different churches that fit into the general category of Christendom.
4. And then there are many other religions other than Christianity, and all of those are options in today’s world.
5. We live in a land and an age with many choices.
B. But in addition to having many choices, pluralism also promotes the idea that truth is subjective.
1. Subjective truth means that when I go into an ice cream parlor that has 31 different flavors I can choose whatever I want and declare that it is the right one for me.
2. And, of course, I choose chocolate peanut butter, because it is the best.
3. But maybe you, not knowing how good chocolate peanut butter tastes, choose plain vanilla.
4. But each of us is free to do whatever we like - not only can we choose the flavor we like, but we also can mix and match flavors into our own concoction.
C. All that is fine to do with ice cream, but sadly, that is the same thing that people try to do with religion.
1. People say, “Well, I mix and I match. And so I take a little bit of Christianity, and I take a little bit of eastern religion, and I add my own ideas with a little dab of humanism and a fragment of Scripture, and I come up with my own concoction that is just for me. And it really is exactly what I want, and what I want doesn’t have to be what you want because you can do your thing. I can do my thing. And we are both right and are both okay.”
2. And that’s the era in which we are raising our children, and that’s the mood of this generation.
D. With that in mind, consider this piece written by Kevin DeYoung, in his Restless and Reformed blog, where he describes what people think about Jesus today and how Jesus is often shaped into their own desires and ideas.
1. There’s the Republican Jesus—who is against tax increases and activist judges, and is for family values and owning firearms.
2. There’s Democrat Jesus—who is against Wall Street and Wal-Mart, and is for reducing our carbon footprint and printing money.
3. There’s Therapist Jesus—who helps us cope with life’s problems, heals our past, tells us how valuable we are and not to be so hard on ourselves.
4. There’s Starbucks Jesus—who drinks fair trade coffee, loves spiritual conversations, drives a hybrid, and goes to film festivals.
5. There’s Open-minded Jesus—who loves everyone all the time no matter what (except for people who are not as open-minded as you).
6. There’s Touchdown Jesus—who helps athletes run faster and jump higher than non-Christians and determines the outcomes of Super Bowls.
7. There’s Martyr Jesus—a good man who died a cruel death so we can feel sorry for him.
8. There’s Gentle Jesus—who was meek and mild, with high cheek bones, flowing hair, and walks around barefoot, wearing a sash (while looking very German).
9. There's Hippie Jesus—who teaches everyone to give peace a chance, imagines a world without religion, and helps us remember that ‘all you need is love.’
10. There’s Yuppie Jesus—who encourages us to reach our full potential, reach for the stars, and buy a boat.
11. There’s Spirituality Jesus—who hates religion, churches, pastors, priests, and doctrine, and would rather have people out in nature, finding ‘the god within’ while listening to ambiguously spiritual music.
12. There’s Platitude Jesus—he’s good for Christmas specials, greeting cards, and bad sermons, inspiring people to believe in themselves.
13. There’s Revolutionary Jesus—who teaches us to rebel against the status quo, stick it to the man, and blame things on ‘the system.’
14. There’s Guru Jesus—a wise, inspirational teacher who believes in you and helps you find your center.
15. There’s Boyfriend Jesus—who wraps his arms around us as we sing about his intoxicating love in our secret place.
16. There’s Good Example Jesus—who shows you how to help people, change the planet, and become a better you.
17. “And then,” DeYoung says, “there’s Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God. Not just another prophet. Not just another Rabbi. Not just another wonder-worker. He was the one they had been waiting for: the Son of David and Abraham’s chosen seed; the one to deliver us from captivity; the goal of the Mosaic law; Yahweh in the flesh; the one to establish God’s reign and rule; the one to heal the sick, give sight to the blind, freedom to the prisoners and proclaim Good News to the poor; the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world...This Christ is not a reflection of the current mood or the projection of our own desires. He is our Lord and God. He is the Father’s Son, Savior of the world, and substitute for our sins – more loving, more holy, and more wonderfully terrifying than we ever thought possible.” (Kevin DeYoung, Who Do You Say That I Am? from his DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed blog, posted 6-10-09)
E. In our story from the life of Peter that I want us to look at today, we will witness Jesus taking a stand for who He really is.
1. As Jesus takes that stand and refuses to allow the world to push Him into its mold, we see the reaction of both the crowds and Peter himself.
2. Let’s turn our attention to the story found in John chapter 6.
F. Here in chapter 6, Jesus had just fed the multitude with five loaves and two fish.
1. In verse 15 we read: Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. (Jn. 6:15)
2. They believed that a king would be one who would bring them much bread, just as Moses did, and here was somebody who could speak the Word, and the bread came from nowhere, literally out of thin air.
3. And so they said to themselves, “This is the kind of man we want to rule over us.”
4. Imagine a presidential candidate who could create bread out of nothing just by the spoken word – both parties would elect him or her in a New York second!
5. So there were people who loved Jesus because they said, “We like His miracles,” but then Jesus would say some things that turned people off, and He really turned them off here in John 6.
G. Look at what Jesus said to the crowd starting in verse 48: 48 “I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. (John 6:48-55)
1. Wow! You want to talk about hard and confusing teaching!
2. The people to whom Jesus spoke knew the Old Testament where it said that you were forbidden to eat and drink blood and canabalism was a sign and consequence of God rejection and discipline.
a. Cannibalism seemed so inconsistent with the rest of the Bible - what could Jesus possibly mean?
b. Now if they had thought about it, they would have recognized that Jesus was talking figuratively.
c. There are some people who are sacramentalists who believe that we literally eat His flesh and drink His blood during communion.
3. But we know that Jesus was not talking literally, not just because the Old Testament forbids the eating and drinking of blood, and forbids cannibalism, but because Jesus said in verses 56 and 57: 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. (Jn. 6:56-57)
4. These concepts are full of meaning and we could discuss them at great length, but I must hurry on to the rest of the story and the purpose of this sermon.
H. In verse 63 Jesus clarified it even more, saying: 63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (Jn. 6:63)
1. These words and concepts were too much for the crowd.
2. Verse 66 says: 66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
3. Members of the larger crowd who had been following Jesus and had heard him speak said, “We can’t take it. This is too much for us” and so they left Jesus and walked away.
4. Imagine that, after all they had seen and heard, they chose to walk away from Jesus!
5. They chose to pin their hopes and lives on someone or something else!
I. With all of that background, we have arrived at the moment from Peter’s life that I want us to see and be inspired by.
1. The Bible says: 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” (Jn. 6:67-69)
2. When some people read that question of Jesus: “Do you want to go away as well?” they read into the verse a note of hurt and fear – like, “you guys aren’t going to leave me too, are you?”
a. But that is certainly not my view of Jesus nor my view of this moment.
b. Jesus was offering them the same option as the crowds – you too can walk away from Me.
3. But I can imagine the initial exasperation in Peter’s voice.
a. It is as if he is dumbfounded by the question.
b. Peter was likely thinking, “What? Did I just hear you correctly, Jesus? Did you say that if we, your disciples, are offended by your words, you would allow us to walk away from you?”
c. It is like Jesus says, “Yes, Peter, you heard correctly. Even after all you have been through and all you have given up, you are free to walk away, if you want.”
4. When you think about it, the freedom to walk away from God is a scary thing, but it also a precious thing.
a. God has given us the gift of choice.
b. Really, that is the nature of love – love does not coerce, or demand, or insist.
5. God allows us to make the choice – even the choice of walking away and rejecting His love.
6. And if we walk way, God doesn’t chase after us saying, “I’m sorry, please don’t walk away, I will change my commands according to your desires, just please don’t leave me.”
a. God will let us leave, but that doesn’t mean He will give up on us.
b. God has been described as the “Hound of Heaven,” and if you know how relentlessly a hound will chase a fox, then you know how relentlessly God pursues us.
c. If we have walked away from God, He will continue to pursue us ever calling for us to return to Him.
J. Let’s go back to Peter’s reply to Jesus’ question: “Lord, to whom shall we go?”
1. Peter well knew the options available to him.
2. He knew the Jewish religion with its powerbrokers of the Scribes and Pharisees.
3. Peter knew about the wild mythologies of the Greeks and the materialism and emperor worship of the Romans.
4. But what comfort and help did any one of these various systems, traditions and philosophies offer to a soul weary world, sick with sin?
5. Peter had come to believe and to know that Jesus was the real deal and he did not want to walk away from him.
6. Let’s give Peter an A+ on that one.
K. And if not Jesus, then to where or to whom would we turn?
1. Shall we turn to the atheists and skeptics of our world? What hope do they offer?
2. Shall we turn to humanism or any other manmade “ism”?
3. Shall we turn to the ritualists of religion – they offer rites and rules, but that doesn’t satisfy our soul’s passion for the living God.
4. Shall we turn to the great religions of the East? Does Confucius or Buddha or Muhammed really offer anything that satisfies the soul like the Christ the Holy One of God?
5. We can try every door out there other than Jesus, but every other door opens on despair and if void of God’s truth.
L. Let’s talk for just a minute about why Jesus truly is the truth, by noticing three important characteristics of truth.
M. First of all, truth is consistent or better yet, exclusive.
1. By that I mean that Peter realized that if they stayed with Jesus and what Jesus taught, then obviously they were saying “no” to a host of other teachers.
2. A truth is not only consistent within itself, but there’s no such thing as believing, as some people do, that all of the religions of the world could be right - that is not possible.
3. If you follow the path of Buddha you do not follow the path of Jesus because those two paths are diametrically opposed and contradictory to one another.
4. If you are a Hindu you believe that salvation comes through the absorption of the soul into the “ultimate” like a drop that is thrown into the ocean and loses its identity - and that’s the goal to which you work if you are a Hindu.
5. Buddhism was born because Buddha did not like Hinduism.
a. He did not feel that it answered his deepest questions.
b. So Buddha said that what you do to obtain salvation is you go through a torturous path that includes seeking the truth and self-denial.
c. In fact, Buddhism does not even believe in God. Hinduism has 330 million different gods.
6. So you see, it is impossible to be into both Hinduism and Buddhism.
7. And then you have the teaching of Islam through the prophet Muhammad.
a. How is salvation obtained in the Islamic faith? It is obtained by trying to keep the Koran and the things that Muhammad taught.
b. Unlike following Jesus, you should not do what Muhammad did because He did one thing and said another.
c. But what you must do is to try to follow his teachings as best you can, and then maybe you will obtain some kind of undefined salvation.
8. Nobody can follow those different paths and say that they are following the same path.
a. Jesus Christ’s teaching cannot be combined with that of all of the religious leaders of the world – there is little common ground of significance.
9. However, truth is consistent and exclusive.
a. Peter said, “To whom shall we go?” If we say yes to You, Lord Jesus, we’ve got to say no to the scribes and the Pharisees and the esoteric religions because they are teaching something different.
b. If we say “yes” to You, then we must say “no” to a host of other alternatives.
N. Secondly, truth is universal.
1. Peter said: “We have come to believe that You are the holy one. We have come to believe that You are the One that gives eternal life.”
2. We’re talking about truth that is not simply cultural.
a. Jesus is not just Jesus for people of the Middle East.
b. He is not just the Jesus for the people who live in the Western World.
3. If He is the holy one of God, and speaks words of eternal life, His teachings are applicable to all who inhabit planet earth.
4. They are universally true.
a. It’s not like going into an ice cream parlor and selecting the one that means the most to you. This is not the same.
5. When Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no man comes to the Father but by Me” (Jn. 14:6), He was excluding all other people who teach that they are the way to God.
a. “No man comes unto the Father,” said Jesus, “but by Me.”
b. By that statement, if it is true, and we believe that it is, all other religions are disqualified.
6. Truth is universal – we must look at religious truth as you look at mathematics.
a. Now nobody says, at least nobody who is sane, says, “Well, you know, 2 and 2 is equal to 4, but that’s just culturally American.
b. That’s what we were taught in our schools, but if you go to the schools in the Middle East or the Far East, you’ll find that 2 plus 2 is equal to 5, and if you think about it a lot, you can make 2 plus 2 equal to 5.”
7. Do you remember Lewis Carroll in The Looking Glass – Alice in Wonderland? She was able to believe six contradictions before breakfast. Just imagine that!
8. Jesus and His teaching are the truth, because He and they are universal.
a. What He taught is universally true to all cultures and to all nations, and that’s why we are reaching out to the unreached people of the world.
b. We “Go” because without Christ there is no other way to God – period!
O. Third, there is another characteristic of truth - It is not only universal and consistent, but it is also based on evidence.
1. Peter said, “We have come to believe, and to know that You are the holy one of God.”
2. If you were with us when I preached on Peter’s great confession a few weeks ago, then you know that when Peter made that astounding declaration that Jesus was the Son of the living God, Jesus said, “Flesh and blood did not reveal it to you,” because even with all of the evidence that there is, unless the Holy Spirit is involved, and unless we add faith with reason, we will never accept Him as our Savior.
3. There is plenty of evidence that Jesus is who He is, but that doesn’t remove the need for faith.
4. The evidence includes the miracles Jesus performed, the power of His teaching, and the impact He has had on individuals and on history as a whole.
P. Added to that evidence is the way Jesus has fulfilled all prophesies about Himself and His life except for the last – that He is coming again.
1. So many others have made great claims and promises that they could not bring to fruition.
2. Back in the days when Communism was popular, when the revolution took place in 1918 over in what used to be known as the Soviet Union, Lenin made some fantastic claims.
a. Today you can see Lenin’s body in a mausoleum right there in Red Square.
b. Lenin isn’t delivering on any claims he made.
c. When he was alive, he said, for example, that when Communism takes over there’s going to be bread in every household. That’s quite a claim.
d. But he never had the nerve to say, “I am the Bread of Life. He that comes to Me shall never hunger, and he that believes on Me shall never thirst.”
3. Think about the claims of Adolph Hitler, who said some fantastic things about Germany’s place in the sun and the Thousand Year Reich.
a. But even Hitler, as a mad man, never had the nerve to say, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by Me.”
4. Buddha died saying, “I am still seeking light.”
a. He never had the nerve to say, “I am the light of the world. He that believes on Me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.”
5. There are New Age gurus that you can plug into for some sum of money, and they will tell you that someday you are going to be reincarnated, and you’re going to keep being recycled until you finally get it right.
a. But they don’t have the gall to say, “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever lives and believes on Me shall never die.”
6. Freud thought that psychotherapy would answer the cruel dilemmas of emotional and spiritual existence.
a. But Freud never had the nerve to say, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled. Neither let it be afraid.”
b. Nor could Freud say with authority to people struggling with guilt and memories and a dampened conscience that continually haunts them, “Your sins be forgiven you.”
Q. And so, if we don’t follow Jesus, then whom shall we follow?
1. Yes, the teachings of Christ are challenging, and are limiting, but they are also life-giving and His truth sets us free.
2. Who else claims to the bread of life, the light of the world, the resurrection and the life, and gives us peace and forgiveness?
3. Who else has the words of eternal life and has the ability to back them and bring them to fruition?
R. Let’s end with something from the comic strip “Peanuts: Here we see Lucy and Linus looking out the window at a steady downpour of rain.
1. Lucy says: “Boy, look at it rain. What if it floods the whole world?”
2. Linus replied confidently, “It will never do that…In the ninth chapter of Genesis, God promised Noah that would never happen again, and the sign of the promise is the rainbow.”
3. Lucy, with a relieved smile, said, “You've taken a great load off my mind.”
4. Linus concluded with an air of truth: “Sound theology has a way of doing that.”
S. I hope sound theology about Jesus gives us clarity of mind and peacefulness in our souls.
1. Thankfully, we have Jesus, the Son of God, our Lord and Savior to turn to and to live for.
2. There is none other like Him - we know that He is the way, the truth, and the life and that through Him we are on the path to the Father.
Resources:
The Life of Peter, F.B. Meyer, Edited by Lance Wubbels, Emerald Books, 1996
The Apostle Peter, James Houck, Xulon Press, 2009
Nowhere Else to God, Sermon by Erwin Lutzer
