John 14:1-11 – Jesus is the only way to God – True or False?
Have you ever been confused by a person from another religion who tries to convince you that what they believe is right? We’ve got a big dog who is fairly protective of our yard. She has a huge bark and would be big enough to keep most people out of our yard. Well one day, Deanna was at home alone and saw some JW’s walking up the street. She wasn’t in any mood to enter into a lengthy discussion and so she slipped Ellie out into the yard and quietly closed the front door. Needless to say, she didn’t get a visit that week.
It is so confusing isn’t it when you are confronted to another belief. And it is frustrating when you don’t have all the answers – often we don’t even have as many as the person you are talking to. Well tonight, I want to try to answer the question – Jesus is the only way to God – True or False. This is the second in a series of messages. 3 weeks ago, we looked at the questions. Jesus is God’s Son – True or False. We looked at all the incredible things that he did and came to the clear conclusion that he was no ordinary man. No ordinary man could heal people like Jesus did. No ordinary man could have power over nature like Jesus did. No ordinary man, could have power over Satan and his demons like Jesus did. No ordinary man could know the future like Jesus did. And no ordinary man has ever come back to life after being dead like Jesus did. It was clear that Jesus was who he claimed to be – God’s one and only Son.
Listening to the Son of God
Now, that is nice, but what has it got to do with Me you say. Well if he is God’s Son, he comes with some amount of authority on the matter of God. Therefore if we want to know about God, it is worth hearing what Jesus says. If you have your bibles, there, I’d like you to turn with me to John 14. The setting is the Last Supper. The mood is somber because Jesus has just been predicting that he was about to be betrayed by one of the 12 sitting around the table sharing the last meal with Jesus. The disciples were questioning - is it me, is it me. I’m sure it won’t be me – It’s Simon – That’s who it is. They are starting to get a bit frightened. What would happen to them if Jesus was arrested. They’d just invested 3 years of their life following this teacher around and now he talks of going off and dying.
Some weren’t scared though. Peter stands up and says, I’ll never leave you – I’ll fight to the death and Jesus says – No you won’t. Fight – you won’t even have the guts to defend me before women. Yes I will says Peter. Oh Peter, you don’t know, but you’ll deny me 3 times before the sun rises. Talk about letting the wind out of your sails.
Now Jesus starts to speak – Read with me from vs 1-11.
These are well known verses – “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” But what are these saying … I am the way, the truth and the life. The way to what? The truth of what and what is this about the life. Look back a couple of verses. Jesus is talking about heaven. He says, in my Father’s house are many rooms … I’m going to prepare a room for you and will come back and get you. To this, Thomas asks, “Where are you going? How will we know how to get there?” How do we get to heaven? How do we get to God? Thomas asks
And Jesus says - through me … “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
So let’s recap … If Jesus is God’s Son (and 3 weeks ago, we found that all the evidence points to that fact) ... So, if He is God’s Son, then we need to listen to what he is saying about God and here in John 14, he is saying that the way to God is through Jesus.
Fantastic, point proved, case closed, let’s have the last song and go home …
The Difference between “One” and “Only”
But hang on a minute, we haven’t proved anything. We’ve just proved that Jesus is one way to get to God. Our question was, Is God the only way to God. If you went out and talked to any of your mates at work or neighbors, I’d bet that they would be more than happy to accept that Jesus is one way to get to God. But just you try saying that Jesus is the Only way to God. Being One way is no threat, Being the Only way is a huge threat.
People in today’s society demand that there be more options available to them than just Jesus Christ. Jesus is Okay for some, but what if I want to go a different way. They would point to the Hindus and say, what’s wrong with what they are doing. And then there’s the Buddhists and the Moslems, and the Bahai’s; and the Mormans; and the Masons; and the Leprechaun guild and the Way of the twinkle toes… etc etc etc.
People today want, no they demand that there be equal opportunity in the case of finding God and so we need to go on and consider the differences between Jesus and the other ways.
Many of you have heard the Buddhist parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant … Several people were arguing about God and different religions, and each one could not agree to a common answer. So they came to the Lord Buddha to find out what exactly God looks like.
The Buddha asked his disciples to get a large magnificent elephant and six blind men. He then brought the four blind to the elephant and told them to find out what the elephant would "look" like.
The first blind men touched the elephant leg and reported that it was like a tree. The second blind man touched the elephant tummy and said that an elephant was a wall. The third blind man touched the elephant ear and said that it was a fan. The fourth blind man hold on to the tail and described the elephant as a piece of rope. Another bumped into the tusk and upon investigating found a long smooth sharp thing – much like a spear. The last was gripped by the trunk of the elephant and likened it to a large snake. The Blind men all felt something different and started to argue.
The Buddha asked the people gathered around, : "Each blind man had touched the elephant but each of them gives a different description of the animal. Which answer is right?"
"All of them are right," was the reply.
"Why? Because everyone can only see part of the elephant. They are not able to see the whole animal. The same applies to God and to religions said Buddha. No one will see Him completely."
This parable is commonly used by people to prove that we can’t possibly claim to know all about God or to make a unique claim upon any such knowledge because like the blind men, our frame of reference is so small that we can only possibly see one little bit of the whole picture. So what a Hindu understands, although maybe a bit confused given that he is blind (A Fan instead of the Ear say) is valid and contains some truth. What the Moslem understands about God and salvation, likewise, might be a bit confused, but it has some truth in it and can’t be totally discounted.
Therefore, argue many people – we have to accept the viewpoints of other religions because within them is some truth grasped from their perspective.
A Real Elephant vs A Perception
This all sounds very nice until you realize one thing. The blind men, were not all right, they were all wrong. Imagine an elephant made up of tree trunks, walls, fans, snakes, ropes. The poor elephant – he’d be a laughing stock in the animal kingdom. What the blind men “saw” was not an elephant at all. They could not comprehend an elephant because they didn’t have the eyes for it. It was outside of their experience and because they were blind therefore was impossible for them to comprehend the detail as a part of the whole. For us it is even worse. If the blind men couldn’t properly comprehend something in the physical realm in which they live and operate every day, how are we going to comprehend God who exists in the spiritual realm. By our own attempts, we just can’t comprehend or fathom what God is like. He is outside of our realm of experience – completely outside.
The only way for us to see who God is - is if He reveals Himself to us. If he chooses to show himself to us. Yes it might still only be a part revelation, but it is a revelation. And this is where we do the full circle and come back to Jesus. We’ve already established that it is pretty obvious that Jesus was God’s Son. If you are not convinced – borrow the tape or video from three weeks back. And Jesus also says … “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” God has revealed himself to us – through his Son. Jesus. If we want to see what God looks like, we only have to look at Jesus.
Do you know, that this is one point at which Christianity differs from all other religions? No other religion claims to worship the Son of God who came down and lived on earth as a human. All other revelations are not based on God’s revelation in a person, but on man’s perception of God through visions, dreams, logic or tradition. Muhummad didn’t claim to be God’s Son, only a prophet who had a couple of dreams. Buddha didn’t claim to be God’s Son, he was just a pilgrim who was trying to reach enlightenment and came across his eight fold path through meditation. He looked within his own rational to come up with his plan. Hindus worship thousands of Gods, but they are all based on mythology and folklaw. When man kind relies on his own interpretation of fleeting glimpses of God or nature, all we end up with is an elephant that doesn’t look very much like an elephant. But Christianity is different. Because God choose to reveal himself to us in a form that we can see, hear and touch, our elephant becomes the real McCoy.
So let’s recap a bit before we talk about one more little concern you might have. Jesus is God’s Son and claims to be the only way to get to God. He does not claim to be one way, but the only way. He is not just a way to God, but He is the best way to find out about God, because in Jesus, God chose to reveal himself to us. We don’t rely on our blind impressions of something which is totally out of our realm of experience, but we have the real thing revealed so that we can see it, touch it, hear it. So we can get to know God through Jesus.
Effectiveness of the Route
But what about people who claim that they still can get to God by other means. Yes Jesus might be a way to God. In fact, he might be better than some others. He may even be the best way, but all roads still lead to Rome don’t they, even if some take longer than others.
The answer is that all roads may head towards God, but only one road reaches God. Bear with me and I’ll explain what I mean by this. But first, you have to understand the problem we face when we try to get to God. God by definition is a Perfect being. By Perfect, I mean – he is complete physically, spiritually, morally and in every other aspect. As a perfect being, he is perfectly good. By definition, a Perfect being can’t have any blemishes or spots. He has no bad characteristics. No bad motives. No bad attitudes. No bad hair days. God is perfect and where he lives is also perfect.
Our problem is that we are not perfect. – We do have blemishes and spots. We have bad characteristics, bad motives, bad attitudes and bad hair days. We choose to do things our way instead of God’s way. We are not always kind, generous or good. We put our own interests above others. These things, the Bible calls Sin. Because of these imperfections, God can’t have a relationship with us and he can’t let us into heaven where he lives. Why? Because if he did, it wouldn’t be perfect any more. We would contaminate it.
So you and I can never get to heaven – there is a huge gulf between where you are and where I am. To get to heaven, we either have to be perfect like God (which is impossible), or somehow get rid of this Sin. That is the only 2 ways over this chasm. And this is the task of all religions in this world – to get us over the chasm.
All religions (except 1), believe that you can cross the chasm by doing things. Be kind to your mother in law. Give to the poor. Offer sacrifices to an idol. Go to church. The Hindus believe that you can become one with God by building up enough good Kharma to escape the endless cycle of reincarnation. By building up enough brownie points in your 125 lives, you may just be able to get to God. The Buddhists also believe that you have to build up enough good Kharma to escape the cycle of reincarnation. They have developed an 8 fold path to direct followers to this end. It involves doing good things – Right knowledge, right thoughts, right speech, right action, right occupation, right effort, right awareness, right composure. If you can do enough good things, you’ll get there. Moslems have 5 things that need to be done to get to God’s paradise. They are their confession of faith in the one God – Allah, prayer – 5 times a day, giving to the poor, Fasting for the holy month – Ramadan, and making a pilgrimage to Meccah. Every religion tries to reach God by doing things.
By doing good things, people believe that you can tip the scales so much that you can earn your way to God. But there in is the problem. If you have 10 good things and 1 bad thing on your record, are you perfect? No you’re not. If you have 100 good things and only 1 bad thing are you perfect? No you are not. If you have a Gazillion good things and still only 1 bad thing are you perfect? NO YOU ARE NOT. Why? Because the good things can’t take the bad things away. They are still on your record and they mean that you are not perfect and therefore you still can’t get to God – you end up in the chasm.
So while many of these things are good and really pleasing to God, they aren’t enough. If you are following these paths – they may be heading you towards God, but they come to a screaming halt at the chasm and there is no way they can get you across because they don’t deal with the sin problem. The only way we can get rid of the sin is to have it forgiven and dealt with.
The Bible says that the only way your sin can be adequately dealt with is for you to pay the penalty for it. The penalty is death – eternal death. Great you say, – So if I die, then I can be forgiven and go to heaven. Yes you can be forgiven, except, you are now dead spiritually and it is too late for you to go to live in heaven. Not the good news you were hoping for …
But there is one way available – Only one - if a person without sin of their own, offers to die for you in your place. The penalty can be paid and you can be forgiven. The problem is that everyone has sinned and there are no perfect people around and even if there was, do you think they’d give up their chance to live with God forever? No way. That is where God steps in. He knew there was no hope for us, so he sent his Son, Jesus Christ to come down to earth. Jesus was God and so was perfect and he lived a perfect life. He lived and he died and offered to pay the penalty for my sin and your sin and everyone’s sin. We’re going to talk a lot more about that on Good Friday when we answer the question “Jesus died for you and me – True or False”
But this is what I want you to get tonight … All other religions come to a screaming halt at this chasm because their attempts at reaching God do not deal with our imperfections – our sin. They can’t get rid of sin and so although their road heads to God, it can never make it to God because it can’t get over the final hurdle. The only way to God is through Jesus, because he deals with the sin problem and gives us a bridge over the chasm. He died and offered a perfect sacrifice for our sin. We can get to God, because we can be forgiven. So Jesus is the only way to God - True, True, True. He is God’s revealed way. He is not a distorted elephant, he is the real thing and his road actually leads to a bridge that crosses the chasm while every other religion ends up at a dead end.
For some of you here tonight, this is the first time you have head these things and you want to know more. Some of you may be wanting to find out how you can be forgiven and cross that bridge that Jesus has made. In a moment, I’m going to ask everyone to close their eyes and I’m going to pray a prayer that you might want to pray to ask Jesus to come and forgive you. That’s all I’m going to ask you to do, but if you like, I’d love to talk to you further after the service to give you some more information or to just pray with you further. I’ll be down the front later and I’ll ask Pastor Roger and some of the youth group leaders to join me down here. Don’t leave this building without being convinced that Jesus is the only way to God.
Let’s bow our eyes and pray.
