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2023-05-30 Are all religions compatible with Jesus (full sermon)
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The speaker discusses the idea of a spiritual trail mix and the importance of understanding why different religions have similarities. They argue that while different beliefs may sound similar, it is essential to recognize the differences between religions. They use Christianity, Islam, and Rabbinic Judaism as examples and highlight their contrasting beliefs about Jesus. The speaker emphasizes that Christianity is exclusive in its belief that Jesus is the only way to salvation, while other religions do not share this belief. They argue that exclusivity is not meant to be mean-spirited, but rather a reflection of the truth of Christianity. The speaker concludes by stating that a relationship with Jesus is too beautiful to be mixed with other beliefs and urges listeners to experience the love of God for themselves. Tonight, I just want to talk to you guys about something, because I've talked a bunch of times now about this idea of a spiritual trail mix, and I really should bring some trail mix one of these nights for this, just to drive it home, and because I'm probably just – everybody's just like, I'm hearing nothing but trail mix, Chris, and I just want to eat some trail mix now. So I totally understand that, but I think that it's relevant to talk briefly about why this matters in a sense that, you know, we've talked about it in a bit of a sense like, okay, yeah, we can't just be picking and choosing from all of these different religions. We have to be, yes, dedicated to Jesus alone. But if we're honest, and I've gotten this question many times, you know, a lot of the different beliefs sound very similar, so why does it matter, you know, if they're already all kind of the same? So I want to talk about that tonight. I want to talk about why so many religions have similarities. Is Christianity compatible with other religions, and then can I believe in Christianity and other spiritual practices or religions? And I want to get a little bit kind of practical with some of these things tonight, but I think it's a topic that many of us feel strongly about as we want to include people. We want and love people of various ideas and life journeys, but I think what we need to challenge ourselves with is, is religious compatibility real, and is it the most loving, peaceable, and unifying thing we can strive for? But then also, you know, does inclusivity of all these ideas, does that mean what we think it means? Challenging that as well, because I believe Christianity is available to all, and I feel that makes it incredibly inclusive. I also firmly believe that it's not only a truth, but the truth. Christianity has a beautiful message of love of how Jesus came to die for us, so we would not be excluded from a relationship with the Father. But the message of Christianity means it has to be exclusive of one thing, which we'll get to later. That's my teaser for you, keeping you awake that way. So many religions hold surface similarity, meaning that they have simple moral beliefs like sharing with one another, or fighting for justice, and they hold these things in common. And I have two explanations why many religions hold these views. My first argument for that similarity is because God placed his law within our hearts. Romans 2, 14 and 15 says that when the Gentiles, that means non-Jewish people, do by nature things required by the Jewish law, they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts. So does this mean that we always instinctively do what is right? No, because reality shows that people still do bad things. So it doesn't mean we instinctively do what is right, but that there's some inherent understanding of objective moral truth that God puts in our heart. We still have an instinct to know what that thing is wrong. And sometimes we get some of those details a bit off, but we have an inherent idea that there is a right and a wrong. So I think that's one of the reasons that a lot of religions share these certain moral things, and even non-religious people share a lot of these moral things. The other reason is that many religions share these basic moral values because of reforming over time, and also because they have something in common with libraries, which is that they borrow, right? And world religions didn't spring up in a vacuum without influencing each other. They were doing borrowing, much the same way that many of us sometimes pick and choose for our personal trail mix, there's a lot of world religions that have done the same. Pick and choose from other religions and put those things together. Christianity, however, doesn't do that. Instead it says that our ways and our thoughts may eventually look outdated, but our message will not change. Our methods of evangelizing might change. Like it was mentioned, it was brought up to me by a couple of you, that they saw one of the reels that we did on Facebook, one of the reels from one of the sermons. That's not something that we would have done, honestly, even probably five years ago. The technology changes so quickly, but it's another method that is available to us to share the message now. So the methods do sometimes change, but the message does not. So as Christians, we always come back to this, we always come back to the Bible. This doesn't change, right? Even when, and sometimes people get the wrong idea, even when we talk about Bible translations, sometimes people have the wrong idea that that means we're trying to update it or change it over time. It's not. We're actually trying to go back and get more accurate to the original as we can over time. It's not that we're trying to improve upon things, you know? So we can always go back to the Bible, not what's popular in culture or other religions. Being a Christian means you believe in Jesus the way that the Bible lays out, not just how we feel about him. So do all these religions agree with each other? In brief, not even close. And the reason there are different religions is because they don't agree with each other. If they all agreed with each other, what would be the point of having different ones if we'd all just be in one now because one of them would have figured it out perfectly, right? And so we would just go with that. So it's not that, right? That's why we have them, right? And we may think that some of those differences are smaller things related to style of worship or maybe like symbolic practices or terminology, but that's really not the case. And we don't have time to go super, super in-depth in that, but I want to illustrate it very simply. And the simplest way, and what I mean by that is we can't look into every single religion and what they believe and whether or not they're compatible tonight, but I want to look at three really quickly, the three most closely, you might say, related religions. And I'll just throw at you a bit of an academic word here. They are sometimes referred to as the Abrahamic religions because they all can be traced back to Abraham, right? So they're considered closely related in that sense. They have some of the most similar beliefs of any belief systems out there. And that's Christianity, Islam, and Rabbinic Judaism. Now, if you're confused why I said Rabbinic Judaism, I'll explain in a moment. But I think we can easily look at these because these are the most closely related ones. If they do not agree with each other, we don't really need to go looking at all 7 billion different ones out there because if these ones aren't even compatible, I guarantee you the rest of them aren't, right? So let's look at what each of them has to say about Jesus specifically because we're here wanting to learn about Jesus and dedicate our lives to Jesus. And so the question is, can we do that and mix in other belief systems too? And so if we can't mix in the three closely related ones, the rest of them aren't even worth looking at at this point. So let's look at what they have to say in their own words about Jesus, okay? So first I'm going to show you, this is a Muslim source on Jesus. That's the reference down there at the bottom. But basically they said, Muslims do not believe in Jesus' divinity, meaning being God, and do not consider Jesus the Son of God. Neither Jesus nor any other prophet or person plays a redemptive role in human salvation. Muslims do not share the Christian belief in Jesus' crucifixion. So that's a Muslim source on Jesus, okay? Now here's a Jewish source regarding Jesus, a rabbinic Jewish source, saying that the beliefs of Messianic Jews, that is, Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah, are theologically incompatible with Judaism from a rabbinic perspective, and let me explain what that word means, because it's important to know that Jesus was Jewish, and that Judaism that existed in his day is not the same as what we think of today when somebody says they're Jewish, right? Because within a Christian perspective, this is Judaism 2.0. This is what we would consider the rightful continuity, right? The early Jewish believers in Jesus did not see themselves as part of a new religion. They didn't. They were just like, we were waiting for the Messiah. The Messiah came, so we're still Jewish, right? So that's how they thought. So Judaism does actually line up with Jesus. Rabbinic Judaism is what most people call today, and that's where it diverged at Jesus. So here is a Christian source talking about Jesus from gotquestions.org, which is a great website, by the way. If you have got questions, go to gotquestions.org, great source. Jesus claimed to be God. Take, for example, the words of Jesus in John 10.30, I and the Father are one. We need only to look at the Jews' reaction to his statement to know he was claiming to be God. They tried to stone him for this very reason, you, a mere man, claim to be God. The Jews understood exactly what Jesus was claiming, deity, again, meaning to be God. So in short, to be a Christian, you must believe, that's way too small for you to read, so never mind that, but to be a Christian, you must believe Jesus is God and is one with the Father. To be a Muslim, you cannot believe that Jesus is God, and as a Rabbinic Jew, a belief in Jesus as God is completely incompatible with those beliefs. So not only are those views, three views, that are the most closely, again, the reason we're highlighting these ones is because every other one you're going to look at is going to be further apart on these things. Not only are these three views incompatible, but taking the stance of any one of them negates your ability to believe in either of the others. You can't believe Jesus, see, in Islam, Jesus was not God and he was a good prophet. In Judaism, Jesus cannot be God and he was wrong, he was not a good prophet. So they don't even agree, they don't even believe, neither of them believe he was God and they don't even agree with each other, right? This is who Jesus said he is in the Bible. Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him, from John 14, 6-7. Jesus calls himself the way, the truth, the life, not a way, a truth, a life to live. He clearly states that no one comes to the Father and consequently heaven except through him, Jesus. And it's an exclusive claim without room for interpretation of saying other religions will lead us to heaven or other individual truths can exist and it's in opposition to what our culture commonly believes. So Jesus is exclusive. I know that may sound unfair, right? But I heard this great analogy the other day, so I had to steal it. Imagine you contracted a deadly disease and somebody came up to you and they said, hey, I have the antidote for you, right? And they come to the antidote for you and you say, hold on, one antidote though? Little intolerant much, like can I not have a few choices? Like I don't know, like this one's a tablet that I have to swallow, I'm not really good at swallowing tablets, I would prefer can you give me an injection or something that I can just drink, right? That would be an unreasonable response if you had the deadly disease and there's this one antidote for you. See, when Christians say that Jesus requires exclusive devotion, it's not because we're mean and we want people to join our club, it's because we're loving and we have the medicine there that could save someone's life and we don't want to watch anyone miss out on that, right? Jesus wants you to have life and he wants you to have it to the full. John 10.10 says that the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy and I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. I don't need anybody to join my club, but I found something amazing and I want you to be able to take part in that too. He wants us to have that life to the full, but he needs you to understand that the reason he's asking for that exclusivity is because you're having to focus on the thing that is going to give you that life to the full. It's not that he's trying to ruin your fun, right? It's just that the other things are going to take you away from that. So what am I saying? Am I saying that millions, if not billions, of well-meaning people through history and presently did not or will not go to heaven if they don't believe specifically in Jesus as the Bible outlines? Yes, I am saying that. But doesn't that make Christianity exclusive? Yes, it does. See, the one thing that I alluded to at the beginning that Christianity is exclusive of is lies. God will not allow us to live a lie if we want to come to the truth. You can't believe both at the same time. The claim of Christianity is not that there are truths about Jesus. Islam claims that, too. The claim of Christianity is not that there are truths about Jesus, but that Jesus is the truth himself, meaning that truth is objective and not personal, but a person, the person of Jesus Christ. And I know that maybe sounds intolerant to other ways of thinking about things, but I think that the truth by definition is intolerant of that which is not true. But I think we also have to understand when I say intolerant, it's a charged word in our society, and a lot of people fill in the blank of what they feel that means to them. So let me explain a little bit more about that. The thing is that we are that way in every other area of our life. What I mean is that if we know something to be true, we don't live like another thing can be true that isn't. We don't live like two things can be equally true. That's not how we live in life. For example, while someone may come to me and say, Chris, you are eight feet tall, I can respect their opinion to believe whatever they want. I can respect their opinion to believe that I am eight feet tall. I will still be five foot ten. I wish I was taller than that, but I'm not taller than that. That's how tall I am. And it would be unhelpful for me, for the sake of peace, to tell them that it is equally rational to believe that I am eight feet tall. Right? Now, I'm not saying we go out of our way to go find people and tell them they're wrong about things. Don't misunderstand me. But I'm also saying that I'm not going to sit here and say that I can be eight feet tall and five foot ten at the same time. It's just not rational. And so when we talk about Christianity, we believe a relationship with Jesus is the most beautiful hope anyone can experience. And it would be the most unloving thing we could do to not share that truth and to tolerate belief in lies. And again, we do tolerate people's freedom to believe what they believe, because I believe that Christianity must—you can only come to God by choice. Right? I can't push, nor would I want to push, anyone. You have to choose. Right? I don't think that's what God wants either. Right? But he does have something for us that no one else has to offer. I think, though, that it would be unloving of me to tell you that a placebo is going to give you the same effect if I have the one antidote that's going to save your life, and I truly, sincerely believe that. It would be unloving of me not to tell you that, that the other thing isn't going to help you, because I care about you. And I know that we might not all like this aspect of Christianity. But the truth is, we don't need to like something for it to be true. We have to decide whether or not we will believe it or reject it, but we don't get to augment it for our preferences. So we're all placed with a choice—belief in Jesus on his terms, not on ours, or rejecting him altogether. But we can't dishonestly mix him into that trail mix when those beliefs are, as we've seen, very incompatible. But I also want to add this back in, because at the end of the day, I can tell you, well, these things don't add up, and we can get really clinical, and we can use a bunch of academic words, but at the end of the day, what I want you to be able to understand is that the reason that you want this is because of that love, right? I love my wife, Hannah, and I love my wife, Hannah, with an exclusive devotion because of the wonderful relationship that we have. And that's what I'm talking about with Jesus as well. Jesus' love is so pure, and a relationship with him is so beautiful, and it's too beautiful to be a part of a trail mix. I enjoy the taste of a trail mix, but it's never going to sustain me the way that a full meal could, right? Jesus is not a snack, right? He fills us with his love, and he changes us. When we encounter God's love, it crowds out everything else. When you encounter the depths of God's love, you won't want a trail mix anymore, right? Because my temptation, I'll be transparent with you, my temptation is to say, well, these are the specific things you've got to take out of the trail mix, they are these specific things. You guys don't need to hear that from me. What you need to hear and what you need to experience is Jesus himself, because when you've truly experienced the love of God himself, all of those other things won't matter anymore. You just won't care. It's going to work itself out because of his love. So I'm not asking us to let go of something good and take something lesser. I'm asking us to let go of things that merely appear good and to take the greatest good we can ever have, a devoted relationship with Jesus. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the beautiful relationship that many of us in this room experience with you already and that everyone in this room has the opportunity to experience. We thank you, Lord, that you invite us to be a part of that relationship and that, yeah, we just thank you, Lord. I just pray that you would impress upon each person here, Lord, that just as you have graciously done for me and many others, Lord, that you've proven yourself to be faithful, Lord. Not that you owe it to me to prove it to me or any of us, really, Lord, but because you love us, you choose to show us how loving you are. And so I pray for each and every person here that may be struggling, whether they've never believed in you, Lord, or maybe they have, but like they're just in a time where it feels like hard to see you at work in their life, Lord. I just pray that you would make yourself known in a fresh and new way to them, Lord, in a way that is personal to them, Lord, because you are the person who encounters them with that love, Lord. A personal way, Lord, that will speak to them and let them know that you are real and that you love them. In Jesus' name, amen.
