Many Paths to God?

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” 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.” Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.

Introduction: Are there Many Paths to God, or Just One?

18-Are there Many Paths to God?

- When Ken preached that there is only one way to God, and warned about Mormons. Church member got upset at the idea that her family member would go to hell because they are Mormon. Elder came to my office to ask about what if there are multiple ways to heaven. My response, God certainly has the right to offer multiple ways, or one way, but in scripture he only gives us one. Maybe God has a plan B, but he has only shared with us Plan A.

My other question to him is, "If there is a plan B that does not involve Jesus dying on the Cross, then why in the world would Jesus need to die on the cross for. That seems like a cruel waste."

Justin's Question: There are so many ways out there. It is confusing, and How can God expect me to know which way is the correct way.

Use the Tower of Babel as an example of humans inventing ways to get to God, but they are the wrong way.

Illustrations from "Distorted Truth" by Richard Mouw. - Every religion has a Truth that they crave, but it is distorted and can only be fulfilled in Jesus.

19-Jesus is the Only Way to the Father.

Thomas asks what people often ask - If you show me the Father, then we will definitely believe. or as others put it, If you God shows up and shows himself in some amazing miraculous way then I will believe. Jesus' response is, 'That is me."

Jesus shows us the heart of God and His will - Healing.

Acts 4:12 says, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” - This is in response to the Sanhedrin’s interrogation of Peter and John for Healing a Blind Man.

God giving us Jesus is not for exclusionary reasons, but inclusion. The way is exclusive, but the invitation is inclusive.

First Timothy 2:5 says, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

This is intended to be a comfort, not a curse.

John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The way they know is because the Father is in Jesus, and Jesus is in the Father - God has shown up in Jesus to show us the way.

Use my kids to show how they look like me or Cindy. Jesus goes beyond this - He is the the second person of God - He is God, and unique to the Father - But the unity is so close that to see Jesus is to see the Father.

The Resurrection has demonstrated that he is the Way.

Properly understood, removing Jesus as the way to God does not provide a gift of inclusion to the world, but removes an understanding of God’s loving character. “If you dethrone Jesus, you enthrone something, or someone, else instead. The belief that ‘all religions are really the same’ sounds nice and democratic—though the study of religions quickly show that it isn’t true. … The whole New Testament—the whole of early Christianity—insists that the one true and living God, the creator, is the God of Israel; and that the God of Israel has acted decisively, within history, to bring Israel’s story to its proper goal, and through that to address, and rescue, the world. The idea of a vague general truth, to which all ‘religions’ bear some kind of oblique witness, is foreign to Christianity” (N. T. Wright, John for Everyone: Part 2 [Louisville, KY: WJK Press, 2004], 59–60).

- One helpful way to think of Jesus is to imagine a doorway leading into a nice restaurant. God is in the restaurant, and he has invited everyone to come eat with him. There is only one door, and Jesus is standing at it, holding it wide open and beckoning people to come through. The wrong illustration—though the one we often imagine and portray—is of Jesus blocking the door, like a bouncer, trying to keep most of the people outside. Yes, Jesus is the way—but he’s not standing in the way! Jesus is helping us get to God, not holding us back. Jesus has made the way, and it is standing open for all.

- YouTube video of the guy explaining God sending people to Hell. It is like a ship that is sinking all the people on that ship are already going down with the Ship. God is the one providing the way off. In a situation like that are we going to argue with God's methodology?

20-Help People Find the Way.

- Those of us who know Jesus can rejoice—not in our arrogance and pride, but in the good news that God’s love is for everyone, that God desires all creation to be restored through Jesus. Let us follow Jesus’s example—as well as the example of the disciples and apostles—and flood our communities with kindness, healing, compassion, love, and service, inviting everyone we meet to join us in serving God through Jesus.

We are like one begger, showing other beggers where there is food.

We are the ones who have stopped trying to invent our own ways of salvation that never seem to work out, and to accept Gods’ way of salvation.