“Bible promises: No one comes to the Father except through Me”
John 14:6
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
“Work less! Play more! Life’s too short for ‘should haves.’” At least that’s what they say at “exclusiveresorts.com.”
And why not? After all, it is “the membership of choice.” For more than twenty years, they’ve taken their clients to the most sought-after destinations around the world, “your passport,” they say, “to living a richer, fuller, and more meaningful life.”
Take, for example, St. Barts in the French West Indies, a go-to retreat for celebrities and socialites alike. Once you land in your private jet, you’ll be escorted, along with nine of your friends, to a lush, airy, five-bedroom, five-bathroom villa, The Hemingway, with its heated infinity pool, ample space, and lounging options in both sun and shade.
Or if that’s a little too much for you, you and five of your friends could opt to stay at the Villa Javacanou, complete with French king beds, his-and-hers closets, indoor-outdoor living, not to mention a private path down to the beach. Seems pretty exclusive to me!
Or how about this--on the island of Crete, there’s a resort, a five-star hotel called Amirandes, what they call “top tier” and “impossibly glamorous with movie-good-looks.” For a little extra pocket change, you could even enjoy luxury transport by limousine, helicopter, or yacht, along with a private chef, a private butler, a private bath butler, private dining, and a full service beach with drinks, snacks, towels, and sunbeds.
Their website says, “It’s like having a personal genie, with no limits to the number of wishes you can make. In fact, nothing is too much trouble at the No. 1 hotel in Crete.”
Now I don’t know how much all that costs, but I can tell you, it’s exclusive.
When we read the words of Jesus recorded in John chapter 14, we can’t help but think of that word “exclusive.” But hold that thought for just a moment, and you’ll see what I mean.
So far in our time together, we’ve looked at quite a lot of God’s promises, promises like “If My people who are called by My name humble themselves, and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (II Chronicles 7:14), and “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:6), and “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7), and “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
Count them and you’ll find more than eight thousand promises from God to man, from man to man, and from man to God. Do the math and you’ll see that there are as many as twenty-two promises for every day of the year.
As the apostle Paul once wrote to the Corinthians, “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who we proclaimed among you, Silvanus, Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in Him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in Him” (II Corinthians 1:19-20).
The book of John chapter 14 takes us to a place only a few were privileged to go, to an Upper Room, on Maundy Thursday night. It was on that night that Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said, “Take eat, this is My Body given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19). It was on that night that He wrapped a towel around His waist and washed their feet. And it was on this night that He said to Peter, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown Me three times” (Matthew 26:34).
Now here in chapter 14, Jesus spoke some of His most important words and one of His most important promises of all. He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
Those are some pretty strong words! “No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Really?! Aren’t there many paths up a mountain and don’t all roads lead to heaven?
When we hear those words, there are several important challenges before us. For one, most of us already believe in Jesus. We’ve thought about Him, we’ve read about Him, we’ve talked about Him, and we know what we believe. He’s the way, the truth, and the life. There is no way to the Father except through Him.
And a second challenge is that most of the world thinks we’re wrong. Around the world, about two-and-a-half billion of us say that Jesus is the way, the only way to heaven. But since there are close to eight billion people in the world, that means there are about five-and-a-half billion others who say, “No, He’s not.” And when we speak of Jesus in such an exclusive way, they think we’re arrogant, bigoted, intolerant, and narrow-minded.
And what complicates it even more is that, once upon a time, we could talk about Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam in some sort of disconnected way, because those religions were somewhere “over there,” thousands of miles away.
But today, they’re not so far away. They’re at our back door.
In her book The New Religious America, Harvard prof Diana Eck writes, “The huge white dome of a mosque, with its minarets, rises from the cornfields just outside of Toledo, Ohio…a great Hindu temple with elephants carved in relief at the doorway stands on a hillside in the western suburbs of Nashville. A Cambodian Buddhist temple and monastery is set in the farmlands southeast of Minneapolis.” Monk Moeng Sang says, “I am so very proud, because you can see it from all around.”
And she writes, “There are more Muslim Americans than Episopalians, more Muslims than members of the Presbyterian Church, and as many Muslims as there are Jews. Los Angeles is the most complex Buddhist city in the world, with a Buddhist population spanning the whole range of the Asian Buddhist world from Sri lanka to Korea, along with a multitude of native-born American Buddhists.”
We say Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, that there’s no way to the Father except through Him, yet billions of others say, “No, He’s not.”
Is that anything new? Really not at all. As pastor and teacher Philip Ryken once said, “The global village is not a new address for Christianity. It was born there.”
For example, in the second century, a Greek philosopher named Celsus wrote, “It makes no difference if one invokes the highest God or Zeus or Adonai or Sabaoth or Amoun, as the Egyptians do, or Papaios, as the Scythians do.” It makes no difference at all, he said. You have your god and I have mine. What does it matter? They’re all the same.
Christianity didn’t wake up some time in the twentieth century and suddenly realize that there were other religions in the world. In fact, it grew up in places like Antioch, Athens, Corinth, and Rome, where all kinds of different religions crossed the same paths every day. Early Christians weren’t Christians because they didn’t know there were other religions around. They were Christians because they knew other religions, and then came to Jesus Christ.
But what does the Bible say? In Acts chapter 4, before the Sanhedrin, the very men who just days before had condemned Jesus to death, Peter said, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “No one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 3:11). And he wrote to a pastor named Timothy, “There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (I Timothy 2:5).
No other way. No other name. No other foundation. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him.
But does it make any sense?
Suppose you were to drive to Florida, does it make any difference which road you should take? Of course, it does! One road will get you there faster, while others will send you to Timbuktu.
When you file your income tax, does it make any difference what numbers you write on the lines of your tax return? Of course, it does! In fact, there are quite a lot of investigators who examine quite a lot of returns just to make sure you got it right.
And when you’re sick, does it make any difference what medicine you take? Isn’t one just as good as another? Take the wrong one and it could kill you!
All of that leads me to ask, if one road is better than another, if one number is better than another, and if one medicine is better than another, then why do so many insist that all religions are the same?
Besides, what other religion in the world has a Savior like Jesus?
Islam doesn’t. Time after time, their prophet Mohammed asked for forgiveness. The best he could do was to offer a five-fold path by which you might get into heaven. And do you know why Muslims always add the words “Peace be upon him” whenever they say his name? Because even they don’t know if he’s saved!
Ask a Budddhist if he has a Savior. If he knows his faith, he’ll tell you to follow an eight-fold path which hopefully, someday, will take you not to heaven, but to nirvana, a painless nothingness.
And Hindus--they’re searching for nirvana too. But all they can hope for is to be born again and again and again into this world, always trying to do better than they did in the past. And if karma treats them right, they’ll become one with Brahman, the ultimate reality, the divine consciousness, the supreme god.
Will they make it? They’d like to, but in the meantime, they can do nothing but hope and struggle to survive.
But standing apart from every other religion in the world is Christianity. And it stands alone because Jesus is God’s perfect Son and mankind’s only Savior. Every other religion says we must struggle and strive to reach up to God, but Jesus has reached down to us. And while every other religion tries to provide some way to free yourself from sin, Jesus took our sin upon Himself and carried those sins to the cross.
In the words of R.C. Sproul: “Moses could mediate on the law, Mohammed could brandish a sword, Buddha could give personal counsel, Confucius could offer wise sayings, but none of these men was qualified to offer an atonement for the sins of the world.”
“But I want proof,” you say. “And without proof, finding the right religion is only a guess.”
You want proof? Then consider the fact that, centuries before Jesus was even born, the prophets promised He would come. And just as they promised, He was born of a virgin in a little town called Bethlehem and wise men came to adore Him. Soldiers drove nails through His hands and feet and gambled for His clothes. When He died, He was buried in a rich man’s tomb.
Do you need proof that Jesus has power? The blind could see, the deaf could hear, and lepers were cleansed. Lazarus lay in his grave for four days, but when Jesus said, “Lazarus, come out,” he came out!
And if that’s not enough for you, come and visit that garden tomb and see the stone that’s rolled away. “He’s not here,” the angels said. “He’s risen as He said.”
A little over two hundred years ago, hymn writer John Newton put it like this: “Jesus, my Shepherd, Guardian, Friend, my Prophet, Priest, and King, my Lord, my Life, my Way, my End, accept the praise I bring. Weak is the effort of my heart and cold my warmest thought; but when I see Thee as Thou art, I’ll praise Thee as I ought.”
We thank You, dear Father, for the life and strength our Savior Jesus brings. Grant that we may always find our hope and help in Him, for His sake. Amen