Who Is The True God?

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, and welcome. It’s good to see you here for our worship service.

I have a few announcements I’d like to highlight from your bulletin.

We had to postpone yesterday’s playground and pavilion cleanup due to all the rain, so we’re going to try again. Your bulletins have that makeup day for next Saturday, but we have some scheduling conflicts and so will be moving that to Saturday, July 15, from 9-12. If you’re able, please try to join us.

We’re also having a very short business meeting after today’s service, hoping to approve push bars and some added safety and security measures, particularly for our doors. If you’re a member, please try to stay behind for that brief meeting.

I’d like you to keep several members of our church family in your prayers.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the passing of Connie Lotts’s brother Billy Chandler on Friday morning. There will be a family night tomorrow from 6-8 at Reynolds Funeral Home here in town, right down the road, and a funeral service here at church on Tuesday at 2:00, followed by a graveside service at Calvary. Please come if you can, and please remember Connie and her family in your prayers and reach out to them for whatever needs they may have.

Brenda Johnson is recovering well from some surgery she had on Thursday. She is still at UVA, and will likely be moved to rehabilitation sometime soon. We’ll keep you updated on where she is and how you can contact her.

Danny Johnson is still at UVA undergoing tests. The doctors are trying to determine how best to treat his cancer. Please keep Brenda and Danny in your prayers. They’re both in good spirits, both are leaning on their Savior and their church, but it’s a hard time for them as I’m sure you can imagine.

Ola Mae Coffey is also in the hospital dealing with some kidney issues. It looks as though she may begin dialysis. She was in considerable discomfort while I was with her, and has asked her church to pray for her.

Vernie Angus is dealing with some pneumonia. She was in the Roanoke hospital this week but is now at Augusta rehab. She’s doing better and getting back to her old self, so please keep her and her family in your prayers as well.

Martha Jane, it’s good to see you back. Martha Jane had a stay in the hospital last week for dehydration but is feeling much better, and we praise God for that.

Ann Harvey was also in the hospital this past week to have her appendix out. She is resting and in a little pain but doing well, and her and Bob appreciate your prayers.

And please keep Jesyka’s grandmother, Dot Oliver, in your prayers as well. Dot is also in the hospital, and awaiting some tests.

I don’t believe I’ve missed anyone, but please let me know if I have.

Jesyka, do you have anything?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray: Father we thank you for this day and for the privilege to come together to worship and rest in you. For many here, this is a day of heavy hearts and deep worries. But you are a God of hope and healing, a God who never leaves us or forsakes us, a God who moves even closer to us in our pain. May your Spirit lift up our voices this morning. May your Spirit renew our strength and our faith. May your Spirit remind us that you are working all things — all things, Father — for our good because we love and honor you. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

Sermon

For the past month or so we’ve been talking about the most-asked questions about God on the internet, and we’re going to finish our series today with what’s become a major point of contention in our current social climate — how can we as Christians say that there’s only one true God, and only one way to heaven?

Because for a lot of people, all religions should be the same. If there really is a God, then God is like the top of a mountain, and all the religions of the world are like different paths leading up that mountain. No matter which path you follow, you’ll still reach the same top.

This is a reflection of our modern times, isn’t it? If there’s a golden rule for secular society, it’s that you can’t leave anybody out. Everybody has to be included. So if you say that your faith has more truth than the rest, that’s a problem. And if you say that some people get heaven and others don’t, that’s a really big problem.

Eighty-three percent of the world’s people considers themselves followers of at least one of the world’s religions, and there are over 4,000 religions in the world. Just about all of them claim to be the real faith, the one that is absolutely true and that explains absolutely everything about this life, the universe, and ourselves. So given all of the different ways of thinking about God, how can we as Christians really say that ours is the true faith?

That’s the question we’re going to look at today, and we’re going to start with the book of Isaiah. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 44, and let’s read verses 6-11:

Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel

and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:

“I am the first and I am the last;

besides me there is no god.

Who is like me? Let him proclaim it.

Let him declare and set it before me,

since I appointed an ancient people.

Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen.

Fear not, nor be afraid;

have I not told you from of old and declared it?

And you are my witnesses!

Is there a God besides me?

There is no Rock; I know not any.”

All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. Who fashions a god or casts an idol that is profitable for nothing? Behold, all his companions shall be put to shame, and the craftsmen are only human. Let them all assemble, let them stand forth. They shall be terrified; they shall be put to shame together.

And this is God’s word.

Regardless of whether people believe in God or not, we all worship something. We’ve talked about this before. You don’t have a choice in whether you worship, you only have a choice of what you worship. Four thousand religions in this world aside, it all comes down to just two choices — you either worship the God who created the universe, or you worship something much less that’s ultimately going to let you down.

The temptation to worship anything but God goes way back. Not even the Israelites could keep themselves from worshipping idols. God worked through Moses to lead the captives out of Egypt, God sent the plagues that finally secured their freedom, God parted the Red Sea, God provided the manna. All those miracles coming from the one true God who gave sign after sign of who he was, but the minute Moses goes up to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, the Israelites start building a golden calf to worship.

Now what’s that golden calf going to do for them? Absolutely nothing. Some people say it doesn’t matter what we worship so long as we worship something, because there’s great value in our capacity to believe. There’s power in faith. That’s partly true. There really is great value in belief, and there is absolutely power in faith, but that’s exactly why we have to make sure the God we worship is the God who created us and the Christ who died for us.

Isaiah begins in verse 6 by stating both who that God is and who is doing the talking in this passage. It’s “The Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts.” All of those names have a meaning that separates the God of the Bible apart from every other god.

That word “Lord” should be in all capitals in your Bible. That’s the English substitution for Hebrew word Yahweh, the name that God revealed when he made his covenant with the Israelites.

He’s also described as “the King of Israel.” Remember, Israel was completely different from all the other nations until they decided that they wanted to be like everyone else. They had no king, they had God. He was the one who gave the laws and maintained justice. He was the commander-in-chief. God judged right and wrong.

The word “Redeemer” in Hebrew carries the meaning of paying a ransom for someone’s freedom. This is a reference to what we talked about just a little bit ago, Israel’s captivity in Egypt. God saved them, not idols. It was God, not Moses. God redeemed his people from slavery, and that redeeming continues. It wasn’t just a one-time deal. It wasn’t God saying, “I’ll deliver you this time, but from now on you’re on your own.” No, he continually delivered them, even — and especially — when his people didn’t deserve it. And in the death and resurrection of Christ, he delivers all of us now.

The Lord of Hosts, or Lord of Armies, is a phrase that we find all through the Old Testament. It doesn’t only apply to something like a general leading his troops, it also refers to God being the ruler over all creation. Nothing can happen, from a blade of grass growing to a galaxy being formed, without God’s knowledge and Spirit.

There are levels to just about everything in creation. Our society is made up of lower, middle, and upper class. In our jobs, we have people above us and below us. There’s the food chain, the order of the planets, the size of the stars. Everything in creation has a structure to it that has some things below and some things above. And above all of it, at the very top, is the Lord of Hosts.

Put all of that together, and you get the end of verse 6: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.”

When God says, “I am the first and the last,” he’s talking about his eternal nature. God always was. God always will be. There has never been a time when God wasn’t. He’s first in the sense that he existed even before time began. And he’s last in the sense that he will remain always, even after the end of time. God is aware of everything before it happens. There is nothing that escapes his notice, nothing that isn’t governed by his will and his plan.

He’s so far beyond us that we can’t even comprehend him. Moses caught a glimpse of the hem of God’s garment and nearly died. Imagine the terror we would feel if we saw the face of God as we are right now, in our sin. And yet we will see his face someday, and in that state we’ll have passed through this life and seeing him won’t be terrifying at all, it’ll be more beautiful than we can imagine.

But as it stands right now, our minds can’t hold something like that. We can’t understand how God can have no beginning. We can’t understand how God can be all-powerful and all-loving. He is perfection, he’s without equal. And that’s exactly the meaning behind that last statement in verse 6 — besides me there is no god.

Not only is God eternal, he’s also omniscient, meaning he knows everything with perfect and complete knowledge. Look at verse 7: “Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me, since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen.”

God knows all things — past, present, and future. Things catch us by surprise every day, but nothing catches him. He gives a challenge here to the other so-called gods to declare what would happen in the future — “Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen.” And of course all the other gods can’t.

And God’s not just talking about those false gods who were so common in Isaiah’s time, the ones carved from wood or stone. He’s also talking about all the false gods that we worship now. That money. Those possessions. Even our health. None of that can keep us safe from the future because they’re not permanent — they could be taken from us at any moment. Only God is there always, and so he can’t be taken away. Those lesser gods in your life can’t speak the truth to your soul. They can’t speak to you at all. They can’t give you true peace and safety. God’s mocking these false idols in your life. He’s calling them out, and he’s calling out the people who follow them too.

That’s why God says in verse 8 that these false gods are small. They’re insignificant, and most of all, they don’t have any power. And notice how God frames those words: “Have I not told you from of old and declared it?” God doesn’t just pop into your life and say, “Here I am, let me know if you need anything.” That’s not how he works. He is constantly proving himself to you by taking care of you, by comforting you, by lifting you up and showing you that the things you’re so afraid of are tiny compared to him.

He asks his people in verse 8, “Is there any God besides me?” And then God answers his own question. No. No, there is no God but him. He’s the only Rock there is, the only thing we can lean on and build our lives upon. And because of that, we as his people can have complete confidence in him, knowing that he is perfectly constant and in control of history itself.

Put that up against these false gods, who are useless and not fit for worship. Verse 9: “All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame.”

Not only are idols nothing (since they can’t speak and can’t know the future), those who make them are nothing, too. The idol makers knew they were working with plain wood, plain metal, and plain stone. But they still thought they were creating a god. In a way, the ones who made the idols were worse than the people who followed those idols. They had more guilt.

The Hebrew word for “nothing” in verse 9 is used about ten times in the book of Isaiah, and it means more than emptiness. It refers to a wasteland, or a city that’s been completely destroyed. In other words, there is absolutely nothing of value to be found.

Every day our hearts are pulled in a thousand different directions, everything vying not just for our attention, but for our worship. And it’s so easy to fall into that trap. The idols in our lives, especially the things that seem good on the surface, no matter how shiny they are or how much they seem to offer, are nothing in the end. They’re wastelands, and God says the more we depend on them instead of him, the more our hearts will be crushed sooner or later.

Let’s look at verses 10 and 11. How do you make a god? Is such a thing possible? Because if you can make a god, then that god has to be weaker than the person who made it.

Unlike the true God of creation, these craftsmen who made their living making false gods were just creating lifeless idols that couldn’t help anyone. They were driven by profit, but they’d only find shame in the end. Idol makers and idol worshippers will at some point all face the real God, and face that real God’s judgment. As will we. But those who place their faith in Christ will find a judgment that leads to rewards for the good that they’ve done for Christ, while those who reject Christ will face judgment.

And speaking of Jesus, let’s turn to him next. Because that’s where the real controversy lays when it comes to the Christian faith. People will shout and call us bigoted because we say that out of all the gods in the world, we worship the true God. But they will go absolutely nuts when we say that not only do we worship the true God, the only way to find peace in this world and eternal life in the next is to believe in what we believe, which is his son. Faith in Jesus is the answer to everything. Only Jesus will get you into heaven.

Turn with me to John chapter 14. Jesus is having a conversation with Thomas, who is one of his disciples. And we all know about Thomas, don’t we? Thomas was the doubter, the one who said he wouldn’t believe in the resurrection unless he put his hands into Jesus’s wounds. Let’s read John 14:5-7:

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

This passage takes place on the night of the Last Supper, when Jesus and his disciples are gathered in the upper room. It’s the night of Jesus’s arrest, and time’s running out. These plain and uneducated men have been with Jesus for only about three years. They’ve witnessed him perform miracles. They’ve been students of his teaching. And in the small amount of time that he has left, Jesus wants to pass along to them what’s most important. So what does he say, knowing that he can’t waste a single minute or a single word?

He washes the disciples’ feet to show them that if they really want to be great in the kingdom of heaven, then they have to be servants here on earth.

He gives them a new commandment to love others just as he loves them.

He warns Peter that by the time morning comes, Peter will deny Christ three times.

He says don’t worry about what’s going to happen. Don’t worry that you won’t understand it, and that it’s going to look like it’s the end. It won’t be. It’s just the beginning. Let not your hearts be troubled, he says. Believe in God; believe also in me.

He says he’s going away to prepare a place for us, and he’ll come back and take us with him so we can be where he is.

And then Thomas chimes in. Poor Thomas, who is so filled with doubts, who is always kind of the pessimist. He says in verse 5, How in the world can we know the way if we don’t understand any of this? If we don’t even know where you’re going?

Here’s the problem with Thomas. And it’s the same problem all the disciples have, and one we have, too: he put God in a box. Thomas limits what Jesus can do by what Thomas thinks is possible. Like I said, these men had been with Jesus for three years. The idea of Jesus’s death and resurrection didn’t just come out of the blue. Jesus had told them and told them what was going to happen, but none of the disciples understood exactly what he meant until after Christ’s resurrection. They still had their minds set on an earthly kingdom and were still convinced that Jesus was an earthly prince and leader. They just couldn’t fathom the reason why he had to die. And all of this goes to show how hard it is to believe and to know the truth when the mind is so filled with prejudice and opinions that we’re so hesitant to change.

Thomas, at least, is honest about this. If Thomas confessed his ignorance to himself and not just to Jesus, he would have been willing to hear what Jesus said on its own terms — I’m dying, I’m going away, but I’ll be back. But Thomas can’t do that. His mind is so full of his own opinions of who Jesus should be that he can’t see who Jesus is. And this was a guy who’d been with Jesus from the very start.

So listen to what Jesus answers in verses 6 & 7: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Thomas had misunderstood Jesus’s words. His own prejudices got in the way. He’s thinking about this life, but Jesus is talking in terms of eternity. Not this little whisper of breath that we call life, but real life, the kind that lasts forever.

God the Father gives eternal life. What Jesus said, and what he still says, is that the only way to the father, the only way to receiving this eternal life, is through a relationship with the Christ. Jesus says he is the only way for us to get to God. He is the truth, the Word made flesh. He is the embodiment of the father, the ultimate revelation of God. And he’s also the life — he has life in Himself, and all who come to Jesus by faith receive eternal life.

But it’s even more than that. Jesus says that if we know him, then we know God Himself. He didn’t just have a relationship with God, he had a oneness with God. He is God. “I and the Father are one,” he says in John 10.

All of that pretty well flies in the face of people who say that one religion is like any other, doesn’t it? The Bible makes it clear: You can’t be saved except through faith in Christ.

Listen to Acts 4:11-12: “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Every religion has a little of the truth. I’ll give you an example — every major religion in the world has its own version of the Golden Rule: do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. Every religion has a little bit of truth because every religion is based on what’s found in the natural world, and God has written himself into the natural world.

But is every religion the complete truth? No. Just one of them. That sounds a little exclusive, doesn’t it? Even a little unfair.

The problem people have with hearing that the Christian faith is the only religion that offers the whole truth of God is that it’s too narrow-minded. We should be more open. We should see our faith as just one of many possible faiths, no better and no worse. It’s just another path up that mountain. It’s subjective rather than objective truth: what’s true for me and what’s true for you don’t have to be the same, but they’re both true.

But that can’t be possible. Yes, there are some values of all the world’s major religions that are the same. But questions about how we should live, what we should believe, what the afterlife is, and how to get there are very different if you’re a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, or a Buddhist.

What’s true for us as Christians and what’s true for a Muslim or a Buddhist are very different things, and so by definition they can’t all be true. So this idea of all faiths leading to the same God is really a lie. It’s built on the desire of everyone being able to get to heaven no matter what they believe, and the Bible is clear on that issue — unfortunately, not everybody gets to go.

But what about really good people who don’t believe in God and who aren’t Christians? Shouldn’t they be saved? Good people, moral people.

The problem with that is you can’t be saved by being good, because you’ll never be good enough to live alongside a completely holy God. There’s only one way to get there, and that’s through a completely holy savior who died for us.

But that’s still too narrow-minded, isn’t it? Where do we get off saying that the only people who will ever get to heaven are those who believe that a man was born who wasn’t really a man but was both man and God, and that man died on a cross but somehow came back to life, and because of that anyone who believes in him will find heaven at death?

What these critics of Christianity don’t understand, though, is that the Christian faith doesn’t put limits on any person. Salvation is anybody’s for the asking. You don’t have to be born into the right family or have the right amount of money or have a certain standing. You can be any color, any sex, from anywhere. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or how far you’ve fallen. It’s for everyone, regardless of who they are or where they live. If access to God is found through the grace of Jesus, then anyone can receive eternal life instantly.

But then you have people who say, “Well, why can’t God just accept everybody? If God is love, then why can’t everybody go to heaven?”

And that’s when you get to the real heart of all these objections about Christianity standing above every other religion. When people gripe about that, they’re really griping about heaven. Who gets in and who gets left out. Because it’s not fair for God to pick and choose, is it?

But if God says, “Yes, I’m a God of love, and so everybody will be able to enjoy an eternity of peace and joy,” then that creates a different problem with fairness, doesn’t it? We talked about this when we talked about the problem of hell. Saving everyone, no matter what they believed or didn’t, would mean God doesn’t really care about things like injustice and evil. And deep down, we all want justice. And God is a God of justice. He is love, yes. But he is also holy, and he will judge everyone.

For God to simply pardon all sin would mean that God isn’t bothered by moral evil. So then how could he be God? If God pardoned the sins of people who showed no remorse for their sins at all, then he wouldn’t be holy. He wouldn’t be just.

Fine, then. Okay. But what about those people who go through life never hearing about Jesus? Or what about those people who are exposed to teachings about Jesus, but those teachings are twisted and wrong? What about all the people who were alive before Jesus was born? And what about all the people now in places like North Korea and China and in the most remote lands on earth?

My answer to that is simple: I don’t know. I have no idea. But that’s okay, because I do know this: The Bible is clear on two things. One is that salvation must be through grace and faith in Christ. The other is that God is always fair and just in his dealings.

What the Bible doesn’t tell us is how both of those things can be true together, but does that matter? Just because we can’t see a way around those two statements doesn’t mean there isn’t a way around those two statements. He’s God after all, isn’t He?

So shouldn’t it be up to him to decide where everybody goes when they die? I don’t think that’s something we should decide. I don’t think that’s something we should be going around and saying — “You’re going to hell.” Because in the end, only God knows that.

God doesn’t judge those who haven’t clearly heard of Christ in the same way that he judges those who have. Paul says in Romans 1-2 that God judges people who haven’t heard the gospel on the basis of how they respond to the parts of Him found in nature and in their own conscience.

But here’s the thing: scripture and our own daily experience shows us that in general, people can’t even live up to the demands that general revelation shows. We can go out and look up at the stars and think there has to be something greater out there, but then we just turn around and live like there isn’t. We can know in our hearts that we have to act a certain way, but then we don’t. God gives everyone the opportunity to seek him out, and scripture says that everyone who seeks him will find him. But the problem is that so many just don’t want the bother of seeking him.

If all of this is true, and I think it is, then no one will be able to stand before God on judgment day and say, “It’s not my fault, because I never heard the Gospel’. If I had, I would have believed.” God will instead say to them, “No, I put enough of me into your heart and into creation, and I know your heart much better than you. So my judgment isn’t unloving nor unfair.”

God says there is only one way to him, and he’s made that way as wide as he possibly can. It’s through a Christ who doesn’t care who you are or where you come from. It’s written in a world that’s overflowing with signs of his presence. What we do with those things is completely up to us.

God is love, yes. And God is holy. How those two things work together in the eternal futures of people is a mystery we can’t know. Which is maybe a good thing, because in the end it’s none of our business. Our duty in the end is to take care of our own souls, to be a light for Him, and to trust that God is always just and fair in all that he does.

There is one God over all creation, one Son of that God who gave everything so that you could live forever with him, and one life to commit all of your ways to him. And if you’re ready to make that commitment, I invite you down here as we sing our closing hymn.

Let’s pray: Father we are so thankful that your Spirit moved in us to answer Your call on our lives. And we’re thankful as well that of all the paths people take to fill that God-shaped hole in their lives, we have found the perfect one. The true one. The holy one. In You we have that light in the darkness. Help us, Father, not to hide that light. Help us to shine it outward with love, with compassion, with kindness, and with understanding so that others can be drawn to it as well. For we ask this in your precious son Jesus’s name, Amen.

Business Meeting

I would like to call our brief business meeting for Sunday, June 25, 2023, to order with prayer:

Father thank you for this time together, and thank you for your wisdom and guidance in these very important updates to your church. We pray your presence among us as we discuss and vote. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

Our safety team continues to meet on a monthly basis to start making our church safer, because unfortunately our world is becoming a more dangerous place. In fact, I read a CNN article two weeks ago that said one of the most dangerous times of the week in our country now is eleven a.m. on Sunday morning when worship starts. With that in mind, the safety team’s first order of business is to better secure our doors. For years our doors remained unlocked during service, but we’ve now reached a point where the safe thing to do is to make sure every door is locked when Sunday service begins.

Unfortunately, as they’re currently built, it is against code to lock our doors during service because they aren’t equipped with push bars. The building and grounds team has done their due diligence by researching our options, and will be bringing a quote to bring our doors up to code.

With that, I’ll invite Mr. Burritt up.

Will someone bring a motion to take ________ from (reserve fund?) to install (push bars) (key locks) in our exterior doors?

Is there a second?

Is there any discussion?

Would all those in favor of the motion please raise your hand?

Are there any opposed?

If there is no other discussion, I’ll close this business meeting with prayer:

Father thank you for this church and for all who come here each week to have their hearts lifted and their souls filled. Be with us as we leave this place, and guide us in the coming week. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.