Don’t all religions lead to You?

Good morning. It’s good to see all of you that are joining us here in person at Shepherd’s Gate.

Those of you that are streaming in online or joining us later on demand, or are joining us in Algonac, our friends in Algonac always want to say hi to you guys as well. If you are in person and you’re new, I would love to meet you after the service, right through those doors. I’ll be in the middle of the West Lobby.

So if you don’t mind, just come up and introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about what brought you here today. And I can just thank you for being a part of our service. If you’re watching online, there’s people in the online chat that want to connect with you as well.

So just let them know this is your first time streaming in as we are just doing what we do here at Shepherd’s Gate. Some of you are wondering what we do. We gather together on Sunday mornings to sing songs and to open God’s word and allow God to convict our hearts and our lives.

This morning, we get the opportunity to receive Holy Communion as well. And it’s also a special Sunday for us because later in the service, we’re actually going to be installing another pastor here at Shepherd’s Gate. So it’s going to be a little bit different than our normal Sunday morning kind of order flow.

And so we really hope that you keep coming back and checking us out. But before I get into the message today, I just want to start this way because I recognize some of you, you’re here. This is your first time here, or maybe you watched the service from last week.

And that’s what brought you here today because I met several of those people after our first service. And it’s an honor to have you here, just so you know. I know last week was a very difficult message to have to navigate.

And if you want me to be completely honest with you this morning, I am like mentally and emotionally drained. Does anybody else feel that? And so even having to put together another sermon and it’s like, okay, well, it’s Sunday again. And now we got to do this again.

Like how in the world, God, we can’t do this without you. God, clearly we need your wisdom and your strength to help us get us through moments like this. That’s something that has literally shocked our nation to the level that it has with the murder of Charlie Kirk.

And I know, you know, this is weighed heavy on so many of our hearts and we’re still trying to figure out how to process this ourselves and also be able to articulate and explain this to our kids. And I also recognize that some of you, you came last week or you listened last week and maybe you didn’t agree with some of the things that I said. And I just want you to know that when I started ministry 25 years ago, this was always my mantra.

I always wanted these three things to be in existence, okay? I always wanted to be relatable, which means every time that I was given the opportunity to speak, that I would share the struggles that I have in my life. That you know that I’m just as fallen and sinful as you and that I have the same struggles as you. And so here, when I read God’s word, this is how it affects me and how it impacts me.

The second thing, I always wanted to be approachable, which is why I hang out in that West lobby and why I encourage our staff to do the same thing, because I don’t want you to leave here frustrated or feeling that you don’t have access to me. And so every single week I’ll be the last person to leave if there’s people that want to talk on a Sunday and connect with me. And the third one is this, is available to you.

And so if you’re just like, man, I can’t stick around after the service or there was too long of a line, call the church. I’ll meet you for coffee. I’ll meet you for breakfast, for lunch.

You can come in, make an appointment. I’ll come to your house. Whatever the case may be, I will figure out a way to connect with you.

Because I think one of the biggest strengths that Charlie had was, that was kind of his mantra, was to be able to have open and honest dialogue with each other. To be able to sit across the table and agree and disagree with each other, but that what united us is the fact that we’re human beings. And that’s what we should continue to pursue, is having those authentic conversations with one another.

You agree? So today, believe it or not, and imagine these sermon series are written months ago, how they just seem to fall in line with what’s going on in our world. But before I get into this week’s topic, I do want to tell you, this is our key verse throughout this entire series, is that God is the one who gives us his word. It’s inspired, it’s infallible.

He is the one that has breathed it into existence, and it’s for our benefit. It’s to teach us and to train us, but it’s also to rebuke and correct us. You have to have both.

And sometimes it’s not always easy to hear the truth, is it? Sometimes we don’t always want to be called out for our sins, do we? And I always tell people, if you stick around Shepherd’s Gate long enough, at some point I will probably offend you. Did you know that? But here’s the thing, it’s not me that’s offending you, because I’m just reading God’s word, saying this is what he says. Now you got to figure out how you’re going to respond.

Are you going to be convicted by that, as the Holy Spirit is speaking through me or one of our other pastors or communicators? And that’s on you, as our job is to preach the word and preach it boldly. Amen? So here is our topic. Here is our question for the week.

And remember, all of these questions, we are addressing them to God and then we’re going to his word and letting him answer them according to his word. And so our question for this week is, God, don’t all religions lead to you? Which, this is popular, right? This is prevalent in our society. Like a lot of people believe this.

And there’s a lot of really smart people out there that get advanced degrees. And I’m amazed, and maybe it’s my algorithm, maybe it just figures out me on the different platforms, like TikTok and Instagram, how many different social media clips I see of people that’ll take a Bible passage and then tell you it’s wrong. Or they’ll take a scripture and they’ll say, this is what you learned as a child, but this is what it really means.

Or, you know, the church made this up or the church created this and created that. And it’s mind boggling how many voices there are out there in dissenters. Or likewise, people will say, well, all the religions stem from the same beliefs.

They’re all tied into each other. And if you just do a little research and you dig into the history, you can see that really at the end of the day, they all really do lead to the same God. And so this morning we’re going to go to the Bible and we’re going to ask Jesus to tell us what he thinks about this question.

But before we do that, let’s just look at some of the major world religions that are in our culture here in metro Detroit. These actually aren’t the top six. This isn’t some ranking order.

These are just ones that I know that we come in contact with all the time. In fact, we have the largest population of Muslims outside of the Middle East. And where do they live? See, you all know that.

We have Jewish temples. We have Mormon temples. We have Hindu facilities to go and worship.

There’s a Buddhist temple in Sterling Heights. And obviously we have churches of all shapes and sizes in every direction as well. And what would make life super easy for us is if we never had to talk about this, number one, right? And number two is if we all could just coexist and just all get along.

Why can’t we all just get along? How many of you seen this bumper sticker before? And the heartbeat behind this is just wanting world peace. Hey, you believe what you believe. I’ll believe what I believe.

Let’s never talk about those differences. Let’s never have that conversation at a table. And everyone can kind of just stick to themselves.

Just the major things we’ll agree on. Like, you know, you shouldn’t steal, and you shouldn’t murder, and you should be a good citizen. If we have this list of morals that we agree to, then everything else should just keep everything peaceful, and there shouldn’t be any conflict.

Now, what happened to my family about a week and a half ago was quite mesmerizing. We have a 14-year-old and nine-month living in our home. And in the state of Michigan, when you’re 14 years old and nine months, they allow you to get behind the seat of a vehicle.

Did you know that? And so we paid billions of dollars to sign up our firstborn for driver’s training. And I was perfectly fine with it because I would drive him to the public school, the high school, and he would get out of my car and go into another person’s car, and then they would let him drive that car. And I was like, this is genius.

And his driver’s ed guy, he’s amazing. He’s a football coach. He was like a motivational speaker.

I mean, he’d get out of the car, and he’d motivate all the kids, and he’d want to know who the parents were and what they did for a living and all this. And then all of a sudden, just a week and a half ago, he said, well, your son has completed all of his coursework. Now you have to drive with him.

And I was like, no, no, no, time out, time out. How much more can I just pay and have you just keep, and then you’re just giving me when he’s 16. Who came up with the idea that our kids should drive us around? I mean, no wonder we have so much dysfunction in our families.

I mean, if you ever want to push your family to the limit, put your child in the driver’s seat and put the parent in the passenger seat. So I haven’t really been sleeping because of that either. But I’ll tell you this, what’s so amazing to me, and this is why I’m bringing this up, is because when you are on the road, do you realize it is the great equalizer in our society? That you can be on the road or on a freeway in a $200 car and you have the same rights and the same privileges as someone that is in a $200,000 car.

Isn’t that incredible? I just find it fascinating that no matter what it is that you have, everybody has to play by the same rules and everybody has to get along. And at the end of the day, everyone’s actual desire is just to return home safely. Correct? And so as we look at this idea of these world religions, as you dig into them, what you find out is there’s some inconsistencies.

This is why you can’t say that they all lead to the same God. The Jews obviously are still waiting for the Messiah. They do not accept Jesus Christ as the Savior.

Islam is perfectly fine with the Old Testament and the New Testament and they’re perfectly fine with Jesus. They just believe that he’s a prophet in a line of prophets and the prophet Muhammad is the final prophet. And if you dig deep into his life and you kind of read the research and the things that he went through, and so it’s not just about Jesus, it’s about going all the way to Muhammad.

Mormonism doesn’t exist without Joseph Smith. So they’re perfectly fine accepting the Old Testament and the New Testament and even acknowledging Jesus. And sometimes it gets tricky because people be like, well they say they’re a Christian church and they’ll even call Jesus the Savior, but they also attach Joseph Smith to all of their teachings and therefore discredit some of the work that we would say Jesus does in the finished work that Jesus did on the cross.

Hindus. I actually have cousins that came out of this. My mom’s sister, my aunt, married a guy from India who was a Hindu.

They have four kids. All of their kids are named after Hindu gods. And I’ve grown up with them.

We’ve had many conversations. In fact, they had three boys and one girl and the one girl, she actually had two weddings. She had a Hindu wedding and then after the Hindu wedding everybody changed and they had a Catholic wedding.

So you talk about living in this reality and this tension of, well how do I love my cousin that I’ve known for so long, but also she’s just kind of accepting all of the different religions and what this looks like in this big melding pot. Or the Buddhist. I mean, how can you not like the Buddhist? Have you ever met a Buddhist that’s not likable? They just want world peace.

They just pray a lot and meditate. But what are they meditating to? And what is happening in those moments? Because what happens is all of those things lead us away from the one true God. And so the harsh reality, but it’s the truthful reality, is that anything outside of Jesus Christ is a cult.

See how quiet it got in here? And even saying that because you probably have friends or neighbors or co-workers that fall in one of these categories and they’re good people and they even have good families and you can tell that they’re just good citizens, but yet they don’t believe what we believe. And so how do we respect people and love people and honor people while at the same time equally as important sharing the faith that we have in Jesus? And of course you have to bring in all of those that are in one of these camps and these can kind of meld together. People that just don’t know what they believe or don’t want to believe anything at all.

In fact, the largest growing segment of our population has just walked away from the church for various reasons. They walked away from God. So now let’s look at what Jesus said and what he did.

Jesus, when he began his public ministry, went back to his hometown of Nazareth and it was the Sabbath and he goes into the synagogue and he stood up to read. And wouldn’t you know that when he stood up to read, someone handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. So this was popular to do.

They would read passages of scripture and so Jesus would have grown up in this synagogue. He would have grown up in this town and so he’s handed the scroll. He gets the scroll and he doesn’t read what’s assigned to him.

He purposely goes through and finds the passage that he wants to read. Okay, keep that in mind. And he finds this particular verse and he says this, the spirit of the Lord is on who? Because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me. So now God is sending him to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. And this is where people are like, wait, what’s going on? Wait, what’s Jesus doing? Wait, I grew up playing travel sports with Jesus.

Where is Jesus losing his mind? Like what’s going on in this moment? Then he rolls up the scroll. He gives it back to the attendant. This is crazy.

He just sits down and he just watches the response. He sees the people getting uncomfortable. He notices that this isn’t sitting well with everybody in the room.

And everybody is staring at him, wondering what the heck he just said and who he just claimed to be. Because by reading that passage and inserting the word me, he is saying I am the promised Messiah. I’m here.

I’m the Savior. It’s been 30 years and now I’m going to go public with this declaration. And as he’s watching them be uncomfortable, as he’s watching them questioning what is happening in this moment, he doubles down and says, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

Well, wouldn’t you know, there were some people there, they’re like, wow, this is amazing. Wow, this is incredible. Man, the Messiah is here and he’s from our hometown.

Like how cool is that? And they begin to put their faith in him. Simultaneously, there were people there that were like, wait, wait, wait. Hold on.

Hold the phone. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe I was on my cell phone while he was reading the scroll.

Because nobody does that during our church services here at Shepherd’s Gate, I’m sure. So here he is, he’s like, wait a second, that’s Joseph’s son. There’s no way that he is the Messiah.

Well, not only were there the skeptics there that were still scratching their heads and trying to figure out, there was a third group that was there. There were people there that were furious at him. How dare you read that passage? How dare you declare yourself to be the Messiah? They were so enraged, they not only drove him out of the synagogue, they drove him out of town.

They took him to a certain spot over by a hill and they were about to throw him off the hill. And this isn’t some little tiny hill. It’s not like the hills that we have here in Michigan, okay? Not some little sledding hill.

Oh, we’re just gonna push him off and bruise him up and knock some sense into him. This is a hill that if he would have been thrown off, would have instantly killed him. Think about that for a moment.

Jesus starts his public ministry with a death threat on day one. Day one. I’m here to tell you today that there will always be this battle between good and evil on this earth.

Folks, there’s no such thing as world peace. There is no such thing as this co-existing and everybody’s just going to get along and be in harmony because we think we can solve it on our own. We think that eventually human beings will just get to the point where we just value everyone equally.

We’ve been doing this for thousands and thousands of years. How are we doing on that? We’re terrible at it. We’ve given the opportunity.

We will annihilate one another, which is what we keep seeing happening. People don’t value human life and if you say something or you believe something or you post something and I disagree with it or you hurt my feelings, then certainly you shouldn’t be on this planet anymore. And we keep wondering, when’s it going to stop? Is it going to stop? God, what’s next for us as a society? What’s next for our world as we watch it play out on the world stage and country versus country and dictator versus dictator and all of the military wars and all of the crazy things that are happening right now in real time in our midst? The battle between good and evil is not a thing that we can manufacture.

It is a spiritual battle that you and I are confronted with every single day. And when you begin to understand that, you begin to accept that, you begin to live in that reality. It actually changes how you live.

Do you know that? Because this is what happens to Americans, okay? In particular, we get comfortable. We get a little bit of money. We get the house.

We get the family. We get the kids. We get busy.

And so our lives are consumed with schedules and everything else and in and out. Maybe there’s a little bit of drama here. Maybe we have difficulty here and there.

But overall, life seems to be just going well until all of a sudden something comes and smacks us upside the head and drops us to our knees, which is exactly what happened with the murder of Charlie Kirk. And that’s why so many of us, we still feel this heaviness. We still feel this confusion.

People on both sides of, man, I don’t understand why the church keeps glorifying this guy, you know, blah, blah, blah, and this and this, and haven’t you watched these clips? To other people, like, man, I’ve been following this guy for years. Why does my heart feel so heavy? I never met the guy, but I, but I listened to his teachings and I listened to how out front he was and how bold he was about his faith in Jesus. Why am I having these feelings? Why has this been so difficult to try to figure out the next step or my next breath or my next thought? Now, watch what Jesus does in this passage.

The Gospel of John. Jesus was summoned to go and to heal a sick person named Lazarus. He receives the news, even though he’s God and he knows everything, that his friend Lazarus is sick.

And he does the exact opposite of what we would expect him to do. He does not run to where Lazarus is at. Instead, he stays back way too many days longer than what we would expect him to stay.

And Lazarus go ahead and he dies. He dies. And the disciples come and tell Jesus, hey, guess what? Lazarus has died, which he would have known again because he’s God.

And then he looks at him and says, okay, now it’s time to go visit him. They’re like, why would we go now? He’s already dead. This doesn’t make any sense.

And so when they finally get there, he’s confronted by two ladies, one in particular, Martha, who’s not very happy that Jesus delayed in getting there to heal her brother. And so Jesus says to Martha in this exchange, in this heated exchange, in this moment, these words, I am the resurrection. What does that mean? Who says that? Do you know that nobody throughout human history has ever said I am the resurrection unless they were trying to duplicate Jesus.

Here is this guy at a funeral with people mourning. And the first thing out of his mouth is I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me is doing the same thing he did when he started this ministry will live even if they die.

And whoever lives and believes in me, oh, by the way, you’re never going to die. And you go like, wait, what? These don’t sound like words of comfort, do they? Like, this sounds like a riddle to me. And then you got to kind of pause and go, wait a second.

No, no, this is exactly what they needed to hear. He once again is proclaiming his lordship. He once again is proclaiming who he is, that I am the resurrection, that I can make the resurrection happen right here and right now.

In fact, I am the one who will be resurrected. And I will declare victory over sin, death, and the devil for you and for all mankind. And even though your friend, your loved one is dead right now, he’s not dead.

He’s alive because he had faith in me. So whether you die this side of eternity or that side, it doesn’t matter. You’re an eternal being.

And I am the only one. I am the only path for you in that regard. That’s what he’s saying.

And then he turns to her and he asked this question, do you believe this? Martha, do you believe what I just told you? Lazarus did. Lazarus is enjoying all of the comforts of being off planet earth and all of the struggles that you face on planet earth. And in her deepest, darkest moment, in the mourning that she’s experiencing, the pain of losing a loved one, and he lovingly, gently asked her to put her faith and her hope in him.

And this is what becomes the tension that we live in. It’s the inclusivity and the exclusivity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because people will say, well, I don’t want to belong to a church, or I don’t want to be a Christian, or look at all of the ways in which people have been hurt by the church, or they’ve been hurt by pastors.

And sometimes we get this confused. We get this whole idea confused of what these two things, these two realities actually mean. And before I answer this, I want to give you one more example of Jesus making it crystal clear whether or not he is the only way to the Father.

Because he also said in John to his disciples, he said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one, no one, no other religion, no other person, no other prophet is going to come after me. No one comes to the Father except through me.

And even during Jesus’s ministry. Yes, he has people that would follow him. And people that were putting their faith in him.

There were times when people would literally churn and they walked away and said, we want nothing to do with you. And when that crowd walked away from him, he looked at his disciples and he said, are you guys going to leave as well? And Peter, who’s often the spokesman of that group, looked at Jesus and said, where are we going to go? Where are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life. Folks, everything that we do, more than we realize, hangs in the balance of good and evil and temporary and eternal.

This is why Jesus told that group of disciples, do not let your hearts be troubled. If you believe in God, you believe in God because that’s how you were raised. You were raised in that Jewish system.

Well, guess what? Now you also believe in me. Because in my Father’s house has many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you that I’m going there to prepare a place for you.

He told them that that’s what he was going to do. And isn’t it interesting? We sung about this at the beginning of our service. And by the way, I’m going to go and prepare this place for you.

I’m going to go be with God. And then I’m going to come back and then I’m going to gather all of you to go be with me where I am. And by the way, you already know the place where I am going.

You know the place. You’ve seen the miracles. You’ve heard the teachings.

You realize that this world and this life is temporary and it’s short. And there’s far greater what waits for you on the other side of eternity. And after he says those bold words, no one comes to the Father except for me.

He says, if you know me, you know my Father as well. And oh, by the way, disciples from now on, you know him and you have seen him. Jesus is the image of the invisible God.

You want to see God? Look to the person and work of Jesus. You want to see God? Look at the finished work that Jesus did on the cross when he stretched out his arms and took your sins and my sins upon him. You want to see God? See the risen Savior.

Take those steps out of that empty tomb and do what we would never, ever, ever be able to do for ourselves. And so for us, that is who we worship. That is who we align our lives and our marriages and our families after.

The finished work of Jesus Christ. So hear me today. Understand the exclusivity and inclusivity of the gospel.

The exclusivity is this, is that only Jesus saves. That’s the answer to our question this morning. There are not multiple paths to the same God.

It is only through the bloodshed of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen? But here’s the other good part of this whole equation. It’s the inclusivity of the gospel.

He wants all men to be saved. He wants everyone to come to a saving knowledge of him. And by golly, how can you not look at the events of what’s happened in our nation? How can you not look at the events of what happened with Charlie Kirk? That now all of a sudden has caused this insane movement, not just in our country, but all over the world.

I mean, you would literally have to be living in a cave to not see the impact that this is having on hearts and minds of people of every religion, in every age, and in every stage. But personalize it for you. Do you know him? Do you see him? Do you see him drawing you to himself? Do you see the love that God the Father has for you? That he sent his one and only son to this earth to walk in human likeness, to experience everything that we experience, including knowing what it’s like to lose a loved one.

All of the facets of our humanity have been experienced by Jesus. That ultimately, he would be the one and the only one who would be reconciled or be used by God to reconcile us back to him. That’s the gospel message.

That’s the beauty of the gospel. And isn’t it interesting that his closest followers, that when he was in the garden and the soldiers and Judas were coming, you know, Jesus didn’t really, you know, make it really difficult for him. If you know the Good Friday or the Maundy Thursday account, he wasn’t like he went hiding into a cave.

He went into a garden where he knew Judas would find him easily. Like, hey, I’m over here. I’m over here.

And when they came and they bound him, what did the disciples do? They all went running in all sorts of different directions. Peter was the one that actually circled back and kind of followed as a distance. And some people asked Peter, like, well, weren’t you one of his disciples? And he denied it because he caved to fear and doubt.

And then others would say, no, no, no, certainly you were one of his followers. And he said, no, you are confusing me with somebody else. And it wasn’t until a crow, you know, a rooster three times that he was broken as he realized that he had completely denied who Jesus was.

Later on, we find out in the book of Acts that he’s restored. He gives the first sermon on the day of Pentecost. And then all of a sudden, he’s got this new boldness, this new love of wanting to share the gospel with others.

In fact, it tells us this, that he said these words to those that were persecuting him. The stone you builders rejected has become the cornerstone. And by the way, salvation is found in no one else.

This is after Jesus is resurrected and into heaven. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. Period.

That’s what the Bible says. And now we got to figure out what we’re going to do about that. If we’re going to receive that and accept that as the truth.

What’s so amazing is when they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and took note that these men had been with Jesus. What did they do? They stand firm for the faith. They weren’t afraid of what they knew to be true.

And I think that’s the difficulty sometimes in the society that we live in. Because again, go back to the beginning. Everyone wants to just play nice and everyone wants to like not offend people.

And if we just all stay silent, then we all get along and no one has to worry about anything. And I think now more than ever, people realize that’s never going to be the case, is it? That you and I have been called by God not to browbeat people, not to, not to, you know, one-up people, not to tell people, you know, that, that we’re right and they’re wrong in order to come alongside people and to love people and to care for people and to feed people and to clothe people. And as the Holy Spirit opens doors to begin to share the pure gospel message.

Amen.