"Answering More of Life's Unanswered Questions"

Dear Friends in Christ,

   What would it take for you to give up your Bible?  What would have to happen for you to relinquish it to an enemy that did not want you or anyone else to have it?  I suppose the answer to that question would depend upon how much your Bible means to you.  At least that was the case with a Chinese woman named Lu Ying whose story appears in this book entitled Extreme Devotion…

   Aren’t you glad that we live in a land where we don’t have to deal with that kind of persecution?   And yet, amazingly, many people who call themselves Christians would never have to worry about having their hands broken to get them to let loose of their Bible because they never pick up that Bible in the first place and use it as God intended us to.  “I’m too busy.”  “I don’t have time.”  “I’ll get to it later.”  These are the excuses people use nowadays for failing to read this greatest of all books whose Author is present every time we open its pages.

   But we’re trying to change all of that through this sermon series I am currently preaching entitled “Getting Back to the Bible.”  After looking at a number of reasons why people don’t read the Bible and then examining some excellent reasons why we should read the Bible, last Sunday we started talking about some problems that can arise when we fail to read the Bible, beginning with this one: Bible illiteracy leaves life’s key questions unanswered.  And just for the fun of it, last week we looked at some of those key questions and the answers that the Bible gives to them, like How can I know the truth?   And Does God really exist?  And if he does, what is he like?  We also looked at the haunting question that people love to ask these days, namely, if there is a God and that God is good, then why is there so much evil in our world?  Today I want to spend my time exploring more of these key questions to life, beginning with this one: Don’t all religions lead to God?

   How many times haven’t we heard that one, especially in this day and age that is marked by what I like to call hyper-tolerance, which is an extreme form of tolerance that says no one’s views or belief system should ever be considered better than anyone else’s.  And so for a Christian to say that there is only one way to God, only one way to heaven, and that way is through Jesus Christ, is seen by many people today as being extremely intolerant, bigoted, and narrow-minded.

   A couple of months ago I received an email that included a video clip from a debate featuring the Republican presidential candidates before any of them started dropping out of the race.  The questioner asked Mike Huckabee, who as you know is a Baptist minister, if he believed in a literal 6 day creation as it is recorded in the book of Genesis.  And how he asked it, I felt, was in a very condescending way, as though anyone who would believe something like that needs to step out of the Dark Ages and experience the enlightenment of the 21^st century.  But much to his credit, Mike Huckabee stayed true to his convictions and gave a beautiful testimony to his belief in a Creator God.

   And in all honesty, what he said would be ok with most people in our hyper-tolerant culture, provided he doesn’t take it any further than that, provided he doesn’t try to get anyone else to believe the way he does or insist that the Christian way is the only way to God.  But let’s just ponder for a moment the fallacy of this way of thinking.  Do all roads or religions really lead to God?  Well, a good way to answer that question is by asking another question:  Do all roads in the United States lead to Chicago?  I don’t think so.  Try traveling on I-70 which goes east and west and you’re never going to end up in Chicago.  Or try taking I-4 down in Florida and it will get you across the southern part of the United States but never to Chicago.  Only roads specifically designed to take you to Chicago will get you there.

   Well, God designed a road, and according to the Bible it’s just one road, that will take us to himself.  And that road is Jesus Christ.  Like he said of himself in John 14:6: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  And in Matthew 7:13-14 Jesus clearly states: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  You know, when you think about it, God wasn’t obligated to provide any road to himself once our first parents sinned.  He could have left us alone to fend for ourselves and never made it possible for us to find our way back to him.  But his love for us was too great.  So through Jesus he did what we could have never done for ourselves.  He provided the necessary road and he made that road available and accessible to all who would believe in Jesus as their Savior from sin.

   And I might add that all other religions in our world today offer a totally different perspective on Jesus and God and a totally different view of how people are saved.  While Christianity teaches that we are saved by what Christ has done for us, every other religion teaches that we are saved by what we do for ourselves.  My point being, both can’t be right, can they?  They are mutually exclusive of each other.  So there’s no way then that all roads or all religions can lead to God.

   That takes us to another one of life’s great questions that the Bible does a great job of answering.  And that question is this: Can God ever forgive me for what I’ve done wrong?  Guilt can be one of the most crippling issues that a person can ever contend with.  And nobody knew that better than King David who had an adulterous relationship with another man’s wife that led him into a whole host of other sins which included the murder of her husband.  And after God sent a prophet to David by the name of Nathan and Nathan helped David to understand that though his sins were done in secret they were done in full view of the Lord, David recorded these telling words in Psalm 32 that describe how the guilt he was feeling was pretty well eating him alive.  He says: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.”  Have you ever felt like that, my friends?  Have you ever felt the heavy hand of God resting upon your shoulder when you did something that you knew was displeasing to him?  Have you ever felt like running and hiding from him like Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden when they ate of the forbidden fruit?  Have you ever wondered how God could ever love you and forgive you for the terrible things that you did?  I’m sure we have all felt that way at some time or another.  In fact, I’ve known people who have carried that burden of guilt for 10, 15, 20, or more years. 

   So how about it?  Can God forgive me for what I’ve done wrong?  David answers that question for us in the next verse of that 32^nd Psalm that we just looked at when he says: “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD’-- and you forgave the guilt of my sin.’”  Elsewhere, in I John 1:9 we are told that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”  And God uses such beautiful pictures in the Bible to describe what he really does for us when he forgives our sins.  In Micah 7:19 we’re told: “You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.”  In Is. 44:22 God says: “I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist.”  In Is. 43:25 he says: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.”  And then there’s my favorite in Ps. 103:12: ““As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

   So while the rest of the world may offer all kinds of answers to the guilt that sometimes burdens our hearts, the Bible tells us the only way to find genuine and lasting relief from it.  And that is to lay it down at the nail-scarred feet of Jesus and allow his blood to cleanse us of all sin.

   Well, we’ve got time to take a look at one more of life’s key questions, one that every person asks sooner or later.  And that question is: What happens to me after I die?  Even atheists ponder that question, even though it may not be as big a concern to them as it is to those who are not atheists.  I remember having a conversation once with a person who classified himself as an atheist and when I asked him what he thought was going to happen to him after he died, he said with great confidence and conviction, “Nothing is going to happen to me.  They’re going to stick me in the ground and that’s going to be it for me.”  When I told him that sounded like a pretty hopeless scenario, to think that this world with all of its trials and troubles and imperfections was it, he said that it didn’t bother him one bit.  He was perfectly fine with it.

   Most of us though are much more concerned about what will happen to us after we die because like the book of Ecclesiastes says, God has “set eternity in the hearts of men.”  In other words, we have a God-given, built in knowledge that there is a life to come after this one, that this world is just a temporary stopping point in the grand scheme of eternity.  And when we read the Bible, we discover what that future life will be like.  In fact, that description is so wonderful and so beautiful that it can serve to raise us up above all the problems and difficulties of this world and give us courage and strength to carry on until heaven becomes our home.  In Rev. 7:15-17 those who are in heaven are described like this: “They are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”  If you think that sounds exciting, listen to what the Apostle Paul says in I Cor. 2:9: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”  So while the Bible does not give us a perfect and complete picture of everything that happens to us after we die, it certainly gives us enough to whet our appetites and to make us look forward to that time with great eagerness and anticipation.

   So my friends, when we don’t read our Bibles, we rob ourselves of the answers to life’s most important and sometimes most perplexing questions.  But there are other problems we run into as well.  And though starting next week we’re going to be taking a break from this sermon series to focus more upon the Lenten season, once we get past Easter we’ll get back to this series again and continue our look at some more of those problems in the hopes of giving us a whole newfound appreciation for all that God makes available to us in this holy book.  Amen.