Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Have you ever had a big question for God?

Maybe you want to have children so badly and so, you’ve tried and you’ve prayed and you’ve waited.

There’s even been glimmers of hope, and then a miscarriage of a child you loved so dearly, and you wonder, how could it be that a good God would let this happen?

Big question.

Or, maybe you’ve sat in a college classroom or read an online argument that brought real doubt into your mind as to whether or not it can be possible that there even is a God or that any of this is true at all.

Big question.

Or, perhaps, life has just beaten all hope out of you, and you’ve buried children or watched children rebel.

Your marriage has fallen apart, or at the very best become simply surviving with the other person.

Day-in-day-out, you just kind of make it, and so you’ve got a big problem with God saying somehow that all of this is supposed to work out for your good.

Big question.

Big questions need big answers.

And, what you see as you read the life of Jesus is that Jesus is not afraid of your questions.

Throughout his life, Jesus answered big questions sometimes from people who were seekers and other times from people who were trying to humiliate him and still others from his own disciples as they were trying to follow him.

So, over the next four weeks, we’re going to bring some difficult questions to Jesus because Jesus isn’t afraid of our questions.

And, He isn’t afraid because He is the truth.

He has nothing to hide.

Today, I want us to start with this question: What makes the Christian God and the Christian faith greater than all other gods and all other faiths?

Or, we might ask it like this: Why can’t all the gods just get along?

God’s Word

Read

“If I’m Wrong, What Have I Lost?”

“we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Occasionally, I will hear a well-meaning Christian attempt to win someone who does not believe in Jesus this way: “If I’m wrong and you’re right, then neither of us have lost anything.

But, if you’re wrong and I’m right, then you’ve lost everything and I’ve gained everything.” Now, as well-meaning as it is, this is a problematic argument.

First of all, Jesus has never called for anyone to follow after him ‘just in case He’s true.’

A man or woman cannot be inspired to surrender all of their life for the rest of their life ‘just in case it might be true.’

They have to know and believe and have confidence the Christ is supreme and worthy of their lives.

The second reason this is a problematic argument is that it’s not true!

If Jesus is not supreme, if Jesus is not risen from the dead, if Jesus is not God, then we, Christians have wasted everything!

We’ve wasted all we have, which is this life, as Christ has called us to deny ourselves now that we might live for a greater life to come.

So, Paul says here in that if Jesus isn’t God then Jesus isn’t Savior, and if Jesus isn’t really the Savior and He’s just some nut-job revolutionary that said some interesting things and had some devoted followers, then ‘we are of all people most to be pitied.’

And, that brings us to our question this morning: Is Jesus the Savior?

Is Jesus really supreme among all other gods?

Is Jesus really God at all?

Is There a God?

Before we can even get to that question, I think we have to ask: Is there a God at all?

The fastest growing religious classification in America are those who classify themselves as ‘nones.’

That is, they believe that there is no God at all.

I want to make three quick arguments as to why I think that the only sensible and rational explanation for anything is that there is a God.

Humanity believes in God instinctively.

Every civilization in the history of the world began with some concept of god.

When they looked at themselves and they looked at their world, their assumption, their instinct was that there was a god or gods by whom they were made and before whom they were made.

The earliest writings outline cultural religions.

The earliest drawings and paintings do the same thing.

You won’t find this driving by a flock a goats or in the chimpanzee exhibit at the zoo, but as long as there have been humans, there has been the concept of God.

And, this would make sense since says that God put eternity in man’s heart.

teaches that man was made in God’s image so that he would live in a relationship with God and know God.

It is natural and instinctive for him to want to know him.

The world exists.

The second argument that I would make is quite simply that the world exists.

It is the first law of thermodynamics, one of the very pillars of science, that states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed; it can only change forms.

That is, you cannot have nothing and gain everything.

Stephen Hawking, who just passed away a couple of weeks ago, is credited with discovering that the universe originated from the tiniest speck, a single point called a singularity.

So, if nothing cannot create everything, even a point of singularity, where did it came from?

It must come from an original Source!

It must come from God!

There must be an original energy.

The world is orderly.

And not only does the world exist, but the world exists with an orderliness that’s impossible to miss.

You know, when I look at my truck, it’s a pretty impressive machine.

And, here’s what I know.

I know that a tornado didn’t spin through Bubba’s Auto Salvage and randomly assemble such a perfectly ordered machine!

And, the thing about it is that I’ve never seen the engineer that designed it or the factory where it was made or the workers who put it together, but I know, without a shadow of a doubt that they are there, why?

Because I can see my truck!

Man, look around you!

The very oxygen that you breathe is produced by plants which breath in the carbon dioxide that you breathe out.

There has to be an Engineer!

There has to be a Designer!

The morality of man.

Many people want to pretend today as though morality is subjective and that it can be changed.

But, throughout history, there have been certain moral standards and ethics that have transcended every culture.

Every culture recognizes that if I walk up to you and shoot you in the face for no reason that it is a morally abhorrent thing to do.

Every culture recognizes that to sleep with another man’s wife is an immoral thing to do.

Even in our subjective culture, what happened during 9-11?

There was a unified call for justice!

Every, single American recognized what moral violation this was.

If there are only instincts and natural selection, then what is the basis of this morality?

Natural selection says that if you can kill him and he is too weak to stop you, then you should.

It was the centerpiece of the Nazi ideology.

Our morality is found in our being made in the image of a moral God who established morality in the creation from the beginning.

Can’t All the gods Just Get Along?

So, maybe you would grant me that it is most rational and most logical that there is a God, but you would say that your problem comes in when we Christians suggest that our God is the only God.

And so, you might ask, “Can’t all the gods just get along?”

Can we not just tell people to find the god that makes the most sense to them, whether that be the Muslim god or the Mormon god or the Eastern gods or Buddhist enlightenment, and tell them to live it out to the best of their abilities?

But, this is an irrational question, for they cannot

This question seems to come from a thought process that all religions originate with the same God.

But, this simply cannot be.

It cannot be because they all contradict one another if you believe them truly.

They can’t all be true any more than green can be blue or two plus two can be four and five at the same time.

The God of the Bible has no patience for pluralism.

Listen to what He says: "Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the LORD alone, shall be devoted to destruction."

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."

Do you hear what this is saying?

If you believe in this God, if you believe in the God of the Bible, then it cannot stand that you see him as simply one of the possibilities, for He does not see himself that way!

In fact, He says that to worship other God is to devote yourself to destruction.

If the God of the Bible is true, then all other gods are liars and lead you away from him.