The Challenge of Pluralism


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Edited February 17, 2009

The Challenge of Pluralism Rich Nathan February 14-15, 2009 Finding God Series Luke 13:18-30 Ever since 9/11 there have been more and more voices arguing that the problem we’re facing in the world today is not just a small number of militant Muslims who fanatically believe that killing yourself on behalf of Allah is a one-way ticket to paradise. Since 9/11 there have been all kinds of editorial writers and columnists and reporters and college professors arguing that the problem of suicide bombers and random violence has a deeper root – faith itself. So, a British journalist named Muriel Gray wrote about the London bombings in 2005. She said: Everyone is being blamed, from the obvious villainous duo of George W. Bush and Tony Blair, to the inaction of Muslim communities. But it has never been clearer that there is only place to lay the blame and it has ever been thus. The cause of all this misery, mayhem, violence, terror and ignorance, is of course religion itself, and if it seems ludicrous to have to state such an obvious reality, the fact is that the government and the media are doing a pretty good job of pretending that it isn’t so. One New York Times reporter argued that our main problem after September 11th was not terrorism, but “religious totalitarianism.” In other words, in a world in which people are struggling to get along any religion that claims to have the truth just exacerbates tension and violence. Faith in religious truth leads to violence The claim is that only faiths that are relativistic, in other words faiths that are just true for you but don’t’ claim to be true for everyone are safe in the public square. I read a recent book that was talking about the problem believing that one’s religious truth is true for everyone. The author said this: It is somewhat trite, but nevertheless sadly true, to say that more wars have been waged, more people killed, and these days more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than any other institutional force in history. Have you heard this claim, “Religion is the greatest force for violence and tension in the world and it has always been so”? The problem with the lazy, unexamined repetition of this claim is that not only is it demonstratively false endangering one of our most fundamental freedoms, the freedom to worship as our conscience

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dictates, but it also betrays an incredible prejudice against all of the positive benefits that religion and the Christian faith in particular has contributed to the world – things like the rise of universities, the development of modern science, the abolition of slavery, the promotion of human rights. It is absolutely the case that people throughout history have been killed in the name of some god. And so it continues today in Iraq, in India, and so on. But there have been multiple times more people murdered and tortured in the name of some secular ideology in the last century than have ever been killed in name of religion. Critics of religion not only need strong dose of truth, but also a strong dose of humility regarding the evils perpetrated in the name of non-religion. The full stories of the evils committed by Stalin and by Mao have still not been completely uncovered. But all you would need to do is to pick up a book that was written a few years ago called The Black Book of Communism. It is an 800-page volume written by ex-communists listing murder after murder, destruction of whole people groups, torture and rape and genocide carried out in the name of the atheistic philosophy called communism. Stalin murdered over 30 million people. Mao is said to have killed over 65 million people. Po Pot, the communist dictator of Cambodia, killed a quarter of his nation’s population. The best estimates say that about 150 million people were killed in the name of nonreligion in the 20th century. We need to respond right off the bat to the claim that religion causes violence. The bottom line is that people cause violence. Selfish, greedy, power-hungry people whether they are religious or non-religious – Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, atheistic, agnostic, selfish power-hungry, fanatical people do violence, not religion. And as we will see, religion, especially the Christian faith, has resources within it to check the spread of violence and work for peace and the lessening of tension between people. But wholly apart from religious violence, doesn’t faith lead to arrogance and bigotry? Faith in religious truth leads to arrogance and bigotry That is the claim. The fact is that we as a nation are becoming increasingly diverse – not just ethnically, but religiously. 35,000 Somali Muslims have come to Columbus in just the last 15 years. 62% of Americans over the age of 70 are Protestant. But only 43% of Americans age 18-29 are Protestant. As we move from older people to younger people, the population of America becomes less white, less Anglo-Saxon, and less Protestant. Even among Catholics, one-third of all people who say they were raised Roman Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic. Many of you might be in that group. Many denominations have seen significant declines in the percentage of

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Americans associated with them in the last 40 years. The Episcopal church is down 60%. The Methodist Church is down 49%. The Presbyterian Church is down 45%. Overall mainline churches are down 49%. Many are attending a range of more conservative churches. A quarter of young adults are no longer affiliated with any particular religion. They say “no particular religion” in answer to surveys. Only 8% of their grandparents say that. There is a huge denomination reshuffling taking place. You can’t attend a graduate school program, especially in the sciences, in engineering, or in medicine without having a large majority of your fellow students being either Hindus from India, or Asian Buddhists, or secularists. The idea that there would be in Christianity something that is uniquely true is one of the things 21st century people find hardest to swallow about the Christian faith. To many folks it seems positively un-American to suggest that salvation may come solely through Jesus Christ. We are, after all, Americans – Muslim, Jewish, Christian, atheist – we are Americans. It is contrary to our entire American egalitarian ethos to suggest that God is anything other than an equal opportunity employer. Many folks today believe that all roads, if followed sincerely, equally lead to God. And to claim otherwise is to be an intolerant, narrow-minded elitist self-righteous, arrogant, obnoxious bigot. Any of you like to sign up for that title? I’ve been doing a series that I’ve titled “Finding God.” I’ve been speaking about the challenges for 21st century people to place our faith in Christ and to walk faithfully with Christ. Today I want to talk about one of the great challenges that not only those outside the Christian faith have with respect to Christianity, but even those of us who believe that we’ve discovered something of truth in Jesus, find rather embarrassing about the Christian faith – this claim to unique truth, Jesus being a unique source of salvation. My message is titled “The Challenge of Pluralism.” Let’s pray. In Luke 13:18-19 we read these words: Luke 13:18-19 Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? 19 It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.” Now, it must have come as some surprise, almost a shock, when Jesus compared the kingdom of God to a mustard seed which is a tiny little seed. To compare God’s reign in the world with something so infinitesimally small is not what Jesus’ hearers expected to hear. They expected that Jesus as a Jewish rabbi would repeat the words of the old prophet Daniel, who compared the

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kingdom of God to an enormous boulder that smashes all competing kingdoms. We see in Daniel 2:44-45: Daniel 2:44-45 In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. 45 This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. Daniel described God’s reign and rule as coming like a comet from outer space, smashing other competing faiths and other competing kingdoms. That is what people expected to hear from Jesus. But that God’s reign was going to come into the world like a tiny mustard seed and that the Christian faith would grow up in the midst of other competing faiths - this was totally unexpected. Other faiths have always competed for allegiance The problem of pluralism – the fact that many, many people in the world have not given their allegiance to Jesus - is not a new problem. The world that gave birth to Judaism was a multi-faith world, and the world into which Jesus came was as much a multi-faith world as the world is today. The world didn’t suddenly become multi-faith in the last 20 years. The ancient world was conquered by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC. All over the Mediterranean world and all over the Middle East there were dozens and dozens of gods and goddesses with their devotees and their temples. There were also people who rejected popular religions and followed various schools of philosophy. Early Christians had to work out what it meant to be a follower of Jesus in the midst of many, many competing faiths. Consider that the beginnings of this faith that we today call Christianity was infinitesimally small, and seemed at the beginning so feeble, so tiny, so powerless that it could never succeed against this enormous marketplace of faiths and philosophies. The founder of our Christian faith was born in a stable in a tiny little village called Bethlehem and his life ended just a few miles away on a hill called Golgotha, the Skull, where he was crucified between two thieves. Jesus had in his life gathered a few followers who after his death began preaching his message. These were not government officials. His followers were not the Roman Emperor or Roman generals. There were a few fishermen. And they didn’t preach the violent overthrow of Rome. They preached that people should turn the other cheek, bear with oppression. The message they preached was foolishness to the Greek philosophers and an impossibility for many Jews because many Jewish people were looking for a conquering Messiah, not a crucified Messiah. Everywhere in the Roman world Christians were spoken

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against. They were seen as disloyal, a threat to the empire. Christians were rounded up and fed to lions in the arena. They were hacked to death by gladiators. They were set on fire. They were crucified all over Rome and in the Middle East. Philosophers opposed them in the academy. Places where Christians met were burned to the ground. And yet, Jesus was exactly right when he said that God’s reign would start with this tiny seed and spread and grow until it became a great tree. But it spread not by violently smashing all competing faiths (like a boulder), but out-serving, outsuffering, out-loving, competing faiths (like a tiny mustard seed) – caring for the sick people during the plagues, feeding hungry people during famines, educating ignorant people during the Dark Ages. This is a great encouragement to any of you who consider yourselves to be followers of Christ and yet feel unbelievably insignificant in the midst of the environment in which everyone else around you does not acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior. Other faiths can make us feel insignificant You may be the only Christian that you know in your high school or college or grad school class. You may be the only Christian that you know at your firm or in your office. You may be the only Christian in your family. Jesus says you are a mustard seed. It is not the number of seeds, or the fact that the quantity of Christians outnumber the quantity of other people. Rather, the key issue is the dynamic of God’s power. It is God’s living reign and rule in your soul that has the potential to impact whatever environment you find yourself in. And friends, this story of the mustard seed that spreads and grows is the great religious story of the last century. From a situation at the beginning of the 20th century where 90% of all the world’s Christians lived either in Europe or in North America, to the beginning of the 21st century where 75% of Christians live in the South and Eastern parts of the world, ¾’s of all Christians now live in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. People have called this the “Next Christendom” or the coming of “Global Christianity.” The Christian faith is no longer a North American or European faith. It is no longer a Caucasian faith. It is a global faith that started with a mustard seed. In a hundred years this Christian faith spread across the world. And Jesus talks about the kingdom of God not only in terms of a mustard seed, but also in terms of yeast. Luke 13:20-21 Again he asked, “What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? 21 It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

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I would say that not only is this another picture of the growth of God’s kingdom among various people groups around the world, but this picture of yeast is a picture of the way that God’s reign and rule grows in our own hearts. Very often the way that God breaks into a person’s life is not by some earth-shattering boulder dropping from the sky. Some people come to faith in the midst of a mammoth crisis. They are going off to battle. Their spouse is dying. They’re being sentenced to prison. But some of those folks don’t continue in the faith after the crisis has been resolved. They have experienced what people have termed a “fox-hole conversion.” I’m going to pray to you, God, when bullets are flying, but the farther I move from crisis, the less I really find the need for you. You may have had some fox-hole conversion in the past. But that is generally not the way God spreads his rule in our lives. Often it is like a little bit of yeast, a remark from a friend or family member, or perhaps a message in a church service that lodges in the heart. The yeast may be a small act of kindness performed that you observe. A Christian friend who is not pushy with their faith, but there just is a different quality in their life and you see that. Something that you read that gets you thinking more about life, about God. A pin prick of your conscience that makes you feel bad about something you’ve done, or the way that you’re living and makes you want to change. The beginning of God’s in-breaking into your life is often very small. It could be the desire to have your kids raised with good values. It could be the desire to hold your family together. These small things can spread like yeast in your heart until they affect your whole person. And so the question arises in verses 22-23: Luke 13:22-23 Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. 23 Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” What provoked the question? Well, certainly, in this text you would say: Jesus, if the kingdom of God is so small, if it is like a tiny mustard seed, if it is like a tiny bit of yeast, are there just a few people who will be saved? The question was provoked by the context of what Jesus was doing. It says in verse 22: Luke 13:22 Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Jesus had told his followers that he was going to Jerusalem where he would be rejected, spit at, beaten, hung on a cross and that his followers would be scattered. So Jesus, if you are going to be rejected, and your message is going to be rejected, does that mean that the saved will be few? We ask the same

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question today. If you claim that salvation uniquely comes through Jesus, then what about those who have never heard the name Jesus? What about those who have never gotten the chance to respond to the message that God has come and visited planet Earth in the person of Jesus? What if someone hadn’t heard that anyone who embraces this person Jesus and what God has done through his death and resurrection will be saved? What about all the folks who have never heard, never had the chance to hear and respond, what about all the severely mentally challenged people who cannot understand the message? What about children, babies who die in infancy? What about the multitudes of infants who have been aborted? We have multitudes of infants in America and around the world who have been aborted. We have lots of questions. So we ask: Jesus, will the saved be few? And Jesus answers: Will the saved be you? Luke 13:24 Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. The wrong question and the right question We ask the theoretical question, “Will the saved be few?” Jesus answers with the practical and personal question, “Will the saved be you?” He doesn’t give us any prophetic disclosure of the total number of the saved. He essentially says to all of theoretical questions of what about this person, and what about that person: you let me worry about that! I am way more kind and generous than you are and I am way fairer than you are. You worry about your own soul. There are other Bible texts that begin to answer our theoretical question: will the saved be few? The Bible in other places seems to scream: No. There is a wideness in the mercy of God. And so by way of prophetic disclosure of the future, the apostle John was given a glimpse into heaven in the book of Revelation. We read his description of the saved in Revelation 7:9-10: Revelation 7:9-10 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” But in Luke Jesus does not satisfy our curiosity about the Aborigine in Australia who has never heard the name of Jesus, or the person who can’t comprehend it, or the child who dies in infancy. By the way, the overwhelming majority of Christian thinkers throughout Christian history have believed that all of these

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groups that I’ve just mentioned would be ultimately embraced by the love of God and spend eternity in God’s kingdom. But Jesus says: You worry about your own soul! So we read in verse 24 these words: Luke 13:24 Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Jesus tells us something about salvation in this text. He says the way into the kingdom is narrow. The door is narrow. There are not a million doors. There is one door. And this is the great scandal of biblical faith, what is called “the scandal of particularity,” this narrowness, one door in, one way in. Anyone who seriously embraces the Bible has to embrace this scandal, the embarrassment of the Bible’s narrowness. God chooses one person from everyone on earth, Abraham, and says that he is going to bring salvation to the world through the one person. And then he chooses one of Abraham’s sons. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. God chooses Isaac (not Ishmael) and says, “Salvation will come to the world through you, Isaac.” And Isaac had two sons. God says, “Salvation will come to the world through only one of the sons, Jacob and not his brother Esau.” Jacob had twelve sons and God says salvation will come to the world only through one of the twelve sons, Judah. Not the other eleven. And from hundreds of Judah’s descendants God said that salvation was going to come through one King, David. And through David’s thousands of descendants salvation comes through one person, Jesus. This narrow door is everywhere described in the Bible. We read in Acts 4:12: Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved. 1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and human beings, Christ Jesus, himself human And, of course, in the most famous text: John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

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This raises immediately for contemporary people a whole series questions. This “narrow” door idea, only through Jesus, is so unfair. Isn’t it enough to be sincere? In other words, as long as you sincerely believe something then that should save you, shouldn’t it? But of course, when we think about this for a moment, we recognize that sincerity is no guarantee of the truth. You can sincerely be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, or be a Nazi, or believe in human sacrifice, or believe in the flatness of the earth. The fact that we’re sincere is no guarantee of the truth. Someone might sincerely believe that Europe is now better off because 6 million Jews were placed in gas chambers. Their sincerity doesn’t make it right or true. A British philosopher of religion named John Hicks summarized the absurdity of equating sincerity with truth this way. He said: To say that whatever is sincerely believed and practiced is, by definition, true, would be the end of all critical discrimination, both intellectual and moral. Don’t all religions basically teach the same thing? Oh come on. Don’t all religions basically teach the same thing? I mean, it all boils down to being a good person and not hurting other people. You know, the Golden Rule: Do it to others before they do it to you! No! That’s not the Golden Rule. That’s the lead rule. But basically all religions teach the same thing. You know the story of the blind man with the elephant. One blind man holds the elephant’s tail and says the elephant is like a snake. Another blind man holds the blind man’s leg and says the elephant is like a tree. Another blind man touches the elephant’s side and says the elephant is like a wall. But it’s all just the same elephant that each of us is touching in our own way. It is all basically the same thing – Islam, Hinduism, Christianity – it is all the same. That’s what 21st century secular people say. All religion, whatever it is, basically boils down to being a good person, treating people with respect. To which a follower of any particular faith would say, “How dare you attempt to reduce my faith to being a good person? Who put you in this superior position where you alone can see the whole truth? You alone see the whole elephant and all the rest of humanity is grabbing the elephant’s tail, leg and sides. But somehow you, 21st century secular American, you uniquely see the whole thing. Who gave you this God’s-eye view of reality? Who appointed you the judge of everyone else who lives on the earth and what gives you the right to reduce what I consider to be the most precious element of my faith? As a Christian, that would be God coming to visit us in Jesus. You throw all of that out and you say, ‘Well, it all boils down to being a good person.’ How dare you be so arrogant!”

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The fact is that we’re not all saying the same thing. Anyone who has ever taken Comparative Religion 101 in college will discover vast differences between the world’s great faiths. Not every great faith even believes that there is a God. Traditional Buddhists would say that there is no god. What we mean by salvation is radically different in Eastern faiths and Western faiths. The Rastafarian view of heaven is that blacks will be eternally served by menial whites. And the old Norse view of heaven which was called Valhalla was that the people who were included were warriors who had slain their enemies in battle. All religions don’t teach the same thing. Orthodox Muslims interpret the Qur’an to read that Jesus was not crucified on a cross. Christians believe that Jesus was crucified on a cross. Only the most compliant college freshman can be convinced to hold together in their brain two contradictory ideas and say that they are equally valid. Isn’t arrogant to claim that your religious truth is really true? You know, there is a habit of thinking in the post-enlightenment Western world that distinguishes between religious truth and other kinds of truth. So just because we put the adjective “religious” in front of truth it is somehow is a different animal entirely from just regular truth, from normal truth, from standard truth. Sometimes we get into these insane arguments in which people say, “Well, you don’t have a right to claim that something is really true because it is religious truth. Don’t you know that someone with a different opinion will be offended because they believe something different than you believe? Their view must be just as valid as yours.” But is that the way any truth claim works? You sit down at a bar at an airport and you talk to the guy sitting next to you at the bar and he says that he is from Arizona. You respond and say: Gosh, I felt really bad for all of you in Arizona after the Super Bowl. I mean you came so close as a team to winning the Super Bowl for the first time. Victory was just snatched away by the Pittsburgh Stealers. Imagine if that person said: How dare you say that the Pittsburgh Stealers won the Super Bowl? That’s not what we believe in Arizona. We believe in Arizona that we won the 2009 Super Bowl. You’ve offended me. You might think, “I’m sorry you are offended.” But your offense doesn’t make your false claim true. The logic of some folks when it comes to religious claims seems to be that a. Different people have different religious views b. Therefore all religious views are equally valid All religious views are not equally valid anymore than contradictory views of who won or lost Super Bowl are equally valid, or all views of how far the moon is away from the earth are equally valid. Putting the word religious in front of truth

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doesn’t change whether your view corresponds what really is the case or what really isn’t the case. Now, let’s be clear here about what Jesus meant by the narrow door. When we say that there is an embarrassment of narrowness about our faith that if you are going to be a Christian you need to embrace this embarrassment, this scandal, this unpopular view and that every Christian from the beginning had to bear with this scandal, this embarrassment, this unpopularity. Let’s be clear about what the narrow door is and what it isn’t. The narrow door is not us. We Christians are not claiming that we are morally superior to everyone else. We Christians readily admit that there are lots of good and wonderful people who follow other faiths or no faith at all. We Christians in fact ought to be the first to admit that, because we don’t believe that anyone is saved by their moral effort or their goodness. The Christian faith should never produce a sense of moral superiority over one’s fellow man. It should produce exactly the opposite – humility. A deep sense of awareness of one’s sinfulness and brokenness because we Christians say God saved us not because of our morality, but in spite of our morality. Serious Christians should be the least arrogant people and the least self-righteous. We believe that our salvation is solely due to the death of someone else. We’re also not claiming that the narrow door is “Christianity.” Often the religion Christianity is filled with cultural elements of a particular people at a particular time. So the missionaries who went to the South Sea Islands insisted that the natives there wear white shirts and ties to go to church. And the church buildings the missionaries built in the South Sea Islands had little white steeples like the buildings back in New England because that was Christianity. So much of “Christianity” is the blend of contemporary culture, whatever it is, and biblical faith. The narrow door is not us; the narrow door is not Christianity. The narrow door is Jesus and his death on the cross. There is no other way than through the cross. From the time Jesus was in the wilderness Satan tempted him to avoid going to the cross. Even Jesus’ closest friends tried to dissuade him and say, “No, you don’t have to do that.” And Jesus saw in their attempts to get him to avoid the cross Satanic temptation. You know, there is no other way other than the way of the cross. We’re told that in the Garden of Gethsemane. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he was in Gethsemane. And he prayed: Luke 22:42 Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.

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Three times he prayed to the Father, “If there is any other way than the way of the cross in order to gain salvation for the world, Father, let me go that way.” But there was no other way. Surely, God would have heeded his Son’s prayers and his Son’s tears. But there was no other way. All of the gospels are structured around the cross. Jesus’ life form the beginning was aimed at the cross. The narrow door is the person of Jesus and his death for us on the cross. What are the exhortations flowing out of this? First: There is an urgency Jesus says in verses 24-25: Luke 13:24-25 Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. 25 Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ You make sure that you are in. You don’t have to have a satisfactory answer to every question you have about the Christian faith in order to become a follower of Jesus. Some questions you have will be answered in a year or two years or ten years. Some questions you won’t have answered for decades. Some questions that you have about the Christian faith won’t be answered until you see Christ in heaven. But you do not have to know every thing to know that Jesus is the door. Church is not the door. Religion is not the door. What your mother or father believed is not the door. Jesus is the door. You need to personally embrace Jesus and what Jesus has done for you on the cross in dying in your place, in bearing your sins, in offering you forgiveness. You need to personally appropriate Jesus and his sacrificial death for you. There is an urgency. Jesus tells us in verse 25 that once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you might be left standing outside knocking and pleading saying, “Sir, open the door for us.” A few years ago Marlene and I were in England. We were taking the train from one city to another. As we were climbing the stairs in the train station, we heard the train pulling in. We ran towards the train pulling our bags and just as we got to the door of the train, the door shut and the train pulled out. We were too late. It didn’t matter that we were so near to the train when it left the station. We missed it. And you, friend, can be near to Christ, so near to the message that he died for you, that God loves you, that God wants to have a relationship with you, that you need to turn from your sins and embrace Christ. You can be so near and yet miss it.

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The first exhortation is to make sure you get in. The second exhortation is: There will be surprises Luke 13:26-29 Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ 27 “But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’ 28 “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. 29 People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Some people who think they are certainly in will not be in. We read that everywhere in the New Testament. Jesus, we ate with you. You were in our town. Jesus, I’ve been going to church since I was a child. I was baptized. I went to religious school all the way through high school. My father was a deacon in the church. My mother led the children’s choir. I sing Christian songs at church. Some people who think they are certainly in will be surprised that they are not in. We’ll be surprised not only negatively, but positively. Some people will be included in the Kingdom of God that we might not expect. Jesus said that “people will come from east and west and north and south and will take their place at the feast in the kingdom of God.” Throughout scripture there are surprising people outside the Jewish people, outside the community of faith, who somehow make it in. Going back in the Old Testament we read about Melchizedek and Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, and a Gentile prostitute named Rahab, and a Gentile woman named Ruth, and a Gentile named Job, and in the New Testament a Roman centurion who Jesus said had faith greater than anyone in Israel, and a Samarian woman who was living with lots of men, but they all made it in. There are surprises regarding who God includes in his kingdom. Not only will we be surprised by some who make it in, but they will be surprised too. Indeed, some don’t even suspect that they are included in God’s kingdom. In Matthew 25 some who were included in God’s kingdom didn’t even know that they were doing their righteous deeds for Jesus. Matthew 25:37-39 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

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But Jesus says in verse 40: Matthew 25:40 The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Surprise! Some of you who are so near and so confident about your standing with God will miss it. And some of you who think there is no way I’m getting in, will enjoy a banquet with Jesus in the Kingdom of God. And the third truth is: There is a wideness in God’s mercy All of the narrowness of biblical faith is designed to bring blessing to the world. The choice of only Abraham at the beginning was a choice of Abraham to be the way that God would bring blessing to the entire world. The choice of Jesus to be the only Savior was a choice to save the world. The gospel writer says in John 3:17: John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. So you say, “Well, how do I know, since there are going to be surprises, and there is this wideness in God’s mercy, how do I know that this person who doesn’t seem to me to have embraced Jesus will miss God in the end?” Let me close with this. Brothers and sisters, those of you who consider yourselves followers of Jesus and have submitted your lives to Christ and to the authority of God’s Word, you do not have to certainly know who is in and who is out with 100% certainty to fulfill your responsibility of sharing the message of Christ and his death on the cross for sins as God gives you opportunity. I mean, if you see children playing out on a frozen pond and you see the sign that says, “Caution! Thin Ice” you don’t have to know for certain that those children will fall through the ice to warn them off the ice. And we don’t have to know for certain who has made it through the door and who hasn’t to warn people and to encourage them, “Make sure you’re in! Embrace Jesus! Lay hold of what he’s done for you on the cross. Make sure you’re in!” And since there are surprises, how do we know that we ourselves are in? We must lay hold of Jesus for ourselves. We must embrace what Christ has done. Make sure you are in! That’s the message. Let’s pray.

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The Challenge of Pluralism Rich Nathan February 14-15, 2009 Finding God Series Luke 13:18-30 I.

The Problem A. Faith in religious truth leads to violence B. Faith in religious truth leads to arrogance and bigotry

II.

The Challenge (Luke 13:18-21) A. Other faiths have always competed for allegiance B. Other faiths can make us feel insignificant

III.

The Question (Luke 13:22-23) A. The wrong question and the right question

IV.

The Objection (Luke 13:24) A. Isn’t it enough to be sincere? B. Don’t all religions basically teach the same thing? B. Isn’t it arrogant to claim that your religious truth is really true?

V.

The Exhortation A. There is an urgency (Luke 13:25) B. There will be surprises (Luke 13:26-29) C. There is a wideness in God’s love (Luke 13:29)

© 2009 Rich Nathan

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