He said he was going to do a short introduction, so I guess that was pretty short. Why don't you be turning your Bibles with me to Acts chapter 17 hat's going to be the first scripture reference that we're going to stop and read together. I'm going to have a few on the slides here, just to kind of give us some orientation for our lesson. I understand from a lot of y'all, this has been a really great series, and I'm very thankful to be invited to participate in this. Y'all know him as Kenny. I've always called him coach. As long as I've known him. Coach this means a lot to me. And we got to have dinner together this evening, and Beth asked how that went, and I said, Coach and I we worked out every one of the problems of my life, and I got four kids and second year of college to second grade. And I know, I know. I don't laugh, I just sigh. And two in the middle. So, I had a lot of problems coach needed to solve for me, so I'm just, I was really thankful not only to be here with you, but to have that opportunity to be with him.
We live in a world that celebrates diversity and inclusivity. The idea of there being only one way to God, it might seem exclusive and to some even offensive. Yet the central message of Christianity is that Jesus Christ is the only way to God. Tonight, what I'd like for us to do is to delve into the claim Jesus is the only way. I'd like for us to explore its scriptural foundation and its profound implications for our lives. I want you to know this at the very beginning, that this lesson is not designed for us to pat ourselves on the backs, because we know that there is only one way to God. Instead, this lesson is designed to challenge us to not only believe that, but to profess it with our actions, recognizing that we are not merely called to be Christians, but we are called to be people of The Way. When we look into the New Testament, we recognize that this, or we are confronted with the claims of the exclusive.. exclusive.. I'm messing myself up. Exclusivity of Jesus. My wife told me I should probably not use that word. I said, it's a beautiful word, the exclusivity of Jesus. You can go to a passage like John, chapter 14 and verse six, where Jesus is going to answer one of the apostles, "I am the way and I am the truth and I am the life. And no one comes to the Father except through me." Or we can listen to the claims that Peter makes about Jesus in Acts chapter four and verse 12, where he is going to say to the crowd assembled around him on the temple, "there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we, among men, by which we must be saved." Paul's going to write something similar to these two, to young Timothy in First Timothy chapter two, and he's going to write this in verse five. He's going to say, "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ, Jesus." And so, from the lips of Jesus himself and two of the apostles as witnesses, Peter and Paul ,and there could be so many more that we could cite, that the exclusive way to get to God is through Jesus Christ.
And yet, we live in a culture that asks this question: Is there only one way to God? Now, why might they ask that? Because we live and what many people call a pluralistic post-Christian world. And one of the questions that I would like for us to answer in our lesson, at least in the early part, is is, how do we counter that? How do we counter a pluralistic world? How do we counter a post-American world? So, maybe what we need to do is kind of define a couple of those things first. What do we mean when we say post-Christian? I bet there are a lot of people in this audience that can remember going to public school and your day started with a reading from the scriptures and your day started with a prayer. And it would not be unheard of for people in the cafeteria to assemble the students and a teacher pray. I remember hearing my mom tell stories like that. In fact, I remember when one of her elementary teachers passed away. She was very upset. She hadn't seen the teacher in decades, but she was really upset when she learned that this very special teacher of hers, I believe, if I remember correctly, was a second grade teacher in Columbia, Tennessee. She said every morning, we would go to class, and she would start class with a reading from the 23rd Psalm, and then she would lead us in prayer. There was a time in America where that was not uncommon. When actions like that did not garner a lawsuit. There was a time within our culture where the culture's morals and mores and ethics were based upon, at the very least, simplified Christian values. To be a Christian and to take a high moral standard would not have been an odd thing. But today, we live past that where even the simplest and most basic of Christian decencies, if I can say it that way, do not form the moral and ethical basis of our society. We live in a pluralistic world.
Now, pluralism, at least religious pluralism, is one of the cornerstones and the foundation of what it means for us to be America. Those who first came to this land came because they wanted religious freedoms. And so there is a sense and where pluralism and religious pluralism has actually been a good thing, and it has benefited God's people in America. But where that runs amok is that where all religions and all philosophies and all ideas are recognized as valid. Where they are all seen as various and different avenues to what one may think of as God or Heaven or eternity or the blissful life you. And so I ask, how are we supposed to as Christians in this day and age? How are we supposed to counter a pluralistic post Christian world that says there are as many ways to God and eternity in the blissful life as one can imagine. Well, for some, that is going to engage in the different battles of the culture war, that's how we're going to confront the world that we live in. For others, they're going to take the cross, and they're going to wrap it into the banner of politics, and they're going to say, what we need to do is we need to fight for a seat at the political table so that we might have a voice and we might have power. Or maybe on the farther end of the spectrum is somebody's going to say, You know what, the way I'm going to counter that I'm just going to disengage from it all together. I'm just going to live and let live and do nothing.
The secret to understanding how we live in this pluralistic post-Christian world is for us to look at the early Christians, to look at the early church. How did they live? How did they operate in a pluralistic, pre-Christian world? That's where we'll find our answer. If you have your Bibles open there with me in Acts chapter 17, I want you to look at what the Apostle. So Paul encountered in Athens something that is not too far away from how we might envision the landscape or the religious landscape of our world. Now, it says, "Now while Paul was waiting for them." That's Timothy and Silas, they'd gone back to Thessalonica. He's waiting for them in Athens, "his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was full of idols. So, he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there." What did the Apostle Paul do to counter the world that he was living in that was not seeing Jesus as the only way to God? He preached, he taught. That's what the early Christians did. They boldly went out and proclaimed the Word of God. They went out and from the deepest, deepest recesses of their heart, they pleaded with people to turn to God through Jesus, through bold and heartfelt proclamation of the gospel of Jesus, Christ.
You're still there in your Bibles, maybe look over one page or two to Acts chapter 18. I want you to notice what Paul's doing here. He's moved on from Athens. He's gone to Corinth. And if Athens is the religious epicenter of the ancient world, with all of its idols, then Corinth is the sin city of the ancient world, because it was a port city. And here Paul is struggling to to continue to preach and to continue to teach. And I always, always teach this rule of thumb. That if somebody has to be told, Do not be afraid, it's because they're either afraid or they're about to be really afraid. So, with our rule of thumb, Paul's really scared. Can you imagine the Apostle Paul being scared? But Paul's really scared. He's really worried. Life in Corinth is really hard, and what does Jesus tell him to do? Go with me to Acts chapter 18. Look with me at verse nine. "And the Lord appeared to Paul, and he said to him, Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack you, to harm you, for I have many people in this city who are my people." Do you hear what Jesus is saying to him? Paul, I know life's tough. I know preaching the gospel in this kind of culture and this kind of society is really hard. But don't be afraid of them. Don't be afraid of what they might say to you or say about you or do to you. I'm with you. You go own speaking,. If we want to counter the culture in which we live, if we want to make a real, eternal impact, we have to boldly and heartfelt plea with people using the gospel that says Jesus is the only way.
What I'd like for us to do then is transition in our lesson here, just for a little bit. Because it's not enough for me to tell you, you've got to go out and preach the gospel to this world and change it without helping us understand how we might explain the gospel. So, I'm going to just give you the gospel message in six sentences. There'll be six sentences. There's some scripture references to go with each one. And if you can take notes fast enough, that's great. If you can't take notes fast enough, I'm sorry, just I won't leave you hanging. Just come see me. I'll just let you take a picture of the notes, and you can go and write them up later and use them for yourself. But if we're going to be the kind of people who say and believe that Jesus is the only way to God, then we have to be the kind of people that could communicate that to a world that so desperately needs it. So, let's take a look then, at the gospel of Jesus, Christ.
Number one. God created us to be with him and for his glory. The foundational passage of all the Bible is Genesis 1:1. Explains almost every single thing we need to know. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." It's so simple a child can even understand it, memorize it, and kind of halfway comprehend it. But everything flows from that. Because if God didn't create the heavens and the earth, then there's no reason you have to worship Him. And if He did not create the heavens and the earth, then there's no reason we have to listen to him. And if God did not create the heavens and the earth, then he is not our father. You see why it's the foundational passage? Everything flows from it. And the gospel of Jesus Christ must begin there. God created us to be with him and for his glory. And you can expound upon if you're teaching this with somebody about Genesis 1:1 and go into chapter two, that God created everything. And there he situated a garden, and he placed our first parents there, Adam and Eve. And life was blissful there for them, because they basked in the glory of God. He did not place them there just to sit by the river bank and fish all day. He put them there to work, to tend his garden, to bring Him glory.
But our sins separated us from God. You don't have to go very far in the Genesis narrative, till you get to chapter three. And there, in chapter three, we have a serpent who appears, and he tempts the woman, and he tempts the man, and they eat of the forbidden fruit. They break the only rule God ever gave them: don't eat of this tree. Could you imagine just living in a world where you have one rule? One. Don't do this. If we think we can be so righteous by our own might and our own power, just fooling ourselves. They couldn't even keep one rule. One. And yet, it's through their sin, through their disobedience, that they were separated from God. They were purged, if you will, from His presence in the garden. But one might say, Well, hey, that was them. What about the rest of us? Well, Paul will address that. We can look at certain passages. I'm going to be over in Romans, just real quickly. Romans, chapter three and verse 23 is one that you probably all know very well. "For all of us have sinned and we have fallen short of the glory of God." Yes, it started with them, and we'll look at that with chapter five and verse 12. It started there with them, but all of us have sinned and we have fallen short of that glory that God prepared for us to be in His presence and to be in his world with him, enjoying communion with Him. Well, Paul will say it this way in Romans, chapter five, and in verse 12, he says, "Therefore, just as sin came in the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men." Why? Because all have sinned.
And so, in the beginning, God created us to be with him, and it was for his glory, but our sin has separated us from God, and sin cannot be removed by good works. You see, because every one of us in some form or some fashion, at the deepest pit of our soul is longing to be back in communion with God. We're just trying to figure out how. And so sticking with the Genesis narrative, you can go to Genesis chapter four, and what do we see Cain and Abel doing? They are coming offering worship. They are coming and offering sacrifices. They are doing something that was a hopes of atoning for their sins. But it didn't really work. And later, God had revealed to His people, we don't have it recorded, but obviously he had revealed to His people some form of worship and some form of atonement, because sacrifices are constantly offered. But then there becomes this codification of this law, and we call it the law of Moses. And you can kind of pick up that law of Moses, beginning about Acts [editors note: Bro. Gentry meant to say Exodus] chapter 20 and verse one. And usually when you throw two "ff"s on the end of a Bible reference, it's kind of ambiguous, but it usually just means two or three or four, maybe five verses later. I really didn't want to put like to the end of Leviticus. So, you start with chapter 20, you go to the end of Leviticus, and you kind of get the whole encompassment of the law. That there are these moral standards that we call the 10 Commandments, that kind of represent and stand for all the law. But then you have all these sacrifices that are enumerated and all the detail that is given for how they are supposed to be offered, and you have all these festivals that are supposed to be kept in honor of God. And it just continues like that, one category after the next category, after the next category.
And it's really not until we get to the New Testament, at least as we're reading it, that we kind of begin to understand what all of this was about. So, I would take you to Galatians chapter two. I just want to give you this one word, because Paul is writing to the Christians in the region of Galatia, because these Gentiles have become Christians, and these Jews have come. They're called Judaizers, and they're coming and they're telling the Gentiles you have to keep the Law of Moses in order to be saved. Paul writes Galatians to say, no, that's not true. He'll say this, let me find my spot here. Verse 16. I'll start with 15, "for we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. Yet we know a person is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So, we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law, because by works of the law," he says, "no one will be justified." And you can look down as you have it open there down to verses 23 and 24 he's going to kind of give a sense of the law. Here he says, "Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So, then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified." Did you catch that phrase there? We were held captive. If anyone has the mentality that their good works can compensate for their sins, only one or two options are possible, and the first one, Paul picks up here, you're held captive. Because you know in your heart of hearts, you'll never measure up and you'll never be good enough.
But you know how sometimes we can have those feelings in our hearts, and we know we should listen to them, but we ignore them. And when we ignore that feeling over here, we become hypocrites, because we've accepted the fact that we'll never be good enough. But at least I'm going to act like it. And Hebrew writers having to combat this and confront this very exact same thing, yet from the Jewish perspective, and he's going to say all those sacrifices they couldn't take away sins. So, God created us to be with Him, to have communion with Him, for His glory. And yet it's our sins that have separated us from God, and sins that we commit cannot be removed by our own good works, no matter how hard we try, no matter how great they may be, they will never be able to touch the hem of the garment of the things that we have done against God.
Someone did pay the price for our sins, and that's Jesus. Jesus came and died, and he was buried and he rose again. I would remind you of what Paul said one of the verses that we used at the very beginning Acts, chapter four and verse 12, he will declare to the crowd, who was there, who has been, who's witnessed the the healing of the lame man. Remember we sing that song in Children's Bible class as he was walking and leaping and praising God, that's the scene. And there's all these people that rushed together and he was preaching Jesus, and He declares to them that there is salvation in no one else. It's exclusive to Jesus. There is no other name under heaven, given among men by which we must be saved. It's exclusive to Jesus. But why? Because he's the only one who could deal with our sins. I would take you to First John, chapter four. Listen to verses nine and 10. He says, "In this is love." Let me paraphrase that real quick. This is the very definition of love. "God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." Do we understand that word propitiation? I mean, that's like a 250 point word in Scrabble. That's something. Propitiation. It just simply means substitute. Substitute. He stood in the gap. He bridged the divide. He brought together that which was separated. He was the replacement. What Jesus did for us is that he endured the wrath due to each one of us because of our sins. He endured on the cross the separation from the Father. He died in our place, and then he was buried. And then to prove that he was the sinless Son of God, that He was the only way in order to get to God, he was raised on the third day, on the first day of the week, by the power of God.
That's why there is only one way to God, and that is Jesus Christ, because He alone has done that for us, and He offers it to us as a free gift, because everyone who trusts in his death and his resurrection receives forgiveness of their sins. Trust him. You see, it's not enough just to say Jesus is the way, because Jesus was a great teacher. It's not enough to say that Jesus is the only way, because he was resurrected on the third day. You can't have a resurrection without a what? Without death, without a burial. It's why Paul will say to the Corinthians, this was the most important thing I talked to you about, of first importance, that he died, that He was buried, and that he rose again. And how do we put our trust in Him and in that death, burial and resurrection was through baptism. I mean, that's the essence of what Paul is teaching in Romans chapter six, beginning with verse three, he says, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried, therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk newness of life." That's born again language from John, chapter three. Note verse five, "for if we have been united with Him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like his. We know," if you got your pen, I haven't done this very much this lesson, I usually do it several times. But if you got your pen, circle that right there at Verse six, "we know, we know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin, for one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we also live with Him." Verse nine, "we know." Circle that. "We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God. So, you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God." How? "In Christ, Jesus." Not by your good works, not by the family you were born in, not by the country you belong to, but by the only one who can get you to God, Jesus Christ.
And when we do that, life with Jesus starts now and it goes into eternity. I would take you to Ephesians chapter two. And Paul's writing here in verses one through 10, he's going to kind of recap some of the things that we kind of read in John we've seen in Romans, we've also picked up in Galatians. But I think this brings it together quite nicely. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. And were by nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. "But God," you got your pen? Circle that. "But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ, by grace, you have been saved." Remember, we can't work our way back to the god we're separated ourselves from. It is only by his grace given to us, through Jesus Christ, that we can be on the one way that leads to God. "And He raised us up with Him," verse six, "and he is seated us with him in the heavenly places. In Christ, Jesus so then in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing. It's a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ, Jesus for good works, which he prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." What is our life supposed to look like because we have put our faith and hope and trust in the Jesus, the one and only way to God? It is a life lived in gratitude. Because if we recognize we've been saved by His grace, we'll live our whole lives in thanksgiving of that salvation that was freely given to us.
That's but one way to summarize the gospel of Jesus Christ, I want to end with this though. I want to end with a plea that we must recapture our identity as people of The Way. Are you aware that the disciples were first called people of The Way? I bet you thought it was Christian, didn't you? Actually, I have a lesson that the Christians were first called disciples. I turned it into my secretary for her to print in the bulletin. She came to me, she said, Clay, that's wrong. That's not what that verse says. I said, I know I'm making a play on words. Oh, this is going to be a good lesson. I hope you caught that. The disciples were not first called Christians. They were first called "people of the way." Go with me to Acts chapter nine, because the church doesn't actually move to Antioch till chapter 11, and that's a number of years before we are in chapter nine when we first read about this designation or this name given to the disciples. But here we read about Saul, who will become the Apostle Paul. But it says, "But Saul," this is after the stoning of Stephen. He's "breathing threats and murders against the disciples of the Lord. And he went to the high priest, and he asked him for letters to the go to the synagogues at the disciples, so that if he found any belonging to the way." The way. The faith that we practice in the Book of Acts, is never called Christianity. Now the people are called Christian in Acts chapter 11, and it's one time. One time. The designation is used the most, outside of the word disciple is the way. The way. I can run these down for you real quick. We won't turn to them all. The first time is here in Acts chapter nine and verse two. The next time is chapter 19, verse nine. The third occurrence is chapter 19, verse 23. The next occurrence is in chapter 22 and verse four. The next one's in chapter 24 verse 14. And then the last is chapter 24 verse 22. And I can give you probably three more references that kind of halfway get you there, like the way of salvation and the way of the Lord and the way of God.
My son is a sophomore at Western Kentucky University. I say I'm going to run out of time. I want to talk really quick, but I got to tell you this. He's a sophomore Western Kentucky and sometimes he forgets I can still track his phone. And every Sunday morning, I track him. I want to see where he's at, and he's at the west end Church Christ, and I'm very happy about that. And on Sunday nights, I usually check to see where he's at, and he's at the west end congregation there in Bowling Green. And on Wednesday nights, he's at the west end congregation in Bowling Green. And sometimes on a Friday night, he might be at the East Side congregation. They have a monthly singing over there, and then sometimes at midnight, he's at the pickleball court. And I just pray my wife doesn't look and see that he's not in his dorm. But if I'd pull that phone up one Sunday morning to see where he's at and he was at a place called The Way church, I would probably feel kind of worried. I think that done, that boy, done going to join a cult?
And yet, before they were called Christians, they recall people of the way. And probably two or three decades before we get to Romans and we read about the Church of Christ, they recall people of the way. We've got to recapture this idea, not just that Jesus is the one way to God, but that we are people of that way. Because if we'll do that, what it's going to do is going to two things, and I'm going to read three or four sentences. It's going to elevate the gospel over every human philosophy. If we are people of the way, practicing the way of salvation, teaching the way of the Lord, believing in the way of God, then no matter what humanity serves up, it will at best, just be second to the Word of God. And then number two is going to give urgency to our evangelism. Do you ever wonder why sometimes our evangelistic efforts just seem so small and so lackluster and so tiring, so lethargic? It's because we don't have a sense of urgency, because we're not recognizing that we are people of the way that have the message of salvation it has to go out into the world. I know they're coming out, but I want to read this one thing to you. Do you know where Jesus was when he declared, "I am the way and I am the truth and I am the Life, and no one comes to the Father except by me"? He wasn't surrounded by the worshiping throngs in the temple. He was not on a hillside in Galilee teaching the masses. He was in a room with his apostles, and he was rebuking His apostles because they had forgotten he was the one and the only way to God, and maybe in our own culture, we have forgotten and God is rebuking us and reminding us you are people of the way and I am the only way to God. Thank you very much.
