Salvation is to be found through him alone; in all the world there is no one else whom God has given who can save us." — Acts 4:12 (GN)
I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. — John 14:6 (NIV)
I remember some years ago watching the Phil Donahue show. He had some evangelical leaders on, and he pressed them on one particular issue. The issue was the exclusive claim of Christianity that Jesus is the only way. Of course Phil, being the sophisticated man that he is, was trying to set them up as narrow-minded and intolerant bigots. He asked, "What about the Jews? What about this Jewish rabbi over here? Is he going to hell because he doesn’t believe in Jesus?"
Of course, you as well as I automatically know the sentiment of the audience that was present that day. The sentiment of the audience was such that if you answered in the affirmative, "Yes, if you don’t receive Jesus, you’re not going to heaven," somehow that made you narrow, bigoted, prejudiced and wrong.
I remember that only one of the evangelicals on the show was firm in his belief that Jesus was indeed the only way. But all the others vacillated all over the spectrum. They launched off into an explanation a politician would have been proud of. The kind of thing where you speak a lot of words and don’t really say anything.
This brings us to the fact that there is a worldview that espouses a high value for broad-mindedness. In this worldview to be narrow is to be wrong, evil, prejudiced and bigoted. The conclusion is that broad-minded thinking is good. Aren’t there many roads to God? Aren’t there many spiritual teachers like Jesus whom we may follow? Certainly there have been many spiritual teachers throughout history. If we’re sincere — isn’t that enough? Isn’t the important thing just personal insight and experience? Why Jesus? Isn’t that just a little too narrow? What about the Jews? What about the Moslems? What about the Buddhists? Couldn’t God have provided many ways to heaven? After all, He would certainly want to be inclusive wouldn’t He?
If you’re taking a trip from here to Los Angeles, there is one place, one destination, but you can get there a lot of different ways. If you know how to read a map, and you’re able to follow the different routes, you can go the Northern Route. You can shoot up all the way through Denver, Colorado and down, or you could go through Texas, or you could go through Atlanta, you could split the country right in half. But if you know how to read a map, you can get there whether you go North, or whether you go Central, or whether you go the Southern route. You can make it, there are a lot of roads that lead to Los Angeles. Aren’t there a lot of roads that lead to Heaven?
We need to honestly examine this question, because if Jesus is the only way, we need to know it, don’t we? And if there are many ways, we need to know that as well. I believe that all of us get caught up in the emotion of a subjective struggle along these lines in this issue. You see, in our age we gravitate toward what you might call a quasi-intellectual view — that truth is somehow inclusive, and the broader truth is, the more inclusive truth is, the better it is.
Broad-mindedness is good. Exclusivity is evil. To be exclusive is narrow and bigoted and wrong. But to be inclusive is to be educated and sophisticated and intellectual. This is a learned attitude, by the way. It is a product of our educational system. It’s the philosophy of our age. It’s the pop culture of the educational establishment. And it seems to be currently in vogue in our generation.
Let me ask you this question; "Is truth broad?" or is it narrow by its very definition? If something is true, it seems to me that its opposite is false. If something is blue, then everything that’s not blue is not blue. That’s seems to be logical. I’m David Hoke, the son of Albert and Francis Hoke. And so anyone but me who comes along claiming to be me is not me. Some of you may say, "Thank God! One is enough. " But everyone who claims to be you except you is not you. Truth by its very definition is narrow.
We live, however, in an age of relativism. In an age where we say there are no absolutes, that there are no absolute rights or wrongs — no absolute truth. I think many in our society have adopted this view because many desperately want it to be so. Many really do not want to have to face the reality that there may be some truths that are unalterable. But the very nature of the idea of truth is that there is absolute truth and that if we ignore it we ignore it to our own peril. To ignore the truth is a very dangerous thing.
The last time I checked there was a law of gravity. This law operates all over the universe. Even those creatures that fly and apparently transcend the law of gravity are in fact working with the law of gravity according to the laws of aerodynamics which are based on the law of gravity. In any case, if you go out to the Grand Canyon and stand on the edge looking over, you might be under the delusion for a moment that you can violate the law of gravity, that it’s not true. You may think that it’s not true all the time, that occasionally, one in a million times, this law will be suspended. And you decide that this is that one in a million times and you are going to fly without the benefit of airplane. So you jump over the cliff. On the way down the reality of your foolishness and willful disregard of the truth dawns on you. Like Wiley Coyote, the next sound you hear is — Splat!! Only you can’t get up, because only in the cartoons can they do that! You ignore the truth at your own peril. So, what if it is true that Jesus Christ is the only way? This is the real question, the real focus. If He is the only way, then however you may feel about it, to ignore it is to put your soul into spiritual jeopardy.
Now you must understand that Jesus claimed to be the only way. This is not something that theologians claimed for Him. This is something that Jesus claimed for Himself. He said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." Now listen to what else He says, "No man comes to the Father, but by Me." Those are the words of Jesus. "I am the way and the truth and the life, no man comes to the father," no man gets to heaven, no man enters the kingdom of God, "no man comes to the father, but by Me." That is a very narrow, exclusive focus statement declaring that there is no other way we can get to Heaven — no other way we can approach God — no other way we can be saved — except through Jesus Christ.
And there are other passages I could point to as well. Let me just point you to one more, because the Bible declares that Jesus is the only way in no uncertain terms. Our text this morning, Acts 4:12 says this, "Salvation is to be found through him alone; in all the world there is no one else whom God has given who can save us." The Word of God plainly claims that there is no other name than Jesus by which we can be saved. And Jesus Himself claimed that He was the only way, that He was the door, that apart from Him there was no other way to Heaven, no other way to approach God, no other way to the kingdom of God. That’s clear.
Many people believe Jesus was a good teacher, but that He’s not the only way. Now if Jesus claimed that He was the only way to God, you have a problem. How can you have a moral teacher who was a liar? Either He was a liar, or a lunatic, or a legend developed by His followers after His death, or He was legitimately the Lord. Those are really the only options.
Was He a liar? Look at His life. How can you come to that conclusion? Read honestly the gospels. Listen to historical accounts written by other people about Jesus Christ. There was nothing in his character, nothing in his nature, nothing in his activities that would indicate that Jesus would have purposefully deceived anyone. He was a teacher of not just high ethical standards, but the highest. He was a teacher who laid his life down because he believed in what he was saying. There is nothing in the life of Jesus that would indicate to any honest person that He was willfully deceiving others.
But maybe He was deceived. Maybe He was a lunatic. If someone came into our service today and said, "I am the Messiah," we would think they were crazy. It would be like their saying, "I am a walnut." We’d say, "You’re not a walnut, you’re just plain nuts." Isn’t that right? We’d say, "You’re crazy. You’re off your rocker. Take this man out." But is there anything in Jesus’ life that would convince us that Jesus was a lunatic — that he was unstable? Was there something abnormal about His life, or about His emotional being? No! Here was a man under intense pressure especially when He went to the Cross. He was mocked. He was spit upon. He was nailed to the Cross of Calvary. If there was anything unstable about His personality, surely it would have been revealed then. Yet He was calm, collected, forgiving, and loving. You see, we don’t compare Jesus with people, we contrast Him to people. Nothing unstable there.
Was He merely a legend developed in the minds of His followers after His death? How could that be? Most people don’t believe that there were any gospels written after AD 70. In other words, there were people still alive that knew the situation whenever the gospel accounts about Jesus were written. How could they be falsified? How could things be said in the gospel accounts about Jesus that were not true about Him? It would be like someone coming in here today and saying, "Did you know that President John Kennedy was the Messiah? He healed the sick, and he raised the dead, and he fed the multitudes." There would be people who would stand up and say, "Wait, wait, wait a minute! No he didn’t. I knew him, and he didn’t do any of that. Furthermore, he didn’t even claim to be that." But Jesus did claim to be that.
But the only other conclusion that I can come to is that He was legitimately the Lord. He was who He said He was. There is nothing in His life, nothing in His character, nothing in His activities, nothing in His words that would say anything different. Look at His power over nature. Look at His power over sickness. Look at His sinless and blameless life. Can He be anything else, besides who He said he was? But look at something else, look at the evidence of an objective event. I believe everything we’re talking about hangs and falls on this one event.
That event is what we celebrate here today, the event of His resurrection from the grave. That is the greatest proof in all of history. The greatest evidence that Jesus was and is who He said He was. It is the resurrection of Christ from the dead. That is the foundation of the Christian church. That is the foundation of the Christian faith.
The apostle Paul said, "And if Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless." (1 Corinthians 15:14 NLT) Without the resurrection it’s all a cruel joke. It’s a hoax. It’s all just religion, just ceremony, just ritual. If Christ is not raised then all we have is a religion. We don’t serve a living God. We serve a myth. It all hangs and falls on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. How do you explain that event, if it didn’t happen the way the Bible said it happened? But if it did happen the way the Bible records it, then it’s a glorious event indeed. It proves that Jesus was who He said He was. He is the way the truth and the life. He is the Savior of the world.
But how do you know it happened that way? There have been many who have sought to supply other explanations of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Of course, the first explanation that was given is found in Matthew’s gospel where it records that the religious leaders paid the guards to say that while they where asleep the disciples came and stole the body.
Why would the disciples have done it? Why would these men, who only a few days earlier had fled for their lives in terror, steal the dead body of Jesus and then begin to boldly proclaim a lie — that Jesus had risen from the dead and was the true Messiah. These men who had feared for their own lives not only began to proclaim this, but were thrown into jail, beaten and began to suffer for doing this. It simply doesn’t make sense to me. Why would these men suffer and die for a lie? They were scared to death before He died while He was still with them. What would change them like that? No, they didn’t steal the body.
Another explanation is that the Jews or the Romans stole the body of Jesus. But that doesn’t make sense either. Because neither the Jews nor the Romans wanted any of these Christians to believe that Jesus had rose from the dead. The Romans didn’t want a disturbance. They put Jesus to death to keep a disturbance down. The Jews were threatened by Jesus Christ. Why would they steal His body and then let the Christians go around claiming that He had risen from the dead? They would have been the first ones to drag Jesus dead body out and parade it through the streets if they had it. That would have ended any claim of the resurrection. The reason they didn’t do it, however, is because they didn’t have it. No one had it. It wasn’t there.
Some people say, "Oh the women imagined it. They wanted so badly for Jesus not to be dead. When they came to the tomb, they went to the wrong one and imagined that Jesus had risen from the dead." But that is not convincing either. When they went and told Peter and John, who were skeptical, they would have gone down and showed them the right tomb. Surely Joseph of Arimathea would have known where he had his own tomb. And I’m sure the Romans and the Jews would have been quick to point it out as well. No, the women didn’t imagine that Jesus rose from the dead.
Some people say that Jesus swooned on the Cross. They say He passed out and people only thought He was dead, so they took Him down and buried Him. They claim that in the cool and damp of the tomb He refreshed Himself and regained His strength and got up and pushed the stone away and He walked out. Now that’s a late invention from about the 18th century. But people forget the severity of the crucifixion when they talk like that. Here was a man who was beaten, bruised, bloody, beyond recognition. The image we have of Jesus is a Cecil B. DeMille kind of sanctified image of Jesus clean and neat, and nice and tidy on the Cross. That wasn’t the picture of the crucifixion at all. Here was a man whose beard was plucked from His face. Here was a man who was beaten until His flesh was ripped from His bones. His body was literally pulverized before it ever made it to the Cross. He didn’t even have enough strength to carry the Cross up the hill to the place called Golgotha, the place of the skull. Then He was nailed to the cross and suffered there between heaven and earth. What is described by all accounts is one of the most horrible agonizing deaths a man can endure. His brow was pierced with thorns. His lungs were filling up with fluid. A spear was thrust into His side. Then He was taken down. He was embalmed with thick spices and was wrapped tightly in a linen shroud and placed in an airless tomb for three days without water or food. And He revived? And had the strength to push the stone away? And then what would He do after He came out? Would He then be able to convince His disciples that He was the Lord of Glory? Hardly! He didn’t swoon, He died a real death.
You see the best and only explanation that the evidence brings us to is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. The empty tomb stands as stark and irrefutable proof that the resurrection of Jesus Christ did in fact occur. And if Jesus rose from the dead, our faith is not vain. But you know what else it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt? That what Jesus said was true in every respect. And whenever He said "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" that is the truth. And to ignore it is to put your soul in spiritual jeopardy.
Jesus rose from the dead. You can go visit Confucius tomb. You can go visit Buddha’s tomb. You can go visit Mohammed’s tomb. You can go visit Abraham’s tomb. They are still there. Their dead bodies remain in their tombs. But Jesus isn’t there. He is risen. He’s not there. That empty tomb proves that Jesus is the way. No, it wasn’t a hallucination. You don’t have mass hallucinations with 500 people seeing the same thing. Jesus appeared ten different times, once to 500 people. He appeared to His disciples. You had Thomas among them saying that "I’m not going to believe this resurrection stuff until I see it with my own eyes." These weren’t people who were deluded. These were people who were convinced by evidence. These were people who saw the Risen Lord and believed because it was true. How else do you describe the change in them?
Phillip Schaff said of Jesus "This Jesus of Nazareth without money and arms conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon. Without science and learning He shed more light on matters human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined. Without the eloquence of schools He spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since, and produced effects that lie beyond the reach of orator or poet. Without writing a single line, He set more pens in motion and furnished more themes for more sermons, oration, discussion, learned volumes, works of art and songs of praise in the whole army of great men of ancient or modern times." Why? Because of the power. The resurrection power of this one life. What can produce a change in twelve timid men to make them bold as lions? Only the resurrection power of Jesus. And I can point you to billions of other souls who have experienced that same change — a change inexplicable by human means, but a change only attributable to the resurrection life of Jesus Christ living in that person. So I point you back to our question: Is Jesus the only way? Yes. Jesus is the only way. Is He your way?
Copyright © 1999 J. David Hoke. This data file is the sole property of the copyright holder and may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies of this data file must contain the above copyright notice.
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