Divisive Words

5This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 8If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

I thank any of you who may have read my previous posts and I hope that I may have at least got you to think. Tonight I am going to be looking at the next verse. My message will be a bit more divisive than prior messages. Especially in today's relativistic world where truth has a different meaning for each person. Tonight I am going to talk just a bit about the nature of God and why the words above are divisive. They may not seem so at first, but I hope that I can communicate with you why these words are at the base of the most divisive verses in the Bible.

I was listening to Sean Hannity tonight and I was stunned to hear him have to argue several points with different listeners. I don't normally listen to conservative talk radio, but travelling through southwestern Pennsylvania has left me with few options.

The first caller was arguing in favor of the "Fairness Doctrine" and claiming that Obama was the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. This scared me, but I will stick to the listener's point which was this: Obama should have the right to silence his critics if they were creating division within the US. Hannity asked the caller if he believed in the 1st amendment and the caller said yes, but not in the case where it causes division. Well, do you believe in it or not? If you think that censorship is fine, then you do not believe in it. If you do believe in it, then you are not okay with censorship. These are black and white views, but today's world sees in gray.

The second caller felt that the government somehow owed people that had taken on mortgages that they could not afford. He felt that these people were tricked or misled and it was not their fault that they had to default. He compared it to buying a car from a used car salesman and went on to say that he felt if the buyer got a bad car it was the dealer's fault. Thankfully, by the end of the discussion, the caller seemed to understand the concept of accountablility. This brings us to the second question: are you responsible for your actions or not? This is yes or no, not yes but... I am not arguing that the car sellers or mortgage lenders had no part, but ultimately we are the ones who are responsible for the decisions that we make. Today's world does not undertand this. Everything is somebody else's fault and nobody is ever accountable.

Now before you think that I am going to spend my blog talking politics, I want to assure you that I am not. I merely wanted to set the stage for the divisive words that we will be discussing tonight. I wanted you to realize why this message is going to be divisive. You see the Bible speaks in black and white, not shades of gray. The Bible says that all men will be held accountable for their actions. These are not popular beliefs to be holding today.

John 14:6Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
These may actually be the most divisive words ever spoken. Jesus does not say that he is a way or one of many ways. He says He is the way. This would indicate that if the statement were true, then it would be an exclusive claim. By an exclusive claim, I mean that it excudes other claims to other ways. However, we also have the words of Oprah "There couldn't possibly be only one way to get to Heaven." Why not Oprah? Why must your exclusive claim be true and not those of the creator of the universe? We can't both be right. I see this opinion becoming more and more popular on the internet all the time. There is an underlying assumption that is easy to miss and I will point it out for you. When you make a statement such as Oprah's, you are saying that you know better than God. That you are capable of judging your own creator and His actions and His decisions. Seems a little less than humble to me.

The problem with what Oprah said is that it fails to ask the essential question. Why is Jesus the only way to Heaven? Why will no one come to the Father except through Him? I will give you a hint: it is in the topic verse of the night: God is light, in Him there is no darkness at all. I hate to tell you but gray is a shade of darkness. Just because you have done some good things, that does not mean you are worthy of Heaven. That does not eliminate the bad things you have done. This is why Jesus came. Because God is light and in Him there is no darkness, we can not be with God for we are not children of light. However, there is one who can make you clean, who can make you a child of light, who can bring you into the presence of His Father. That one is Jesus Christ, who died on the cross so that you could be with Him and with the Father.

I am afraid my friends that this truth will not be tolerated much longer by a world that loves the gray.

Peace, Bruce