Why Jesus versus other religions?

Watch the complete sermon here: https://www.bridges.church/messages/goodness-faithfulness-john-10-1-18/

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. This last week, we concluded our series on the fruit of God’s spirit, and we talked about goodness and faithfulness that God develops in us. A goodness, a trueness, a richness, an alignment to him, a faithfulness to him that we hear his voice and we recognize his voice and we are drawn to him. And so the question this week asks, out of all the various truth claims out there, really, why should we follow Jesus? Which we talked a little bit about in the sermon, you know, Jesus evidence for that is that he died for us, whereas the voice of the wolf wants us to die.

And that’s a pretty dramatic difference. But if you’re looking at maybe other religions, the claims of them, don’t they offer something similar to Jesus? Why. Why would we want to, you know, hitch our wagon to Jesus, so to speak, when there are these perhaps other options? And I would say, you know, even if.

Even if all the claims were true, and they’re not, but just for a minute, you know, imagine all the claims are true and just take a step back and compare the different claims. You know, what Jesus offers, what we’ve talked about just in this series, a love that is bottomless, endless and unconditional, that sees us to the bottom, that loves us to the sky, that embraces us. No other, you know, real religion is offering that. We say it all the time. Every other religion is, be good enough, right enough, long enough, and.

And then you will be accepted. Whereas Jesus, you know, pays the price for our acceptance himself. So God’s love for us really is unconditional. We have, you know, a peace that is, or a joy that is deeper, that is deeper than sorrow that is. And that is unique.

I mean, other religions would promise joy, but the joy that Christianity offers is such that even our, even our worst tragedies are somehow turned on their head and reversed in such a way that they kind of add to the tapestry of glory that is to come, that they will be redeemed in such a way that the sad things will come untrue. In a way, we’ll get a remade, physical world where all of this is rebuilt and all the injustices are solved. No other religion offers that. Most other religions actually offer an escape from this world, some kind of consolation for the suffering that we’ve had here.

But in Christianity, it’s actually turned on its head and used for good, which we see most evidently in the crucifixion.

The crucifixion is the worst event that’s ever happened in history. And yet God has somehow redeemed it in a way that we actually now call it Good Friday, right, can do that with the crucifixion, then he can do that with every tragedy that is in our lives. As unimaginable as it might be, he has a way to turn it on its head and make it for our good. In the end, we have a strength to make peace with others, because we follow a lord who made peace with his enemies, and he died for his enemies.

Other religious leaders haven’t done that.

The claims of Christianity are such, are so compelling that even if everything else was true, which it isn’t, but even if it were, Christianity just shines so much brighter. What Jesus offers is so much deeper, right? And so as we are sorting out among all these voices in our world, what to listen to, right, or who to listen to, Jesus voice rings different. It’s more compelling. It draws us to him in a way that other voices just don’t.

And so we pray that. That you can discern his voice from amongst all the other noise and that your faith in him would grow deeper and deeper and deeper as the years roll by. We’ll see you next time.