Monday, November 10, 2008, Part 2

Hebrews 11

IDEA: Jesus is the only way to God because He is the only one qualified to be our Savior.

PURPOSE: To help listeners appreciate that salvation has always been through faith in God's promises and in God's provision to keep His promises.

A young man who grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania loved to go out in the woods during the day or to stare up at the stars at night. He believed there is a God and he also wondered if it would be possible for someone like him to have some relation with God. His parents were not at all religious.

I. If that farm boy had asked you if he could have a relationship with God, and if so, how could that occur, what would you have told him?

II. Do you think that there is any other way other than through Jesus for people to have a relationship with God?

The New Testament says No.

John 3:18: "He who believes in [Jesus] is not condemned; but he who does not believe in him is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God."

Acts 4:12: Peter before the Sanhedrin said of Jesus, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by whom we must be saved."

1 Timothy 2:5-6: "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and people, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for us all."

Do you think that the people listed in Hebrews 11 had a different way to have a relationship with God?

Could it have been by their good works?

III. Is saying that Jesus is the only way to God bigoted and despising of other people's faith?

We are not dealing with preferences. We are dealing with the question, "Is all this true?"

If you take the historical record seriously, then you have to decide not whether you prefer Jesus as a Savior, but was He what He claimed to be and did He do what He claimed to do.

The exclusiveness of salvation through Christ comes because Jesus is the only one who has died for our sins, and He is the only one who could have done so.

If anyone ever has a relationship with God, their sins must be forgiven and only Jesus through His death and resurrection can make that happen.

We are called to have faith in Him and that implies that Jesus is alive now. What does that mean in practical terms?