The Way - John 14:6 - Let's Be Clear

All right, well, hey guys, welcome this weekend. I love it, man, when you can do your announcements from overseas, okay?

So that was pretty incredible. Also, I just feel compelled to do this, y'all. We are so blessed to be served so well, five different locations, six different campuses, okay? These worship teams and production teams put in the work, don't they? Can we praise God for them? All right, these guys, I mean, this weekend, if you're in the front row, you're just getting your hair blown off, okay?

It's just, it's awesome, all right? So we praise God for them and what they do. Hey, we're gonna be in John 14, six today.

So I wanna do a couple of things. The first thing I wanna do is just go ahead and tell you that today we're not asking the question, who is Jesus? We're gonna let Jesus say who Jesus is. So the question is really, who does Jesus say that Jesus is? And what we're gonna get into, I think, is not a statement of faith, not something written on the Bible, not a commentary of the Bible, but what we're gonna see is what Christ says about himself. And I think sometimes Christians, people, man, people pin a lot of things on Christians and they come after, well, you guys are saying that? Well, you guys are saying that? Well, actually Jesus said some stuff, so we're gonna have to just take it up with him, all right?

And that's what we're gonna end up seeing today. So find John chapter 14, one verse this weekend. But as you guys are doing that, I do wanna mention what the Alexander's mentioned, and that is Scent Weekend. Guys, we don't have a ton of traditions in a church like Mercy Hill. So the ones that we retain are very important for culture and vision.

Scent Weekend goes all the way back to the first couple of years at Mercy Hill. And it's very important. It's a time for our church to come together and say for this weekend, man, we are thinking about the nation's missions, church planning, we're thinking about mobilization and going. If you guys have been around here very long, you'll know this, but some of you are brand new. This ain't a cruise liner, it's a battleship.

All right, and I'll tell you what, it's really an aircraft carrier, is what it is. Because we wanna send people where people need to hear the gospel, where underserved communities are in terms of church plans, I mean, that's the heartbeat of this church. People said, well, why do you wanna plant another church in the south? There were two reasons in 2010, 11, and 12, we were planting this church.

Number one, the church was dying in the south faster than any other region in the United States. Number two, we wanted to build a base to send from. Church plants, missionaries, all the way to the ends of the earth, and that is what Sent Weekend is all about.

Sent Weekend is about seeing people gather, group, give, and finally go. Let me show you guys a picture of Zach and Sequoria. Zach and Sequoria, they ended up coming, actually, as first time guests. You guys know how we do that big Easter push and everybody's got Inviter cards, well, these two showed up at a college service for the very first time at Mercy Hill in 2022, and they came to our Easter service. They had never been.

Zach had not heard the gospel in terms of a way that he could understand. A few weeks after being here, he accepted Christ. And then they got discipled, and then they got married, and now they're going to the mission field, right? And they're leaving in the summer.

They would actually already be with our team in South Asia, but you gotta be married for a year before our sending agency will send you, probably wise that they do that. But I mean, listen, that is the win. That's what we're going after. This is what Sent Weekend is about. Guys, if your heart burns for missions, whether you think you will ever be there or not, you need to take this card and you need to sign up for the missions interest dinner that is coming, okay?

That's the Friday night kicking off, well, Thursday does, but Friday night is that next event of Sent Weekend. I'm gonna speak there. My family will be there front row. All right, and we want you, if your heart burns for this stuff, to support it or to go, or you don't know what God's gonna do, or you, like me, pray that maybe one of your kids would be sent out from this church and be part of the 500 that go by 2032, then you need to be at this missions dinner, all right? And the last thing I'll say, and then we're gonna dive in, is also what is kicking off with Sent Weekend is our DMI groups. Now, DMI, I know that's, I know, if you're new, you're like, man, you're throwing a lot of stuff at us.

I understand that, okay? Disciple making intensive. There are people in our church that step out of their normal small group for one session. Okay, I always wanna say semester, but there are three. Okay, so it's not a semester. It's a session, group session, all right? They step out of that for a while, 10 weeks, and they jump into a disciple making intensive where they commit to learning how to grow and go to share the gospel with the many nations that have come to the triad, all right? And it's pretty incredible, y'all. The last time we did this, 35 people did it, and they share the gospel over 270 times, 24 countries, 18 languages, okay?

Now, that's what we saw then. What we're praying for now, I want you guys to jot this down. If you're prayer warriors of this church, we're praying for 75 people to go all the way in, and we wanna see 1,000 gospel shares in the next 10 weeks, 1,000 gospel shares all across the triad, and of course, an invite to Mercy Hill on top of that. So you guys keep that in prayer, and if you wanna sign up for that, there's ways to do that here on this as well. Everything's a QR code now, okay? So we just gotta get with the program.

All right, we're diving in. John chapter 14 is where we're gonna be today. We're gonna see that Jesus Christ himself was not clever or coy when it came to describing what he came to do. Instead, he was clear, why? Because clarity is the answer for confusion, and boy, are we confused. When it comes to this issue, we live under the tyranny of inclusivism. We live in a bumper sticker of coexist kind of world. We live in a day and age where the only absolute truth many times on the college campus is that there is no absolute truth, which of course is kind of funny and self-defeating.

How could it be true that there is no truth, right? But this is where we live, and we find ourselves in a confusing time, and Jesus Christ comes along, and he says, I'm gonna tell you what I am and what I have come to do. One opponent of the faith writes this. Christianity is a contentious faith which requires an all or nothing commitment to Jesus as the one and only incarnation of the Son of God.

Actually, you're doing pretty good so far, okay? But then they say this. Christians are uncompromising, ornery, militant, imperious, and invincibly self-righteous. Why? Because we parrot.

We didn't make up. We say what Jesus said, which is that he is the way, the truth, and the life. And for that, we are called uncompromising, ornery, militant, imperious, and inconveniently self-righteous.

Now, just by my book, when you call somebody invincibly self-righteous, you're kind of being invincibly self-righteous, okay? But be that as it may, our temptation many times is to see the culture shifting so fast and the winds blowing in different directions that what we think, and some churches have done this, some people have done this, and we are all capable of doing this. What we end up saying is, well, quick, the culture's changing, so we need to change the message and make it more palatable for people who could never believe that there is only one way to reconcile your relationship with God. And when we make that exchange, we lose all power. Because we lose truth. And this is what happens. Many denominations have gone down this road. Well, we're gonna change the message to make it more palatable to culture, only to realize when you align yourself with culture that much, you have nothing to say.

You have nothing to speak in. It's tempting for us. It can be tempting for all of us. Y'all, we live in a world that wants this kind of, God is at the top of the mountain, and every one of us are on a different trail. You've heard this, to get all the way to the top, right? And it doesn't matter which trail you take.

You're gonna land at the top. Well, what if it, listen, what if it was true that it's right that all of us are on a trail? The problem is that trail isn't leading up the mountain to God. That trail is taking us directly to hell.

What if that was true? But that God on top of the mountain, knowing that we would never find our way to him, he has come and walked the trail for us. He has come down the mountain to meet us. When the Motolone in South America heard the gospel for the first time, they said he has come to walk our trails. He has come to walk in our shoes. Now, what if that was true? Here's my point, all right? If you're here today and you're wrestling with Christianity, if you're at one of our campuses today and you're wrestling with Christianity and you're wondering if it's time to submit your life to what the New Testament calls the way, okay, or the Christian life, and you're wrestling with that, you might be thinking to yourself, one of the hangups that I have is how could it be true that there's only one way to heaven?

I'm gonna tell you something today. My role, I hope, through this text is to get you from the place where you think to yourself, how in the world could there be only one way to God to see the truth, which is, how in the world could there be any way to God at all? And if we can make that shift, maybe we're gonna be able to see that what Jesus has done. Listen, every single faith and religious claim on earth is exclusive, that's a fact. To believe anything is to exclude other things.

To believe anything that is true, we step into the world of exclusivity. Every faith, every religion, every, which one is worth it? Is it the one that tells you to pay for your own sin, even though you never can? Or is it the one that tells you there's a God in heaven that loves you enough to have paid that price for you?

And I pray that we're gonna see that today. Look what it says in John 14. Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. My Father's house, there are many rooms. And if it were not so, would I not have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? Would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself.

There where I am, you may be also. And you know the way to where I'm going. Now Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going.

This has been going on since chapter 13. Okay, there's this whole thing going on here. And he says, we don't know where you're going.

How can we know the way? And Jesus said to him, one of the most famous verses in all the Bible, this is the verse where you gotta have this decision where you say Jesus Christ was either a liar, a con man, a madman, or the son of God. He was one of those, okay?

We can't have this milk toast. He was a good guy. We like him, we like some of his teachings. How could you like the teachings of a guy who said, I am the one way to reconcile you to God.

He's either mad or he's a liar, or he is who he says he is. This is the verse. I am the way and the truth and the life.

And no one comes to the Father except through me. Now let's just walk back through this. I wanna go back to verse one. It says, let not your hearts be troubled.

Let's just kinda take this as it comes, okay? Let not your hearts be troubled is what Jesus is telling his disciples. And why do you say let your heart not be troubled?

Because your heart is troubled, right? And the reason that their hearts are troubled is because they are beginning to understand somewhat of Jesus' predictions of his own death, of him going away. They're starting to put some things together that Jesus is not going to be with them forever in terms of in this earthly form.

And so therefore, this wrestling match that begins in 13 and 14, it's this, they're troubled. It's troubling to them, and Jesus says, let not your hearts be troubled. Listen, believe in God, believe also in me, and then boom, where does he go? In my Father's house are many mansions. He goes straight to kingdom.

Father's house are many mansions. This is a bit of a picture that gets fleshed out more in the new heavens and the new earth in terms of revelation. It's Jesus trying to conceptualize for them. What does it mean to be? I mean, you guys have watched old movies of ancient culture.

You read the Bible enough. What does it mean to be of the house of, right? It means family, right? It means that I am of that house. I am underneath that banner.

That's what he's getting at here. What do we do when our, okay, let me ask you. Is your heart troubled today? Has your heart been troubled in the past? Don't you understand it's coming? One day, I mean, it's like the old preacher would say, either you're coming out of the storm, you're in the storm, or you're going into the storm, right? And I mean, there's really a lot of truth to that in terms of just the way life is and the way life is up and down. Are you troubled today?

Well, look at what Jesus does. Believe in me, believe in God. What does he say? My father's house, he's lifting our eyes. And this is the remedy.

You could say it like this. Jesus points to heaven as a remedy for the troubled heart. One of the ways that we preach the gospel to ourself. See, the beautiful thing about Christianity is that it's real, and here's what I mean. We don't wish our, we're not silly about there's no sorrow. What we're able to do, I pray, is look through the sorrow and into eternity and understand as bad as this is, God is not gonna waste it. As hard as it is, it will not be wasted.

And it lifts my eyes from where I'm at. I don't know what maybe you might be facing today, financial instability. Maybe not seeing the character you wanna see in your kids. Maybe they're older, maybe they're, and you're not seeing the things that you wanna see. Maybe you're troubled today because of a health issue.

Maybe you're a college student. We have college students in this church that are burdened for their siblings. They're burdened for parents that are not walking in wisdom. They're not walking in a biblical manner, and they're burdened for that.

And maybe you're troubled in those ways. What is the Bible telling us to do? Lift up our eyes. Stop thinking only about the next 24 hours, and let's start thinking about the next 24,000 years.

That's the idea. Man, believe in God. Believe in me. See what God is doing. In my father's house, there are many mansions. There is a kingdom coming.

God will reign over his people in the place that he has prepared for them. And we can think about that. Politics are maybe bothering you, troubling you. Wars are troubling you. Natural disasters are troubling you. I don't know what worries you today. This world is broken.

It is jacked up. I saw a news story the other day. 3,500 monkeys have taken over the city of Lop Buri in Thailand, okay? They've taken it over. They're biting people. They're kicking people out. I'm not kidding. You go look it up, okay? People are having to close their businesses. I'm looking at this news article.

I'm like, man, you let me and about two boys from the northeast campus over there, we'll fix that problem in about two days. You know what I'm talking about? So I don't quite understand what's going on in Thailand, all right? But my point is the world is like, man, and sometimes it can bother us.

It can, you know, I understand that. Where do we go? We lift our eyes up from where we are and we look towards the next 24,000 years, the next 24 millennia. That's what Jesus is trying to get us to do. You know, ministry at times can be hard.

What should I do? One of the guys that all of us read in seminary, a guy named Richard Baxter wrote a classic book, old time preacher. Here's what they said. They said, how did you have a successful ministry? Ministry can be hard.

Here's what he said. I think about heaven for 30 minutes every day. It's pretty good advice, you know? So if we're troubled, let's lift our eyes and let's see what God has for us. In my father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself and there and where I am, you will be also. I get tripped up on this passage because I learned it in the King James Version, okay? And I'm trying to read it in this version, but you guys understand.

My father's house are many rooms. Okay, some of y'all are like me and you're having flashbacks from a 1990 subculture Christian upbringing, audio adrenaline right now. Others of you have no idea what that means, okay?

And that's maybe fine, okay? All right, but if you were at the youth camp circuit back in the 90s, you remember a song, audio adrenaline, big, big house, lots and lots of rooms. The house is awesome, the kingdom is awesome, but what makes heaven heaven is that God is there. That's what makes it heaven.

The streets of gold are gonna be cool. Not having any tears is gonna be good, but what makes it great is that Jesus is there. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, we look forward to this.

Y'all, God dwelling with us in heaven is what makes it great. I want you to hear today, a lot of you don't know me, guys. We met our youngest daughter, she has special needs. I can't wait to interact with her in heaven. Some of you here are dealing with things right now in terms of health issues and that kind, I can't wait.

People with blindness, people that are not able to walk. I think about not struggling against sin anymore. No struggle, we will always choose what is good and right. But what makes heaven heaven is because God's presence is there and He is dwelling with us and we don't need to go to church because the whole thing is like a temple. God is dwelling with us every day, every breath.

And that's what He's getting at here. In my Father's house, there are many rooms. You're gonna be part of the house. You're gonna be part of the kingdom. I'm going away to prepare a place.

I'm gonna take you to where I am. And this is the picture that we have of heaven that we're getting. It's coming into God's family in fullness, the kingdom. It is this idea of God's reign and people and place. And I want you to understand, it's incredible.

We need to think about it more. Guy named Don Piper wrote a book about his experience. Maybe some of you guys remember this or again, early 90s. January 18th, 1989, Don Piper was pronounced dead at the scene of a car crash. Actually, he was pronounced dead by four different paramedics, right? And a local pastor, for whatever reason, felt compelled, stopped, began to pray for him, began to sing over him. Now, this guy was pronounced dead and this local pastor gets in the car that's mangled. They haven't even been able to get his body out.

That's how bad it is. He gets in the car with him and he's praying. They've already told him, you know, he's gone.

I mean, they're getting cornered, all that. 90 minutes later, this pastor is praying and singing and he's singing the old song, What a Friend I Have in Jesus. And Don Piper wakes up and starts singing it with him. Come on. Now, that pastor got out of that car pretty fast.

90 minutes later, right? Now, here's what I want you to see. This is probably ain't going where you think it's gonna go, okay? Here's what I want you to see. After this experience that, and he wrote a book, some of you guys have seen it or whatever. It was a bestseller, six million copies, all that kind of, 90 minutes in heaven.

I'm not engaging that part of it at all, okay? What I wanna engage is that Don Piper said after his experience that he could speak more authoritatively about heaven. I want you to understand something today. Our authority to speak about heaven doesn't come from us going there. It comes from Jesus having come here. And Jesus came and he has told us that my Father's house has many rooms and I am going to prepare a place for you.

And that's what he said. Look at verse two. In my Father's house are many rooms. My Father's house, y'all, I gotta engage this. This word father might bring up some stuff for you. I don't know what it brings up. It brings up pain or joy.

It might bring up safety or abandonment. Let me talk to the fathers that are here. And I know that's not everybody here and some of us will be and some of us, you know, that may not even be something that's on your radar, whatever, let me talk to the dads that are here right now. Fathers, you and I stand in for God the Father in our home forming what our kids think about him in their earliest days and I don't say that, listen, this is, you know, we have this thing in church a lot of times. We really love to heap praise on mom and we really love to kick dad down, okay? And that's come from a lot of different streams but that's not what I mean. What I mean is we have been given a grave responsibility and every one of us, I mean, okay, you stand in for God for a while.

Well, that's a lot, you know, and I'm probably gonna fail at that. Okay, yes, we are. There's no doubt. But do we, amen, right? But do we see the gravity of it?

And can we not begin to take steps? You know, we talked about gender roles a couple of weeks ago and in my community group, one of the things that we talked about was how the men in our group, as we're all sitting there, you know, the Bible frames that thing not as, you know, the Neanderthal beating the, you know, I get my way. It's more like all the guys in our group are like, dude, there's times where you almost feel like you wanna lay that down. It's so heavy. Now, we're not, we can't do that and God props us up but the point is it is a heavy calling.

And I just wanna say, guys, I'm not talking about how you do and how'd you do last week. Man, tomorrow's a new day. Can we get our mind right about the fact that we get an opportunity no matter what stage they're in, you don't stop parenting a kid when they turn 18, right? Like we're walking with them.

Can we not see that God has given us this place in their life? But when they're young, we do stand in for him in a lot of ways. You know, I was, one of our young families here, their oldest kid was like eight years old.

I was hanging out with him the other day. And he said, man, I don't know what it is my kid. They've got this weirdest thing going on where, you know, at school, they're like the best kid. You know, the teacher's like, you can't believe how awesome they are and all that. And then when they get home, they just totally fall apart. And I was like, you guys realize that's every kid, right?

I mean, however good they can be, it's gonna be with somebody else. And I was like, man, what happens in their life, right? We all know this, like what happens in their life is they've spent all day trying to hold it together for everybody else. And then when you get home, it's just like, dude, they just lose it, right? And they just kind of turn, they kind of turn. And then I thought about it for a second. And I was like, well, you know, all we are is grown up versions of them.

And especially dads. I'm like, you know, for me, how many times in my life is it like, man, hold it together all day long, all day long, all day long. And then you get home and it's just like, man, I've got no EQ left for everybody else.

I've got no, you know, salted speech for everybody. It's like, man, it's just, well, it just kind of is what it is. It's like, no, you know, that's not, that's not what we're called to do. Guys, how many of us at times, I'm convicted of this. How many of us at times, two o'clock in the afternoon, an associate, somebody from the church or somebody, you know, they call you and you're like, hey man, what's going on, how you doing? How you doing, brother? You know, and then wife calls 30 minutes later and you're like, what's up?

Yeah, no, okay, later. You know what I mean? It's like, how many of us maybe are saving energy for everybody else? Dads, when actually we're called to stand in for the one who gives his energy for us in the home. Maybe we need a little more margin in our day. Maybe we've got to cut things a little bit short in order to be able to fulfill this role in my father's house.

We want to create a picture for them. Y'all, I think about those right now without father, single moms raising kids without fathers. I want you to understand we mourn that it's broken, but there is an ultimate father. There is one that is never absent, who never leaves, who doesn't die. There is one who wants to call you and listen, this is what's cool about that father. That father wants you in his house.

Now here's the rub, we got to be clear. What is the passage saying? What's the heart of this passage?

Well, here it is. We are not naturally destined for the father's house because of sin. I mean, if we were naturally destined there, there wouldn't be a need for Jesus to come and be the way. There wouldn't be a need for him to come and put us back together. You know, there's one point in which virtually all major religions agree, and that is this, very, very encouraging here, you ready? They all agree on one thing.

There is something deeply wrong with us. But there's one that takes a turn and says, the way out of getting, the way to get out of that shame and guilt over there being something wrong is not to work your way back to God, but it's to understand that God took the initiative and worked his way down to you. That's what Jesus says in John 14, six. One of the most controversial passages in the Bible, one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible, Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to the father except through me. It is not through your working.

It is not through getting a little bit better. It is not through some starting and some stopping this, and it's not through a little bit of religion. Y'all, if we could get back to God on our own, Jesus wouldn't call himself the way. Jesus says, believe in me. Put your faith in me. That's what he says in verse one. Believe in me. Put your faith in me.

What does that mean? It means that what the Bible is calling us to do is understand that Jesus Christ is saying he is what we need. He has said it now, and if you go to the Gospel of John, he said it a bunch of other ways too. This is the sixth statement where he says I am this or I am that. I am the bread. I am the door. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way back to God. I am the way. And this is what I put before you today. In our sin, we are separated from God, but because of our Savior, we can be reunited with God. Here's the rub. Jesus doesn't say I am a way.

Jesus says I am the way. You know, I was watching The View the other day. Don't typically do that, okay? Actually, I saw a clip, okay? I saw a clip of this. All right, that's better, right? Yeah.

I saw a clip of this, and it was a crazy thing. They are opining about how much they love the show The Chosen, okay? Now, I know, I just saw a bunch of everybody go, really? I mean, they, and you know, and I'm like, and I don't know all the faith backgrounds and stuff like that, but I've heard them kind of talk some about Christianity and some of that stuff, and I just remember thinking like, I wonder if you guys know where this thing's going. You know what I mean?

Like, I mean, it's an awesome show. I mean, I guess, I haven't really done all, but I mean, I'm assuming if it stays faithful to generally faithful, it's like this thing's heading toward Jesus Christ looking at the entire world and saying I am the way, which, of course, you understand in the culture that we live, in the tyranny of inclusivism, I like, it's like the worst thing you could ever say, right? That there is an absolute truth, that there is one way that we would get back to God. Jesus will claim to be our way to heaven. Y'all, when we buy into inclusivism, that everyone is right, nobody is wrong, it directly contradicts what Jesus is saying, because what Jesus is saying is dying apart from, well, this is what he said, apart from me.

If it is apart from me, nobody comes to the Father. You know, this goes back to the intro here. I know it's a little bit philosophical, but listen, every faith claim and every religion and virtually every philosophy in the world is exclusive in some way. You can't say I believe this without that kind of setting a fence, no matter how big you try to set the fence. You guys have heard of the church, the Unitarian Universalist Church. Truth, you know, basically it's right in the name, right? Unitarian Universalist.

Do you know how I know that there is no religion or faith claim or philosophy on planet earth that doesn't draw some exclusive claims? Oh yeah, the Unitarian Universalist Church, they're having all types of schisms. You know why? Because one of the guys spoke out because the Unitarian Universalist Church used to say the phrase, we stand on the side of love. And then they realized that that was not politically correct and they fell over themselves to apologize because saying the word I stand on the side of love is offensive for people who can't stand.

Okay, it's called ableism. And so they made a big public apology about saying we stand on the side of love. And one of the pastors in the churches who is an acclaimed devout atheist has said, there's a line that we can't, that's too far. And in saying that that's too far, you know what the Universalist Unitarian Church did? They kicked them out.

They basically called them a right-wing lunatic. I'm serious. Now the reason I bring that up, it's not funny, it really is sad, but the reason I bring it up is to say this. Every faith claim on the planet is in some way exclusive. Even the most inclusive.

You know, this is the college campus thing. You know, it's like, we just accept everybody. Well, you accept that. The thing about inclusivism is you only include the inclusivists. We include everybody, as long as they never say that we can't include everybody.

And then that person is not included. You chase your tail with this stuff, right? My point is, every faith claim, every religion, every kind of philosophy, if you make a claim about truth, you are drawing a line, you are putting a fence up. The question isn't do you do this? My point is, y'all, Jesus' problem here, if you wanna call it that, his problem here is common to every faith and religion that is on the planet.

The good news is, the gospel is the most inclusive of all exclusive belief claims. Do you know why? And I need you to follow me on this. Do you wanna know why? Because there ain't but one way to get in. And anybody can take that way in. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor. It doesn't matter if you're old or young. It doesn't matter if you're black or white. It doesn't matter what language you speak.

It doesn't matter what caste you were born in in India. You come in one way. Every faith claim on the planet is exclusive, but there is one that is more inclusive than them all. And this is the gospel. You know what it says?

You come in by trusting, not in your works, but in the blood that was shed on the cross as a sacrifice for your sin. And you know why? The truth bears out.

I've said this before. Guys, Christianity is the most diverse movement in the history of the world. That's not preacher talk. That just is.

Here's what I mean. When you think about all of the types of people and languages all over the world that have embraced Christianity, it is mind blowing. When people want to punch at the caricature of the rural North Carolina Baptist kind of, and they think they're talking about Christians, they actually don't know who they're making fun of.

They're making fun of people all over the world from every stripe, from every socioeconomic background, from every race. And here's what I want you to know. What else would we expect from a religion that claims that one day every tribe and tongue will worship? Look at this picture. This picture shows the majority religion.

And I want you to see how one of them has colors that is all over the world. So majority religion in each culture. Now, hey, listen, we fully understand. I mean, there's thousands of religions in all these different cultures. I understand that. But when you look at how one of them is so diverse on different continents, different languages, you begin to understand what's going on.

It is an exclusive truth claim, but it's the most inclusive of all exclusive truth claims. And you know, we even get to see that in our church. Man, we celebrate when people from different backgrounds get to come, people from different races get to come in church. We get a little picture of heaven.

Look at this picture. You want to know what our most diverse campus is, by the way? It's our Espanol campus. There's 11 nations that are represented in Mercy Hill in Espanol, all right? Four different major cultural groupings in 11 different countries. Why does Christianity have that type of reach? It has that type of reach because, man, what it says is it doesn't matter what your background is.

In fact, God is targeting you because of that background and that diversity because he is the one God that is worthy of being worshiped from every tribe, tongue, and language. All right, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna start moving toward a close, okay?

Here's what I'm gonna call you to do. Man, trust Jesus as your pathway back to God. Man, here is my prayer today that some of us will move from. I can't believe there would only be one way to God to seeing today, and I can't believe there's even a way to God at all. And the way that we're gonna get there is by understanding that this analogy of God on the mountain and all of our different trails are kind of getting to him.

Y'all, it fails because all of those trails are filled with sin. What the Bible has told us is that in our sin, we are deserving of separation of death and of hell forever. We will die in this life and we will die on into eternity for all time because of our sin, and that's what it deserves when you're thinking about a holy God. You say, well, my sin's not all that bad. Well, you're probably comparing yourself to your neighbor or something. It's like, no, no, when you think about God, who is holy and you have sinned against him, now we begin to understand how the punishment matches the crime.

Because of our sin, we deserve hell, but Jesus Christ has come for us. Y'all, when I was a kid, I heard this story. I never forgot it. There was a kid who was watching his dad mow the yard. Maybe some of you guys have been in this situation and the mower's coming, you know how the dad's gotta line it up, you know, in the perfect rows, right?

And so he's lining it up and he's not gonna veer one way or the other, I mean, no matter what, okay? And the kid sees a massive ant mound that's in the path and he sees the lawnmower coming and he's starting to get panicky because he wants to save the ants from the incoming wrath. Now this story is not about me, okay? I spent a lot of time blowing up ant piles with M80s and cherry bombs and stuff, all right? So this is not about me. I wouldn't have saved them, is my point.

The kid sees them coming, simple story I remember from a kid, he realized, man, the only way I could tell them what's about to happen is if I became an ant. That's what Jesus has done for us. I have come to you, not only to warn you, but to be the sacrifice and save you from what you deserve. And that's what Christ has done on our behalf. Man, Jesus came and lived a life that we didn't live.

He died the death that we deserved. In our sin, we deserve death to be separated from God forever. Jesus Christ comes and he says, how about this?

How about I'll trade you? I'll lay down on the cross and take the death that you deserve so that I can give you the righteousness and the rewards that I deserve because of who I am. And three days later, he raises from the dead to prove himself to be who he is and offer us the chance for the newness of life. That's what the cross is. It's Jesus in my place because of my sin.

Jesus hung in my place. Now my question for you is this. Would you trust him today? Oh, there could only be one way. How could there be one way?

How could there be a way at all? Can you trust him today? So the question is this, what's it gonna be, all right? What's it gonna be? Now here's what I want you to do. I want you to close up your books and Bibles. And man, we just wanna kinda get in a good head space here as we close our sermon time. I wanna give you an opportunity to respond, all right? Here's what I'm gonna ask you to do. I wanna ask you to bow your heads, close your eyes. It's a way for us to kinda not think about anything else. If you're brand new and that weirds you out, then just don't do it, okay?

Don't worry about it. But man, if you're, you know, I mean, the reason we do this is just to kinda try to get a head space of, man, just try to. So here's my question for you today.

Man, what's it gonna be? Jesus Christ promises us eternal rest in his home. Would you lay down, okay, lay down your religious striving.

Is there someone here, is there someone at our campuses? You're so worried that God's gonna kick you out because you just keep failing and you don't know that you've done enough. Don't you understand that in the gospel, Jesus' blood covers you. It's not about what you have done. Maybe there's somebody here that thinks you're not worthy enough for God to save you.

And I wanna make sure you understand something really clear. You are not worthy enough. But Jesus Christ loved you anyway. He has come and done what we could not do. And in the gospel, we can become worthy again, not because of our works, but because of his blood. You can have an eternal relationship with him.

Somebody's in here today or somebody's at one of our campuses and they're thinking, man, God's calling me. He's orchestrating my life to come to a moment just like this, but I can't give up the control that I have over my life, over what I do. I wanna tell you today that control is an illusion.

You are one email, one phone call, one wobble in the market from everything changing. And even if it doesn't, one day you will take your last breath and you will have no control there. Why not get, instead of arresting and grabbing something you can never keep, why not give your life into the hands of the God who loves you as he calling you today. Maybe today is the day of salvation for you. All right, so listen, if God has been drawing you in today is the day that I'm gonna pray a simple prayer and I'm gonna ask that you pray it with me, all right?

You pray this in your heart and if you wanna step over that line today, you wanna become a Christian, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, if you wanna declare it today, I believe that and I'm stepping in to the way. Then you pray this prayer with me. In your heart, you say, Father, I know that I'm a sinner and I know that I deserve death and hell for my sin. Someone on our campus says you keep praying this with me but I believe that Jesus Christ has come to shed his blood for me. He went to the cross so that I didn't have to. I believe him to be who he said he was. I believe that three days later he rose from the dead and offers me salvation and I will live with him forever. He is the Lord of my life.