Is Jesus the Only Way to Salvation?

Introduction

I’m going to start this morning with a statement and a little assignment for you. As I’m making this statement, if you have a pen and paper, you just write down who you think said this and maybe the environment or the atmosphere in which this was said. And if you know, don’t tell a neighbor. Just keep it to yourself. So let’s begin with this statement. Now I’m going to put part of it on the screen for you. One of the things that struck me about all of you is your ability to engage in interreligious dialogue. This is very important. If we start to fight among ourselves saying, my religion is more important than yours, my religion is true, yours is not. Where will that lead us? People in the crowd answered, destruction.

Yes, it is okay to discuss. Every religion is a way to arrive at God. An example would be that there are different languages to arrive at God, but God is God for all. If God is God for all, then we are all sons and daughters of God. But my God is more important than your God. Is that true? There is only one God, and each of us is a language, so to speak, in order to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian. There are different paths. Interesting statement that I want to dig into a little bit this morning.

But who do you think said that? Maybe a college professor at some big university, someone speaking at a major public event with college students. It was actually a statement recently by Pope Francis in Singapore in what was called an interreligious meeting with young people. Now, if you have come across this and you’ve seen various quotes from him, I’ll get more into some of this here in just a moment, but I do want you to know that my source was Vatican News. And I listened to him say what he said, and I listened to his translator live translate exactly what I wrote down. So I didn’t go to some article, I didn’t go anywhere else to find what I just read to you. I listened to it come from his lips and from the lips of his translator, and I transcribed it.

So this is not somebody else’s idea of what Pope Francis said. This is what he said. It set the Catholic community into somewhat of chaos in the previous days. I’m I’m not necessarily all that concerned about that. I don’t mean that in a mean way, but I’m not Catholic. None of you probably are either.

Christian. And so people, even within the Catholic faith, were greatly rejecting what Pope Francis was saying. And the sad reality is that Pope Francis’ statements are really the product and the influence of what is called a pluralistic society. Now you’ve probably heard this talked about in a number of ways, and so I want to keep it pretty surface level this morning. It’s a basic idea, you’ve probably heard of like moral relativism or just the idea of relativism. It’s very tied to that, or postmodern thinking. Like truth doesn’t really matter that much. And what I really want you to see just from this statement from the Pope is how far this kind of thinking has come. I personally put no significance in the Pope and who he is as a person.

I do not think he speaks for God. I do not think he’s an earthly representative of Christ or any of the things that a Catholic would claim. And one of the reasons that I am would be so adamant about that is because of foolish and ungodly statements like this that are coming from the voice of a man, not Christ.

So I’m I’m not alarmed by this in terms of a human saying something like this, but it does show the extent to which religious leaders are even influenced by cultural phenomons of the day. And one of those is this idea of a pluralistic society. Sometimes maybe a slightly more positive way to think about this is the term multiculturalism. Maybe you’ve heard that before. And there are aspects of this that are very good. I mean, certainly we want to be able to dwell in peace and be able to discuss things with people without everybody getting mad all the time and angry at each other. And there are lots of cultures and lots of backgrounds that come together, particularly in a place like the United States. And I agree with the Pope that we need to be able to discuss.

We need to be able to have dialogue, and the purpose of that is to come to truth, not to pretend like there is no truth, and it doesn’t really matter, and so we can all just get along, which is really the direction he was ultimately going with it, along with various other types of modern thinking. He actually went on, he went right from that statement to then talk to the kids about bullying. That was his next really big point. Certainly, I don’t like bullying, but it’s interesting that, at least from a Catholic perspective, the one who is at the head of the church who speaks for Christ is now engaging in very much woke postmodern sorts of discussions. Like this is his role is now to go and talk to young people about bullying.

Very interesting that he’s kind of following the narrative of what’s happening in culture around us and pretty scary. However, this is nothing new. It’s not new that religious leaders get pulled into kind of the culture of the day and the thinking of the day and are afraid to speak truth and to speak reality. We see that happening here with the Pope, but I’m going to read in just a moment from Acts 4. We see the very same thing happening in the days of the apostles. Where people are they are resistant to truth. They don’t want to admit what is real and what is reality. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. But I think one of them in our culture at least is a hesitancy for any kind of confrontation.

And so pluralism, there’s there’s various meanings of it. There’s some positive, like I already described, but philosophical pluralism is really the idea that everything is equal. And that you can have your truth and I can have my truth, and that cultures are different, and one culture is just as good as another culture, and so we really can’t judge one culture over against another. And like the Pope said in his statement, there are many truths, or there are many paths, and these religions or ideas or values are equally legitimate. Now, if you go look all this up, you can find a variety of definitions as I already pointed out. But bottom line, in practicality, this is where it ends up. And this seems like a lot, a very reasonable purpose for this.

If this is the direction you’ve gone, it’s very hard to go up to anybody and say, I don’t think you’re right about that. It’s much easier for us to say, Well, that’s what you think, and I think this, and now let’s go on our own way, feeling good about where we each are. Rather than truly investigating what is real and right and true. And so, in this anti-philosophical landscape that we live in, it’s offensive to proclaim that salvation is only through Jesus. This is really the direction I want us to think about this morning. Not just our young people, but those of us who are older in the world that we live in, it is not popular, it is not accepted to say the types of things that the apostles even are saying in Acts chapter 4.

It’s not popular in their world either, maybe for slightly different reasons. But I want us to see that when you speak truth, very often people don’t want to hear it, and they’ll find all sorts of ways around it. They will try to guilt you into believing that you can’t know truth, that we can’t really know what is right and what is wrong. But I want to say and proclaim this morning that Jesus is the only way to salvation. He is it. There is no other way. There is no other path, despite what the Pope has said in the last week. There is no other way to the Father but through the Son, Jesus Christ. And I want to just quickly, really on a surface level, probably through texts that you already know and understand, kind of work through this in what I hope is a logical way to help us see kind of the error in modern thinking.

Now, this is not just to kind of dog all the people in the world and say, look how dumb they are, and that sort of thing. That’s not really my goal this morning. It is more encouragement for us and maybe to arm us with some confidence to say this doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to say we can’t know, or there’s lots of different ways to go. And not just that, but it doesn’t give you any confidence or any assurance. When I look at the Pope’s statement, that statement says there’s no assurance or confidence in what anybody’s doing. How do we really know? You know, if you can follow Judaism or you can follow Buddhism, or you can whatever, Taoism, it doesn’t really matter, and just it’s it all ends up in the same place.

That’s a very confusing and muddling message. It would be a little bit like if I said, Hey, why don’t you come to my house today? And you said, Hey, how do you how do I get there? And I just said, just go any way you want to go. Good luck. I mean, that doesn’t work, does it? I’ve got to give you a path, I’ve got to give you a plan. And you just can’t go any direction or any way. I mean, you may end up in West Texas somewhere, hours and hours from my house. You may end up all the way in Florida or way up in Canada, because you go some direction you want to go, and maybe you feel really good about it, but you don’t end up in the right destination.

And so I hope you see the confusion of a statement from someone who is supposed to be a religious leader, at least in the eyes of the most of the world, and how he has been influenced by modern thinking. Alright, let’s read from Acts chapter 4. I want to get in this text a little bit. And really this morning I just want to pull some thoughts from it. It’s not going to be an exegesis of Acts 4, but I just want to get some ideas and principles from this text that kind of help us with this thinking, or interacting with some of the chaos that we see in the world around us. So Acts chapter 4 and verse 1. They’ve just healed a guy, the crowd is going wild, they’re preaching and teaching Jesus to them, and all sorts of people are believing.

That’s the context here. It says, as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed, because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who had heard the word believed. And the number of the men came to be about five thousand. On the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high priestly family. And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, By what power or by what name did you do this?

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which is become the cornerstone, and there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus.

But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another, saying, What shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name. So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge.

For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. And when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way to punish them because of the people. For all were praising God for what had happened. For the man on whom this sign of healing was performed, especially from a sociological standpoint. Very interesting the behavior of the people in this story. And you see the way that they are influenced and the way they act, even particularly the rulers at the end of the story, who says they found no way to punish them because of the people. This is the way they operate. They operate by nature of the influence, the impact that the people around them are going to have. What that means essentially is they operate by fear.

Contrast that to Peter and John and the other apostles, not just in this story, but other stories in the surrounding text, who act in boldness and courage. They are unimpeded by the opinions of men. They bravely and boldly stand up and say the things that are true and that are right, even in the face of imminent danger and threat.

1. This Thinking Will Never Work With Jesus

And coming from a statement like the Pope made earlier in this week is that this sort of thinking will never plumb with Jesus and his teaching.

It doesn’t work. Whatever you want to call it, pluralism or relativism or any other ism that’s about just there being no truth, and you get to do whatever you want to do and say it’s right, that will never work with Jesus Christ. This will always be a challenge. It will never be accepted. Pluralism attempts to turn Jesus just into another nice person, a nice prophet who says good things. He’s no different than Confucius or others who have been wise in life and made great statements that they just equate Jesus to that. And that doesn’t work with Jesus. Because it’s not what Jesus says about himself. And so this sort of thinking that permeates our society does not work with Christianity. And by the way, I’m not trying to teach or promote Islam this morning, but it also doesn’t plumb with that either.

There is nothing about Islam that’s going to accept pluralistic ideas. If you don’t agree with them, you are the enemy. And especially within some Islamic groups, they want to kill you, the extreme ones. They’re not interested in pluralistic type of thinking either. And so I want to come back to that thought here in just a moment about the nature of when you have that sort of thinking in the world, what does that mean for this philosophical idea? But I want to start with just the reality that it doesn’t work with Jesus. What are the sorts of things that Jesus himself says? His own teachings deny the sort of everything goes kind of concept. John 10 in verse 9, he says, I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved.

He did not say, choose any door, just be religious. You know, have a heart to figure out the divine, and then it’s all going to be okay. That’s not what Jesus says. And so if you believe in Jesus, you cannot believe modern thinking about the world. Alright, well, let’s continue. John 11, 25. I am the resurrection and the life. Particularly that last statement. Now, the resurrection is extremely important with part of what we’re talking about here this morning and the evidence of Jesus and who he is, but even that last statement, he says, I am the life. Muhammad is not the life. Buddha is not the life. Right? I am the way of life. There’s no other way. And then he just flat out says it in John 14.

I am the way. So Talism, it’s not the way. Jesus is the way. Jesus is the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. So just a basic logical concept here. We cannot accept Jesus and accept the thinking of the world. No big surprise there. That’s kind of always been the case. But if we’re going to believe Jesus and what he says, it does not align with modern philosophical thinking. It’s not going to work. He claims to be the exclusive way to salvation. That is his claim. And he says, if you don’t come through me, this isn’t going to work. There’s a narrow way and there’s a wide way. Remember this from Matthew chapter 7. And the wide way, despite what the Pope said and his crowd around him, the wide way leads to destruction.

Not the narrow way. Right? He talked about if we if we fight and we discuss and we say, My I have the truth, and you don’t have the truth, where does that lead? Destruction. His crowd answers back to him. No. Destruction comes when we think it’s easy and we can go any direction we want to go, and that does not take us to God. That’s where destruction comes. And the Bible is extremely clear about that. But the way that is narrow is difficult. And it leads to life. Now I understand, as I know you do too, that there are some difficult things in Scripture. And there’s some things we need to talk about Jesus and about mercy and about grace that are really important in God’s plan.

2. Scripture Teaches That Pluralism Is Wrong

And it’s not that every item on the list we have to be in 100% agreement on, or else we just have no chance. That’s not the point I’m making here, and that’s not the point Jesus makes in Scripture. We are to be intelligent beings who discern through scripture and we read and we study and we come to understanding. But there’s a great thing about God’s plan that makes it so much better than every other pain, and we’ll come back to that here at the end. Even outside of Jesus’ teaching, the scripture teaches that pluralism is wrong. The idea that my truth and my friend’s truth are equal, young people. That’s not true. Either what you think is true is true or it’s not true. And either what your friend thinks is true is true or it’s not true.

They can be grossly inaccurate about what they think, and you can be grossly inaccurate about what you think. It’s not true just because you feel like it’s true. That is not what truth is. It doesn’t matter what I think about it’s what is actually real and correct. So Paul writes to the Corinthian brethren, dealing with things like paganism. And he says paganism is wrong. Now, you know, there’s a lot of things, we don’t talk a lot about this. There’s a lot of things about paganism that are just warped concepts of reality. And so, like they do things like sacrifice and they go to temples, right? And they make offerings to God. And so there’s a lot of things, and some will say, you know, what the Pope was trying to say is that you go down these roads and that this kind of spirituality is going to lead you to God.

Okay, I can sort of go with some of that to a certain extent until he starts saying that all these paths are okay. That you can kind of go in any direction and it’s really all right. Not that if you’re seeking truth and you kind of happen to fall through some of these areas on your way to God. Okay, that’s fair. Maybe you are in an Eastern culture that is very heavily based in Hinduism, and you’re seeking truth, and you start there, and along your path and your journey to truth, you’re you’re working through some of these other religions, and you realize that’s not the answer. Okay, I can I can go along with that. But they are not in and of themselves going to bring you to God, and it sure does sound like that’s what he’s saying.

And that is error. It is not true. Paul tells the Corinthian brethren when they offer to false gods, when they are taking part in pagan sacrifices, they offer to demons and not gods. He says, I do not want you to be participants or have fellowship with demons. The message there is this is wrong. It’s not the right way to go. However sincere your heart may be in that moment, it’s the wrong direction. And if I love you and I care about you, I’m going to tell you the truth about this. Which is what Paul’s doing. He’s saying, this is not right, and you shouldn’t be involved in demon worship and the things that are taking place in baked paganism. Don’t get tied up, and that’s going to lead you in a bad direction.

3. Pluralism Is Philosophical Failure

It’s not going to bring you to God. Okay. First Thessalonians 1, Paul again, he says, I’m glad that you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God. The path there was to turn from error and to turn toward truth. To go in the right direction. That’s how we come to an understanding and we come to know God. It’s not that all paths just kind of end up miraculously there at God. That doesn’t work. And so inspired writers and Jesus himself deny this concept. Pluralism is really just, it’s anti-philosophical, as I said earlier, but it is philosophical failure. And I want to just show this really quickly. I would propose to you that no one actually believes in pluralistic ideas in reality. You simply can’t.

What often is happening is people are seeking some kind of moral high ground. Right? What is it that they don’t like about Christianity? Well, you say you have the only way. Well, why does that matter? Well, it makes them feel like they’re morally superior to me or to you. Well, how do they get their sense of morality? Where does that come from? It’s all a ploy to really feel better about what we believe ultimately. And the real answer is not that I went or you they win, it’s that we seek what’s actually true and right. And have a good way of thinking, good philosophy, a good way of seeing life, which is ultimately only going to be found through the creator of life himself and what he has told us.

And so this sort of thinking, this pluralistic idea is really just a failure in logic and morality and philosophy. It seems nice, and particularly our young people, our older people, I think we get caught up in this as well. But it’s such an emotional society, and feelings are so much how our young people are kind of drugged through life these days. It feels nice to say that everyone can have their own truth. It feels kind of kind. You know, to say, it’s okay, you can think that, I’ll think this right, and we’re not mad at each other, we don’t fight, we don’t get angry, right? So it seems really nice. But the problem is it fails completely on a logical standpoint. If pluralism cannot fit Christianity or Islam, for that matter, then it fails as a system.

Do you understand that? Like the idea that all religions and values and truths are equal and good, falls apart when then you have to accept Christianity or Islam, which says that’s not true, which is why they hate it so much. Right? So they say you should accept all as equally true and relevant and legitimate, and then they turn around and don’t do it. It fails logically. It doesn’t actually make any sense, which is why I said earlier, no one actually believes this. It’s just a kind of magic trick to deal with people and say, well, you shouldn’t be judging other people, or you should accept their truth, and then now what do we say to that? It’s all based in emotions and feelings and not actual fact or truth or logic or any sort of morality.

What about atheism? You know, is atheism an equally true and right ideology and value system? I mean, if so, then we must accept all cultures, we must accept cannibalistic cultures, or maybe we turn kind of to the what I call the Hitler principle, you know, nobody’s gonna support Hitler, but we have from this standpoint, we have to support him. It’s his culture, it’s his way of thinking. Where do we get any sense of morality? If atheism is a legitimate and true way of thinking, how do we know what is good or evil or bad? We don’t. There’s no gauge of that other than just my personal feelings, and your feelings are different than my feelings. So, where do we come to anything? So I want us to see this, and young people, I want you to see this with all the garbage you’re fed and various sources.

This is illogical, it doesn’t make sense, it is philosophical failure and nonsense. It fails logically and it fails morally.

And no one can even condemn even the worst human atrocities. It’s all just opinion. It is people kind of lobbying for the moral high ground, which again doesn’t really make sense to have because there essentially is no morality. So is there truth or is there not? If we believe there’s truth, then it matters what we believe. If we believe there is no truth, nothing matters. Doesn’t make any difference. If someone wants to walk into a school and shoot it up, you can’t say that’s wrong. There’s no morality. There’s no issue with that. That’s their opinion. That’s what they’ve decided to do in their life. Everything is completely random. There’s no purpose. And so why does it matter? Which fits pretty well with evolution itself because it’s about survival of the fittest.

4. Jesus Is Much Better

So, I mean, who cares? You’re bigger, you’re stronger, you can do what you want. That’s the idea. So, what I want you to see, and I’ve talked about this in past years, what you have here are conflicting and irreconcilable ideologies. They don’t work. When you start to dig deeper into this idea of, well, that’s your truth and that’s okay, and I have my truth. When you start digging deeper into that, you realize it doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s complete foolishness. And what I want to propose to you this morning, and that’s that Jesus is much better. He is way better than pluralism or kind of this cowardly avoidance of any kind of conflict. He defeated death and offers deliverance from the body of sin and resurrection to new life.

He demands we accept his way, not any way. He demands that we accept him if we want his blessings. He says it’s difficult. There’s a narrow path. It’s not easy. But it is a way that leads to life. And unfortunately, there’ll be few who find it. Matthew 7, 13 through 14. But this truth comes with grace and hope and assurance or confidence. It’s based in grace. It is empowered through the incarnation. There is no other religion that can boast the things that Christianity boasts. That God became human.

And then he died for them sacrificially. He put their sins on his shoulder. And he said, This is what you have to do. You have to believe in me. You have to put your faith in me. And there’s ways that you go about doing that are very clear in scripture, but the simple message is Jesus did this, it’s the plan of God. You believe it. You are saved by his blood. Listen, all the other religions out there, you earn what you get. You know, your good deeds and your bad deeds are kind of weighed in the balance in Islam. And then if you do more good deeds than you do bad, then you go to paradise. Is that how you view Christianity? If you do, you don’t understand it.

In Hinduism, if you don’t do enough good things, you’re probably familiar with this a little bit, right? You are reincarnated. You come back as like a lesser, you kind of have another chance, maybe as like a fly or a camel or something. I don’t know. It just, I mean, that’s real comforting.

And I don’t mean to mock other people’s thinking, really. It’s just the idea of what this, the way this works is if you do enough yourself, then you get rewarded. These don’t really deal with the problem of sin. They don’t really deal with the human condition, which is we have a creator who created this world perfectly, and we have defiled that creation, and there’s nothing we can do to make it right. You can’t do enough good deeds, so then you get to go to paradise. You can’t live enough to the principles that instead of being reincarnated as a fly or a mosquito, suddenly you now get to enter into euphoria. That’s not how things work. Amazingly, in God’s plan, we are saved by grace through faith.

We could have someone walk into this building this morning who has lived a horrible life. I don’t suggest you do that. I don’t say to go live a horrible life, but they could have lived a horrible life. And they could be 93 years old, and they could come to Jesus and realize this is what I need in my life. And they could submit to his will, bury the old man in baptism and come out of the waters and newness of life, and they have utter confidence that Jesus’ blood is now saving them for eternity. You don’t get that in anything else.

He offers a specific answer to sin and the problem of death through resurrection to questions about eternal life.

5. The World Will Suppress Truth

The answers are found in faith and provided by God’s grace. So I want to leave you with three simple points this morning. Just some things to think about truth itself and what we see from a text like Acts chapter 4 and the apostles’ interaction with those who just aren’t interested in the things of Jesus. And the first of those is that the world will suppress truth. The world’s not interested in truth because truth is hard. And truth means you have to change and you have to do something different. That’s where you are now is not right, it’s not good, and you need to get somewhere else that is good and right. That’s what truth does with you. Now for those who are interested in truth, they don’t mind that vetting process, even though it is hard.

And part of what we’re to do as God’s people is to actually work through that together. There’s times when I need correction or you need correction, right? We’re going off path or something we’ve done isn’t quite right. And so we need someone to step in and say, hey, this is not what God actually wants. This is the truth. And so I alter course. And that can be really difficult. We have people here this morning who have made drastic changes. If they just wanted to do whatever they wanted to do, they could have just gone on and continued on in what they were doing. But they did very hard and difficult things. Not because they thought it was going to earn them salvation or they’d have enough good deeds or anything like that, but it’s because it’s what Jesus has called them to in faith.

And that’s hard. It takes commitment and loyalty, and the world is not interested in that. And so Paul talks about this in Romans 1. Just like the righteousness of God is revealed through the gospel and the power of the gospel, God’s wrath is going to be revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. That is people who suppress the truth. And that’s what we see in the world around us, and unfortunately, even through religious leaders, just as the apostles saw in Acts 4. These priests and the captain of the temple, they’re greatly annoyed by the preaching of Jesus and resurrection. They don’t want to hear any of it. They arrest these guys, they throw them in prison. When they can’t deny the truthfulness of what’s happening, when they have healed this man, they try to scare them and threaten them and squash them and keep them from talking.

And you know the epic responses of Peter.

6. Truth Holds Power, So Boldly Speak Truth

Boldness. Courage to speak truth even when it’s hard, because truth holds power. The world knows that. That’s why they want to suppress it. There’s power and truth. And truth, unlike pluralism, unlike relativism, unlike the thought of the day, actually demands response. If you believe there’s truth and someone comes to you and says, I don’t think you’re right, you have to wrestle with that, don’t you? If you believe that all truth is fine and that all paths are good, and someone says, I don’t think you’re right, you’re right, you just say, Well, that’s your truth. And then we all go on our merry way, acting like everything’s okay. It demands no response. It’s easy. It does nothing to help me or the other person. But truth holds real power.

It convicts me to change or to help somebody else change. And it demands a response to what is real and what is good. And so the world needs God’s people to continue to boldly speak truth in the name of Jesus and the authority of Jesus and who He is. I said it that way because what the world doesn’t need is me to speak my opinions, my ideas, the things I’ve come up with that I think are right and good. The world doesn’t really need that. But the world does need me to speak the truth in Jesus’ name. The realities of the cross, God’s plan of salvation, and what God has done through Jesus Christ, by the faith of Jesus Christ, that now all who have faith in him can be made just by the one who is the justifier, Romans chapter 3, 21 and following.

That’s the truth that the world needs. That’s the truth that’s actually going to bring peace to the world. But sometimes it just involves some conflict along the way.

Conclusion

For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. And so, in whatever small way this morning that I can do it, I want to speak what is true. There is no other way to be saved other than Jesus Christ. And we should be unashamed to say that. There’s no other path, there’s no other religion. Nothing else is going to get us to the presence of the Father for all eternity. It’s only going to be through Jesus Christ and His blood, His sacrifice, and submitting my will to His. Can we help you do that this morning? We have a baptistry ready. This is what we’re told we’re supposed to do. He says, Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

These are the words of Jesus. This is what Jesus says to do. It’s not my idea, it’s not some religion of men. Jesus, the one who came and died for his creation, said, Go out and make disciples, my followers. And in that process, you’re going to baptize them in my name, by my authority. And we can do that this morning. We’re ready to help you. You can begin a path that makes sense, that’s logical, that’s reasonable, that is a good way of life that will bring you to the presence of the Father for all eternity. Can we help you that this morning? Come now as we stand and we sing together.