SEARCH FOR GOD
JESUS
EASTER SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
JOHN 3:16-17, JOHN 20:26-31
APRIL 8, 2012
The Nazca people lived for 1,100 years in South America on the southern plains of Peru. From 500 BC to 600 AD, they lived on those plains of Peru. They thrived. Suddenly, around 600 AD, they disappeared; they just vanished. Historians, anthropologists, and archeologists do not know why the Nazca people just disappeared. They left behind the famous Nazca lines, geoglyphs on the plains of Peru. From the air, as you look down, these geoglyphs look like animals, images of animals. For centuries, nobody knew that, then in the 1920s the first aircraft flew over the plains of southern Peru, and they saw the geoglyphs in the shapes of animals.
That began the questioning of who did this. There were many theories, from UFOs to extraterrestrials, but today most historians, most scientists, anthropologists, and most archeologists agree that those geoglyphs were created by the Nazca people as part of their religion. They believed that these images could be seen by the gods, and they would look down and be pleased. Some of these images are two, three, four, and even ten miles in length. In the midst of the geoglyphs there are long lines leading to temples. These were Nazca places of worship.
Around 400 to 500 AD, the Nazca people began to experience earthquakes and famine and then a very strange thing happened. They began to reject their religion. They rejected their religion, they turned away from it, and they began to burn their temples. Archeologists can see at the end of the Nazca lines, where the temples once stood, they were all burned to the ground. They burned their temples and they abandoned their religion. Having lost their faith, they lost their core and they began to be assimilated by other peoples and they just disappeared from the earth. That is the prevailing theory. Assimilated by other people, they just disappeared after they abandoned their religion.
We live in a similar time today. We live in a time where many people are abandoning their religion. They are, figuratively speaking, torching their faith, burning their temples. In fact, in the current issue, the April issue of 5280 Magazine, the cover story is about religion and spirituality in the state of Colorado. The most recent surveys show that 20 percent of the people of Colorado now identify themselves as atheist or agnostic. An additional 13 percent acknowledge that they are confused and virtually clueless. The studies show that many, many people are leaving their religions, they are leaving their faith systems, and they are figuratively speaking burning their temples.
Many people are tired of their religion. They find that their religion is burdensome. They find that their religion is heavy and they just can’t bear it anymore. We think of the words of Jesus who said, “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light. You will find rest for your souls.” Two thousand years ago a man came up to Jesus and said, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
That question is asked again and again in the pages of scripture. We see it in Matthew’s Gospel, the tenth chapter, and Matthew’s Gospel, the 19th chapter, we see it in Luke’s Gospel the tenth chapter, and in Luke’s Gospel the 18th chapter. It is a question asked again and again. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Perhaps in your heart and in your mind you have asked that question. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The religions of the world give one answer, but Jesus Christ gives a completely different answer. There is the answer given by the religions of the world and a then a completely different answer given by Jesus.
Let’s briefly look at what the religions of the world say. First—a very brief glimpse at Islam. The word Islam is an Arabic word which means submission. In the world of Islam, if you would receive eternal life, if you would inherit eternal life, you must submit and you must obey. You must submit to Islamic law. You must obey Sharia law. Sharia law is extracted from the Surahs of the sacred writings of the Islamic people. In Islam, you must, from the Quran, extract the law. In combination with the Quran, you look at the Sunnah and the written form of the Sunnah, which is the Hadith. From the Hadith and from the Quran, you extract the Islamic law, Sharia law, and you submit to that and you obey that for the sake of salvation.
The Hadith and the Sunnah have to do with the actions and the teachings of Muhammad. Those teachings are precious to the Muslims. There are 1,300,000,000 Muslims in the world, some of them are devout and passionate. Some of them are nominal, but all of them are precious to God. All of the Muslim people are precious to God. They are seeking to find everlasting life through submission and obedience to the law, to the Quran, to the Sunnah, and to the Hadith. They obey the five pillars of Islam.
The first pillar is shahada. They make their great confession that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. Because they submit, because they obey, they say this every day. They say it in their hearts, they say it in their minds, they say it to their family members, they say it to their friends, and they say it to everyone. There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet. Shahada.
The second pillar is salat. Salat is ritualistic prayer. The Muslim people kneel down; they fall prostrate on the ground five times a day in the Muslim world at the sound of the crier from the minaret. They face Saudi Arabia, they face Mecca, forehead to the ground, and they say their prayers. Salat.
There is zakat, the third pillar of Islam. Zakat has to do with the giving of your money. This is part of submission, and this is part of obedience. You give two percent, not of your income, but two percent of your net worth every year. Two percent of your net worth you are to give to the mosque and to the cause of Islam. If you are really faithful you will go beyond zakat to sadaqah and give the extra gift, the extra sacrificial offering in order that you might inherit eternal life.
The fourth pillar is sawm. Sawm has to do with fasting in the month of Ramadan. It is the Muslim fast every day of the month of Ramadan. It is a daylight fast. From when the sun comes up to when the sun goes down, you do not eat anything in order that you might be submissive and obedient to Islamic law.
The fifth pillar is Haji. You make your pilgrimage to Mecca if you are able bodied. You circle the Kaaba. You look at the black stone that allegedly fell from heaven. In years past, you kissed it but it has been damaged through the decades and centuries by so much kissing.
These are the pillars of Islam. At the end of your life there is the final judgment. There are two angels. One angel, according to Islamic teaching, has recorded all of your good behavior. The other angel has recorded all of your bad behavior. You just hope that your good behavior outweighs your bad behavior so that you might have merited, so that you might have earned eternal life. Along the way, you try to enhance your chances through jihad. I, for some Muslims, is the spiritual quest for righteousness and the conquest of sin. For other more radical Muslims, jihad is a militant effort to destroy the enemies, the infidels, the enemies of Islam. The basic message of Islam, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” is you must submit to the law, Sharia law. You must work your way to salvation. We see this message throughout the religions of the world.
If you look at Buddhism and you look at Hinduism, salvation comes through samsara, it comes from the never-ending cycle of life-death-rebirth, life-death-rebirth. It has to do with the law of karma. You are saved by your compliance with the law of karma. You try to increase your good karma and decrease your bad karma. It takes many, many, many, maybe countless lifetimes to get rid of the bad karma.
This is true in Buddhism and this is true in Hinduism. In Buddhism you strive to be good. You read the Tripitika, you read the three baskets—the basket of higher dharma, the basket of instruction, the basket of discipline. You seek to obey the five precepts. “Thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal, thou shall not commit adultery. Thou shall not lie. Thou shall not take any addictive or intoxicating substance.” These are the five precepts of Buddhism. You seek to be faithful. You seek to obey as Buddha taught his people.
Thou shall not kill has vast scope in Buddhism. It means you are not to kill the fly on your window; you are not to kill the spider in your basement because of samsara and reincarnation and because of the transmigration of souls. You don’t want to take the chance that you are killing a loved one. All of this is part of “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
In Hinduism, you read the Vedas, you read the Mahabharata, and particularly within the Mahabharata you read the Bhagavad Gita. You read about Krishna. You read about Arjuna. You strive to be faithful. You long for oneness with the one. The one is Brahman, he is manifested as Brahma, he is manifested as Vishnu, he is manifested as Shiva. Vishnu is manifested as Rama, manifested as Krishna. There are countless gods, countless emanations from Brahman. You pick your god, but you try to be faithful so eventually you can break free from this tragic cycle of samsara, life-death-rebirth, and life-death-rebirth.
In Hinduism, between each cycle of samsara there is heaven and hell. They are temporal. They are remedial. There are seven heavens and seven underworlds. Within the seven underworlds there are millions of hells. In some branches of Hinduism there are 8,400,000 hells. Some people are force-fed excrement; some people are picked away by birds all the days of their life. It has to do with sin, it has to do with an effort to get rid of bad karma, it has to do with the desire to break free of samsara, and then your soul, your atman, comes back into another cycle of samsara. It goes on and on and on, in order that you might inherit eternal life. It is the law of karma through which you long to find salvation. There are 800 million Hindus on the earth and 400 million Buddhists on the earth. They are precious to God. He loves them all: 1,200,000,000 Hindus and Buddhists and God loves them.
There is Judaism. Most of the Jews, throughout the history of the world, have sought salvation through Torah. Torah is a Hebrew word which means law; it means instruction. The law of Torah includes the Decalogue, or the Ten Commandments. It includes the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It includes the whole of what we call the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi; it is all a part of Torah.
Jewish people seeking eternal life have tried to obey Torah. They have tried to obey the Levitical dietary laws. Even today, Orthodox Jews seek to obey the Levitical dietary laws. In the time of Christ, they all lived in accordance to the ceremonial law. They followed the laws of purifications and ablutions, the ceremonial washings. They followed not only the moral law, but they followed the sacrificial law. They brought the appropriate sacrifice or offering for the appropriate need. They relied on the priesthood, and particularly the high priest, who on Yom Kippur went into the Holy of Holies of the Temple, and before that the Tabernacle, offering the blood of animals on the mercy seat seeking to atone for the sins of the people. It is salvation through the law of Torah.
Islam you have salvation through the Islamic law, the Sharia law; in Hinduism and Buddhism the law of karma, the law of samsara; and in Judaism the law of Torah. It is all salvation by the law. The religions of the world basically teach this. If you are going to get to heaven, you have to earn it. You have got to work your way there. This Easter morning, Jesus has a completely different message. His message is: we are saved only by grace. We are saved only by his grace.
The word grace is the Greek word “charis,” and it means unmerited favor, it means a free gift. Our church, Cherry Hills Community Church, is located on Grace Boulevard. We were given the privilege of naming our street, so we called it Grace Boulevard. It is not Law Boulevard; it is not Works Boulevard. We certainly believe in the divine law, and we believe in good works, but we are saved by grace. We pitch our tent on Grace Boulevard and we invite you to join us.
To help you understand grace I was thinking, “What could I share with you that gives you any kind of a picture of what the grace of Jesus is like and how it saves us?” I was thinking of my driving, which my wife Barb tells me is sometimes tragic. I have driven my car for 50 years. I am 66 years old, and I have been driving since I was sixteen. Fifty years of driving a car. In the course of those 50 years, I have had about 10 tickets, which amounts to one every five years. I will admit I have deserved a whole lot more. I have probably… technically, by the letter of the law, I might deserve ten tickets a day. I have had ten tickets in the course of my 50 years.
I know many of you have had tickets and you have been pulled over by policeman, by cops. Have you ever had a cop take your ticket and tear it up? Have you ever had a cop do that? I had that happen to me one time. One time, 37 years ago, the cop took my ticket and tore it up. Some of you know the story. I was driving in Cherry Creek and I saw the red lights blinking behind me. The police officer pulled me over and came up to my window. He said, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” I hate when they ask that. I honestly didn’t know why. He said, “You didn’t stop at that stop sign back there. You did a kind of gradual slow down, but you didn’t stop.” I had no reason to doubt him. My assumption was that he was absolutely right. He said, “I am going to have to write you a ticket.”
He said, “Let me see your license.” I pulled out my wallet and I showed him my license and he said, “This is a California license, are you visiting?” I said, “No, I live here now.” He said, “How long have you lived here?” I said, “two years.” He said, “You need to have a Colorado license. You are driving without a valid license. I am going to have to write you up for that.” He went back to his car, wrote up my ticket, came back to my window, and he had the ticket in his hand. He said to me, “What do you do?” I have rarely been asked that question by a cop. He said, “What do you do?” I said, “I am a pastor.” He said, “Do you mean like a minister of a church?” I said, “I am a pastor at a Presbyterian church.”
I saw him pause. I saw him smile. Then I saw him just take my ticket and tear it in two. He said “Listen, if you are Presbyterian pastor, you have got enough trouble.” I don’t know whether he was a Baptist. I don’t know what was going on there, but he tore my ticket up. That is grace. You understand when you come to Christ, when you accept Christ as your savior and Lord, it is all grace. He tears up your tickets, past, present, future. They are all torn up. You are saved by grace. You are washed whiter than snow. Your sin is forgiven you. Here is what the gospel tells us: the gospel tells us that Jesus actually fulfilled the divine law. He fulfilled the divine law, he obeyed it perfectly, and when we accept him as our savior, he clothes us in his righteousness. He covers us with his holiness. His righteousness is imputed to us, vested upon us. That is the gospel. Our sin is forgiven us by the cross, by his shed blood. When we come to him, and we repent and believe, it is all grace. We are saved by grace.
Maybe you are sitting there this Easter morning and you have been trying to earn your way. Maybe you have been trying to earn your way into heaven. Maybe you are just trying to be good enough. I think it pleases God when we try to be good people. Understand that we are never good enough for heaven because God alone is righteous. We are sinners in need of grace. Salvation comes by grace through faith. By grace you are saved, through faith, it is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. We invite you this Easter morning to inherit eternal life by grace alone. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.