One of the great things that I've experienced about Ealing already, even just being here a week, is that I've noticed in my brief time that it's made up of so many different people from so many different parts of the world.
And all of these individuals, many of whom are your friends and your family, maybe just your neighbours, they make up lots of different views about who God is, if there is a God, and what he's like.
Whether Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, whether spiritual, we've all got friends like that, whether atheist or just apathetic.
We all have a view of God, but the question is, how do you know who's right?
With all of these different views, how do you know who's right?
As Christians, what makes us so certain that while other views claim to be right, that it's only Christianity that is right when it comes to the truth about who God is?
So the question we're going to be engaging with from this text in 1 John is why the incarnation means that only Christianity can be true.
By incarnation, what we mean is the idea that God, the God of the universe, became flesh.
That God became man in the person of Jesus, which is what John is getting at in our text when he says, verse 2, that the life was made manifest in a way that was able to be seen, touched, heard.
Now this is an idea we're going to come back to again and again.
Now even as I say, only Christianity can be true.
There's a weird atmosphere, isn't there?
I sense a few feathers being ruffled because engaging with the issue of other religions is always tricky.
We feel like we're stepping on other people's toes and we don't want to make people feel uncomfortable or unnecessarily cause offence.
Do you know what we do in response to not wanting to unnecessarily cause offence?
I think it's actually far worse.
What we do is we flatten out all religion.
We flatten out all spirituality.
And pretend that there isn't any differences between any of them.
We make Allah the same as Brahman.
We make Nirvana the same as heaven.
And we make all practices of different religions essentially the same.
You must have heard this.
Whether it's in coffee shops or around.
People who say, well, essentially they're all the same.
It's just different religions emphasize different aspects of God.
And that brings us to our first heading.
The first thing we're going to look at.
Aren't all religions essentially the same?
Generally people collapse these different views of God into saying that no one really knows.
So we're all right.
There's a well-known parable about six blind men and an elephant that illustrates this really well.
Those unfamiliar with the story, here it goes.
The six blind men, they encounter an elephant.
Although in the story no one really knows how they know it's an elephant.
But the first blind man, he touches the trunk of the elephant and says,
do you know what, an elephant is like a palm tree.
Another blind man touches its big side and says, well, an elephant's like a rough wall.
Another feels its tail and another one feels, you know, says it's like rope.
And a tusk says, well, it's more like a sphere.
Each comes in contact with a different part of the elephant.
And it's convinced that their own explanation is correct.
That all the others are wrong.
The thing is, none of them realize that they're all experiencing just one part of the same elephant.
And that none of the explanations are really complete.
And in the same way, it's argued that different religions are just experiencing different parts of one God.
But fail to realize that each is just part of the complete truth.
Do you think that?
Let's sat here this morning.
Do you think that?
That all religions are just different aspects of one God?
Well, maybe you don't, but maybe people around you do.
But the problem with that interpretation of this parable offers,
it's best phrased with a question.
How does the interpreter know that every religion is just part of the overall idea of God?
How does the one telling the story know that it's an elephant?
In order to know this, one would have to be able to see God,
or in the story, see the elephant in all his fullness,
to understand how each of the religions reflect just part of the complete picture.
You see, people who claim that they can dismiss the distinctive claims of Christianity
by saying they're all the same,
that's a really arrogant claim.
It claims to sit above God,
and everyone else,
and be able to be the one who can adjudicate who's right and who's wrong.
But we know that that's not right, is it?
Who has seen everything,
and who has seen God himself,
in order to say who's right and who's wrong?
The answer is no one.
No one has the right to say that all religions are the same,
because it dismisses the blatant contradictions between different religions,
but also puts the one who's making that claim
in a position they could never occupy,
above everything.
So if we're not all right,
how do we know which view of God is?
And that brings us to our second section.
We can't say that all religions are the same,
so how do we know who's right?
If all religions are not the same,
how can we know who's right?
It doesn't feel, often,
in the marketplace of different religions,
we're just fumbling around in the dark,
trying to make the best of a bad situation.
This bit seems a bit right,
and this bit seems a bit right.
Because we're kind of trapped in this world,
and we can't get outside the world to find out who's out there.
We're trapped by the laws of physics and chemistry and biology
and all the other constraints on mankind.
We can't get outside of ourselves to see in.
In order to grasp our situation,
as we fumble around to make different claims about God,
I'm going to use another illustration,
so park your elephant and your six blind men over here,
and come with me,
and I want you to imagine for a moment,
that sat in this room,
everything goes black.
just momentarily,
but when the light returns,
you find that you've got no memory
of how you got into this room,
and no memory of what's outside.
And as you look around the room,
you see that the windows are all blocked,
and the doors are locked.
There's no way in,
and there's no way out.
The question is,
how would you know
if there was anything or anyone outside the room?
How would you know?
You have no memory or knowledge
of anything outside the room.
So we'd do our best
with what we could from inside the room
to figure it out.
We'd have those that claim
there is nothing outside the room.
We'd have those who imagine
fantastical things outside the room.
You'd have the poets among us
start writing great odes
about the arrangement of the chairs
and the green blinds at the back.
You'd have the geography lovers
measuring the distance of the room
and undulations in this wooden floor.
You'd have the physicists among us
dropping chairs
to make sure that gravity was here.
You'd have the philosophers
contemplating what was outside the room
and the sociologists among us
just monitoring the groupings
of how we're arranged.
But ultimately,
left to our own devices,
we could explore this locked room
but we could never know
if there was anyone
or anything outside the room.
That's like us in this world, isn't it?
We can explore this world,
we can contemplate this world,
but we could never know
if there was anyone outside this world.
But it doesn't stop us, does it?
You have people saying
that science has got rid of God,
but how could it
when it can't test
what's outside the world
and it can't test
what it can't comprehend?
And you have all sorts of religions
and spiritualities
claiming they have the truth about God
or how we should live,
but how can they
when they're locked in the room,
when they're trapped in this world?
We cannot know
unless,
unless someone
came from outside the room
and came into the room.
And that's what our passage today is.
It's taken us a while to get there,
but our passage today
tells us
that someone from outside the room,
outside of this world,
stepped in.
In a way
that could be seen,
could be heard,
could be touched.
To tell us
about the outside,
that's exactly
what the incarnation is about.
The incarnation,
the coming of Jesus,
means that we're not
blindly groping around
in the dark
trying to figure out
some conception of God,
but God has come to us
to make himself known.
He has made himself manifest.
Listen to how
John 1 puts it
in verse 18.
No one
has ever seen God.
The only God
who is at the Father's side,
He has made him known.
Or,
to use the Adam Wilson paraphrase,
no one has ever been
outside the room
or been face to face
with God
to know what He's like.
But,
the one and only
Son of God
who is God,
has made himself
known to us.
He has come into the room
so that we are
without question
of what God is like.
2,000 years ago,
in history,
in a way that could be
seen,
heard,
touched,
God came into the world.
The world that He had made
in order to reveal Himself
to those He had made.
Knowing we could never find Him
fumbling around in the room,
He came to us.
Do you know what?
The incarnation is
God's personal introduction
to the world He's made.
The great writer,
C.S. Lewis,
he gave this great illustration,
thinking of it like Hamlet
bumbling around
inside one of Shakespeare's plays,
trying to find Shakespeare.
But how could Hamlet
ever know Shakespeare,
although the world
that he was in
would have the strokes
of Shakespeare's pen
surrounding him?
He could never come
face to face with Shakespeare
unless Shakespeare
wrote himself
into the play.
And that's what
the incarnation is.
The God
whose fingerprints
are on every aspect
of this world
wrote Himself
into the script
of history
that we might know
what He's like.
In each of the four Gospels,
the Bible,
in the Bible,
we're given eyewitness accounts
to the life of Jesus.
Accounts of when God
stepped into the room
when God wrote Himself
into history.
history.
And if you're familiar
at all
with the Gospels,
then you'll know
that John,
who wrote the passage
that we read earlier,
and the rest of his followers,
they were with Him
at every turn.
You know,
the followers of Jesus,
they ate with Him,
they prayed with Him,
they walked down dirt roads
with Him
in the hot sunshine.
They saw Him
do the miraculous,
miraculous,
and they saw Him
do the very ordinary.
The followers of Jesus
were witness to His life,
His death,
and even His resurrection.
They were there
every step of the way,
watching,
hearing,
touching.
This man,
who was also God,
and they wrote it
all down.
They wrote it
all down
for people like you
and me
to know the truth
about what God
is like.
They left no ambiguity.
Thousands and thousands
witnessed,
marveled at His miracles
as He healed the sick
and cared for the weak.
They were astonished
at the teaching
about the rebellion
of mankind,
but the grace
and forgiveness
that God gives
to all those
who return to Him.
A teaching which
they'd never heard
the likeness of before.
They believed
and followed Him,
having seen Him
physically raised
from the dead,
proving all of His claims
about everlasting life
and life outside the room
were true.
Do you know what?
God coming into His creation
in the person of Jesus
means that He has
the final word
on what God is like.
Do you know what?
Every other religion
that challenges Jesus
is false.
But the good news is
that Jesus,
in Him,
when we come face
to face with God,
we come face to face
with a God
that no human imagination
could ever have come up with.
A God who is
infinitely powerful
yet cares for the people
He's made.
A God holy
and just
and yet makes a way
for sinful people
who deserve justice
to be forgiven.
a God that is
good.
All religions
that imagine,
sorry,
all other religions
imagine a God
that is trivial
in comparison
to the God of the Bible.
To the beauty
of the true God
revealed in Jesus.
And perhaps
what's most remarkable
is that He came
so that people
like you and me
could know
this great God
personally.
And that brings us
to our closing
point.
So why does
all this matter?
You know,
if God has
personally introduced
Himself
so there is no
ambiguity anymore
about what God
is like,
that expels
all false religion,
man-made religion
just imagining
what God is like,
what are we to do?
we start by asking
the question
why the incarnation
means that only
Christianity is true
but I hope you can see
that the answer
is simple.
That if
Jesus really is
who He says He is,
if God has really
come into His creation
in order to make it
beyond doubt
about who He is
and what He's like,
then it means
any other view
can't be true.
But more than that,
look at those
three of our passage.
That
which we have
seen
and heard
we proclaim
also to you.
Why?
This is the so what?
This is the
wake up and listen
point.
Why have we gone
and done all of
this work?
Why have we
said, you know,
this is who Jesus is?
Why has He gone
to great pains
to write this letter?
So why has the
whole Bible
been recorded?
Well, this message
about God
incarnate
is so that you
too may have
fellowship with us
and indeed
our fellowship
is with,
here we go,
with the Father
and with His Son
Jesus Christ.
So what John
wants us,
as well as his
original readers,
to know that
God in the flesh
has come
so that we
can know God.
Now,
there's a whole
host of things
we need to talk
about because
Jesus makes a lot
of claims about
who we are
in His world
and how we've
rebelled against Him
and the consequences
for that.
But the coming
of God in the
person of Jesus
is good news.
And we're going
to unpack that
more because
Him coming
is the way
that it makes
it possible
for us to
have fellowship
with Him,
to know God,
to be friends
with God.
And we're going
to think about
the life,
death and
resurrection
of Jesus
in a lot
more detail
next time.
So for now,
if you're a
Christian,
maybe new to
Christianity,
and you've never
read these
eyewitness accounts
of Jesus,
I really want
to encourage you
to do so.
We've got some
copies of John's
Gospel at the
back.
In those pages,
you will come
face to face
with the God
who made you.
And for those
of you who are
not Christians,
but are kind of
interested in
thinking about it,
and maybe this
talk has sparks
for questions for
you,
I really want to
encourage you to
come and ask
them.
I remember
that moment
when I had
lots of questions
about who
Jesus was,
and why he
came.
And if I
hadn't asked
them, I
wouldn't be
stood here.
But I also
want to encourage
you to come
next time.
We're going to
be thinking
about the
significance,
why he had
to come bodily
and physically,
and not just
spiritually and
abstractly.
And I want to
assure you,
there's even
better news
than that.
Let me just
pray.