Show Me the Way
People have asked me why I do what I do. Why am I a church
planter? Why am I a pastor? Why do I direct an afterschool program? Why do I
hold community events? Why do I help people that have physical, emotional,
mental, and spiritual needs? The answer is always the same: because people are
calling out for help, begging for someone to show them the way.
In 1989 Nintendo began selling the Gameboy, the World Wide
Web was invented, and the first GPS satellite was launched.
People mostly remember 1989 because it was the year that
race riots occurred in Miami, the Exxon Valdez spilled its cargo of oil in Alaska’s
Prince Williams Sound, the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, the Menendez
brothers shot their parents, and the San Francisco earthquake took place during
the World Series. It was a rough year.
It was also the year that televangelist John Nunes was found
guilty of embezzling $158 million and televangelist Jim Bakker was convicted of
fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to 45 years in prison. The Catholic Church
was caught trying to cover up sexual abuses by their priests. The 80s was also
the era of the Religious Right as they entered into the dirty business of
politics. Men such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell become the rights version
of Pastors Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
In 1990, Dennis DeYoung, lead singer and keyboardist for the
group Styx, wrote this song.
Dennis DeYoung and billions of others are looking for
someone to show them the way. But most are looking in the wrong places. They
read New York Times bestselling books, they look to politicians, they follow
celebrities, they listen to the glitzy and glamorous superstar preachers on
television. And they walk away disillusioned.
They talk to everyday people that claim to be Christians and
yet hear and see how they display hate towards others because of their skin
color or political position or religious beliefs or nationality. And they walk
away confused.
Who can show them the way? Where do they go to find the way?
The Book that Shows
the Way
There is only one book that can be trusted implicitly to
show us the way: God’s Holy Word, known as the Bible. There are many other
books that claim to show the way, but they often fall short of the truth in
some way. So why can we trust the Bible to show us the way?
16 All
Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking,
for correcting, for training in righteousness, 17 so
that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy
3:16-17, HCSB)
Often people point to the fact that men wrote the books of
the Bible. Those men could have made mistakes. In this passage, Paul is
reminding Timothy that God has inspired all scripture, so therefore it can be
trusted.
20 Knowing this first of
all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. 21
For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as
they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:20-21, ESV)
I’ve shared before that prophecy can mean one of two things:
a message directly from God for a prophet to share with others or a message
about God that a prophet (or pastor) shares with others. Here Peter is saying
that all prophecies are from God and shared by men as they were carried on (or
inspired) by the Holy Spirit.
The Bible can always be trusted to be true. However, we must
be wise enough to discern the truth of God’s Word based on the cultural
context, historical perspective, and even the social context for which it was
written.
The One that is The
Way
While others are looking for someone to show them the way,
it is important to recognize that there is only one way. That way is a person
and that person is Jesus.
6 Jesus told
him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through Me. (John 14:6, HCSB)
Jesus claimed that He is the way and that nobody can find
their way to God, nobody can hope to get to heaven, nobody can receive new
life, except through Him. That is not a claim that anyone else can make.
In fact, many have trouble believing this about Jesus. For
Jesus to make this claim he was either confident in the truth behind the claim
or He was a nutcase. To make this claim He had to have some method of knowing
that He was right. This claim is one of the reasons that the devout religious
Jews wanted to kill Jesus. He was claiming that He was the gatekeeper to God,
He was the High Priest, He was Messiah.
Jesus never swayed from this statement that He is the one
and only way to God. He made this statement before He entered the city of
Jerusalem to a crowd that was celebrating Him. He was told by the leaders to
quiet the crowd that was shouting Hosanna and calling Him the King of Israel.
Jesus responded that if the people stop, then the rocks and stones would cry
out proclaiming who He is.
When Jesus was arrested He had numerous times He could have
refuted His claim to be the Way. He was beaten with a whip that ripped his
flesh off, yet He did not recant. He was punched in the face and beat with a
stick, spit on, and his beard was ripped out by hands, yet He did not recant.
He had a crown of thorns pushed down on His head, yet He did not recant. He had
nails hammered into His wrists and ankles, yet He did not recant. He was hung
on a cross and spent hours struggling to breathe, yet He did not recant.
These are not the actions of a man who is making something
up. The amount of physical abuse and torture that He endured would have been
enough to break anyone. If Jesus was not confident that He really is the Way,
then He must have been a madman. I believe that He is the Way.
The People of the Way
The claim that Jesus made that He is the Way was of such
renown to all people at that time that those who were followers of Jesus were
first known as the people of the way. Not only did Jesus make the claim that He
was the way, but His followers also claimed that He was the way.
Today, anyone that says, “Show me the way,” only needs to
read the Bible (the book that shows the Way) to read about Jesus (the One that
is the Way). That is one of the hopes of the ministry of the Gideons. If we can
just get people to read the Bible, they will find the way. That is what
happened to Matt Kasap, one of the elders at South County Community Church.
Matt was born in Turkey. His family were Muslims. When Matt
moved to the United States, he encountered Christians (people of the Way).
Specifically one man that both intrigued Matt, but also gave him a bad image of
Christians. One day Matt decided to buy a Bible and start reading it. He
struggled through Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and by the time he hit Numbers
he was frustrated. But he kept reading every night after work. When he reached
the New Testament, he started to see the Way. Because of reading the Bible he
came to believe in Jesus.
There are numerous stories of people picking up a Bible in
their hotel or hospital room and learning about Jesus. There are numerous
stories of people reading the free Bible handed to them in the military or at
school and coming to believe in Jesus. But those numbers aren’t enough to reach
a lost world for Jesus.
People who know the way need to tell those that are
searching for the way. That is why I do what I do. That is why all followers of
Jesus are called to do the same. Tell others about all that we have seen and
heard about Jesus. All that we have experienced of God.
Do you need someone to show you the way?
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