From False God to True God — E.A. Johnston

A Wooden Jesus and a False God

A missionary shared the following story, he said you could stand on a cliff in Mexico and gaze down at a certain village of Mexican workers. These people work down in the riverbed in their corn patch and there they grow their corn and when the corn is ready to harvest they shuck it and after it dries out they'll take it and grind it into cornmeal and make tortillas and then take these tortillas down to the open market and there sell the tortillas for a few pesos and put them away.

Come back out to their house and there they will live off of lizards. They'll go out among the rocks and catch these huge long lizards and they'll eat those lizards and save that money for a special day.

A special day when they will start a pilgrimage up to the mountains. They will make their way to the top of one mountain where there is a wooden statue of Jesus Christ. The terrain to that statue is so bad that most of the people will have to crawl on their hands and knees a couple of miles.

By the time they get to that statue they are bleeding all over. Standing beside the statue is a priest and the priest is saying, Now you love God, give to Him because you show your love to God by giving.

And those people will reach into their little bags and purses and pull out those pesos stained in their own blood and drop that money into a slit in the top of the head of that wooden Jesus. Then the priest prays and when he is finished the priest will yell, You have not given enough.

Look, Jesus is sad. He is crying. And all the time there will be another priest hidden in that hollow statue and with a little hand pump he will pump water to where it comes out of human made tear ducts and that statue is crying.

And there those people will give all they have, crawl down that mountain and go back to eating lizards, growing their corn to make more tortillas, to get more pesos to go and give to a dead God that cannot move or hear.

And they are sincere, honest and sacrificial as they serve their wooden Jesus. Now I tell you that story friends because I say it with the hope it will awaken some of you to your condition. Because I submit to you there are many sitting in churches throughout this land as they serve a false God of their own making.

They have gotten out their pocket knives and have carved out for themselves a little God they can live with. A God who won't get in the way of their daily living. He is not the God of the Bible though.

Eternal Life Defined by Knowing the True God

The title of my message today friends is, From a False God to the True God. And my text can be found in the Gospel of John in chapter 17. You can turn in your Bibles there now friends. We will be in verses 1 through 3.

You better pay attention to this message friends because if you are serving a God of your own imagination or the God of your apostate denomination and not the God of the Bible then you do not have eternal life.

You better throw your wooden Jesus in the fire friend. If you don't you will burn up with him. Today I am going to describe what true salvation is and I will be honest with you. And as we say in the south I am going to give you the oil straight from the can.

I believe there are many sitting today in churches who don't have a clue what eternal life means. They either swallowed a false gospel that will only damn them or they had some kind of religious experience that the devil gave them and they mistook that for salvation.

I had a friend in church one time whose testimony of salvation was that he was out in the woods reading his Bible one day and an owl appeared to him and hooted. And this man thought that was such a rare event that it was God's way of telling him he was now saved.

Listen to me friends. If you don't get to Christ and know that only true God, no owl on earth will give a hoot when you drop into hell. We are going to examine what eternal life is and what it means as related by the Lord Jesus Christ as seen here in the 17th chapter of the gospel of John in verses 1 -3.

I am going to read us this striking passage of scripture at this time. Here now is the word of God and may the spirit of God attend the reading of his holy word and like a hammer break the rock in pieces and like a fire sear and singe the conscience with conviction.

Of the Holy Spirit that's my prayer friends. These words spake Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father the hour has come glorify thy son that thy son may also glorify thee as thou hast given him power over all flesh that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

Salvation Comes From God, Not Human Achievement

Let me pause here friends. We live in a time smack dab in the middle of the Laodicean church age where we have taken salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of men. You saved yourself today.

Jesus said it was God who gave eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. If you get saved friend it's because God gave you saving faith. And we live in a day of such sad spiritual declension in the church where many are in apostasy.

They are like the Jews in the days of the prophet Hosea where they were far away from God and God was removed from them and withdrawn from them. Yet they continued their religious duties. But they had gray hairs all over them and did not know it.

They were completely oblivious to their dead spiritual condition. Did you know friend that you can be religious and lost? Those Mexican workers were sincere. They were religious but they served a false God.

They were deceived. If you are sitting in a Baptist church and serving a false God and if you suddenly die you'll be cast into hell clutching that false idol of a God that is not the God of the Bible.

You better pay attention friend because you may have been fed a false gospel and you may be joined to your idols and you may be serving a false God and your only hope is to find eternal life in Christ Jesus.

Knowing God by Spiritual Experience

Well let's continue with our text in verse 3 where we have the description of what eternal life is. And this is eternal life that they might know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

Here from the holy lips of Christ Jesus comes a description of what it means to have eternal life of what it means to be saved. Number one, eternal life is to know the true God. Those Mexican workers and their wooden Jesus are a clear example friends of someone religious who does not know the true God, the true God of the Bible.

Rolf Barnard, the greatly used Baptist evangelist used to tell a story about when he was holding meetings in a church down south and he announced his subject for the next night a sermon entitled God Must Punish Sin and after his message the chairman of the deacons approached him and said he would not be back to hear him.

Rolf Barnard replied to the man he was sorry he couldn't come. The man said oh he could come alright but he wouldn't because his God would never send anybody to hell. And Rolf Barnard replied I reckon you're right your God wouldn't send anyone to hell but the God of the Bible would and that's our trouble today friends.

We have sat and listened for many years now to ministers who only speak of a God of love from their pulpits to a point where we don't believe in a God who would send anybody to hell but Jesus is the one who said God sends people to hell.

In Matthew 10 28 Christ declared and fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. So number one eternal life is to know the true God the God of the Bible.

The Difference Between Head Knowledge and Experiential Knowledge

Number two do you know him by experience? Oh friends here is where so many come close to eternal life but fall short at the end. They have a head knowledge of God but lack the heart knowledge. They lack an experiential knowledge of Christ.

It was R .G. Lee the famous pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church who shocked his convention audience one year by announcing that he believed only one out of ten of his members in that big Baptist church knew anything of an experiential knowledge of Christ.

If that was 50 years ago I wonder what the old boy would say if he came back now. And that's our problem friends we know about Jesus. We know that Jesus died on the cross for sins but we don't know Jesus.

What physical act we did years ago in maybe walking an aisle and repeating a prayer and making a decision did not result in eternal life. We missed Christ. Too many today mistake church membership for salvation.

But Jesus says that eternal life is to know the true God and to know him by experience. George Whitefield the great British evangelist was a member of John Wesley's Holy Club at Oxford and he dutifully served God in fastings and prayer and Bible reading and visiting the prisoners and widows and giving alms.

One day he read a book by the Scotsman Henry Schugle entitled The Life of God in the Soul of Man. And while reading that book George Whitefield realized he was religious but lost. True religion wasn't merely performance of religious works but rather one had to be truly born again by the spirit above and experience the life of God in the soul of man and it revolutionized his entire life or birthed his entire ministry.

God’s Holiness and the Danger of a Self-Made Deity

Whitefield preached on two continents and powerful revivals. The same message you must be born again. Eternal life friend is to know God and experience him. Number three. If your God is different from the one in the Bible then he's not the God of the Bible.

Allow me to explain. What is your God's attitude toward sin? Many false teachers today who have big platform ministries and who sell hundreds of thousands of their books say that God today is tolerant toward sin.

You can sin all you want to and God is okay with it. God has changed his attitude toward sin. But my Bible says that the true God is so holy he can't look on sin. And my Bible declares he will by no means clear the guilty.

If your God friend will let you rest with known sin in your life then you've gotten out your pocket knife and have carved out for yourself a God you can live with. Listen to me friend. If you can be content to indulge in any sin you are lost and do not possess eternal life.

And this is eternal life that they may know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. You better go friend from a false God to the true God. If you want eternal life you better know God.

Christ Alone Is the Way to Eternal Life

Jesus declares not everyone that saith unto me Lord Lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. But Lord Lord I did this for you and that for you and I was a deacon and a Sunday school teacher and I sang in the choir and gave my money freely to the church.

But he who has eyes of fire and knows the hearts of all men will reply and then I will profess unto them I never knew you. Depart from me ye that work iniquity. From a false God to the true God. Throw down your false God friend and get to the true God of the Bible the only one who gives eternal life.

You must get to Christ. Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Leave your false God friend and get to the true God before it's too late. Let us pray.