The following sermon was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on May 4, 1986. The title is The Proof of the Pudding, and the scripture reference is John 8, verses 31-47. 

It doesn't really matter what you believe so long as you're sincere. Jesus is my way, but there are lots of ways to God. Who am I to presume to tell somebody else that they've got to do it my way?

All religions are basically the same. There are cultural, historical differences, but we're all trying to find God, each in his or her own way. I don't believe a good God would send anybody to hell.

Do you? What about the sincere Buddhist? Or the sincere Jew?

Or the little pygmy out in the bush who's never even heard of Jesus? Surely a good God wouldn't condemn people for things they've never even heard. Those kinds of questions are raised by both passages that we've heard read this morning.

By Paul's interchange with the Lystrians, who had their own set of beliefs. They believed in Zeus and Hermes and the pantheon of Roman and Greek deities. by Jesus Himself in His interchange with the Jews.

Just think of the harshness of that language. You are of your father the devil. You claim to believe in God.

You claim to be descended from Abraham. You claim to be followers of the covenant that God has made with His people Israel. And I tell you, you are of your father the devil.

That's a strong interchange, isn't it? Same kind of questions are raised when Billy Graham comes to town and begins telling people that they've got to repent, they've got to change, they've got to be converted, they've got to be born again. Who is he to say so?

Same questions are implicit in what we've just sung. Jesus is the one who saves. Well, I want to just look for a moment at the end of that passage in the book of Acts where Paul summed up to the Lystrians in Acts chapter 14.

I think that's on page 961 if you want to follow along in the Bibles in the pews there. It's an extraordinary story. There's this marvelous healing.

A man crippled from birth is miraculously healed. And just stop and think of what that would involve. That's not only giving him the ability to walk, but it's suddenly miraculously healing his inner ear, giving him a sense of balance which he's never had all his life.

It's freeing up calcified joints and atrophied muscles, and he's miraculously restored in a moment. And the people are so astonished at this that they want to fall down and worship Paul and Barnabas. They think that their gods have come down in human form.

And Paul is horrified. You mustn't do that! Stop!

We're just ordinary human beings, men like you. But we have come to tell you that God has indeed come down in human form. We want to tell you about one named Jesus.

Look at verse 15. Acts chapter 14, verse 15. Men, why are you doing this?

We also are men of like nature with you and bring you good news that you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them. In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways, yet he did not leave himself without witness. For he did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.

Four things I want to just focus in on very quickly this morning. This may be very familiar to you. It may be something that we really need to think through.

But this is a message that runs all the way through Scripture, and I think sooner or later we've got to come to grips with it, not only for ourselves, but in our desire to share Jesus with friends, family, neighbors, others around us. The first is that God has not left Himself without a witness. God has been bearing witness to Himself everywhere at all times.

God has been expressing something of who He is to all men everywhere. So the question that is so often posed, what about those who have never heard, is really a false question. It's a red herring.

there is no one who has never heard. Now obviously, some have heard much more than others. But there is no one who hasn't received something of God's own witness to Himself.

Paul says, He's given you rains and good seasons and fruitful harvest. He's given you of the creation itself. And the very word creation suggests Creator.

David said the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaims His handiwork. The creation itself is bearing witness to the Creator. You can't look at that universe out there and not have it remind you that someone brought that into being.

Now that doesn't tell you very much about God. But it tells you something about Him and what it tells you is true so far as it goes. He's given to everyone a conscience.

And our consciences speak to us that there is good and evil in the world. That doesn't tell you very much about God, but it tells you something. It tells you that God is a holy God, that He's a righteous God, that He likes good and He hates evil and He wants us to follow Him.

It's bearing witness to God. And if you respond to the witness of creation and the witness of conscience and you live up to the highest you know, then you are following God in so far as He has revealed Himself to you. And if you turn from that, of course you're not.

God has not left Himself without a witness. That's number one. There is no one who has ever lived who doesn't know inherently something about God.

Enough to begin to respond to Him. enough to begin to respond in faith and seek after more. Of course, our consciences can be seared.

That's Paul's language to Timothy. It reminds me of if you stick your hand in a fire, it hurts. If you leave it there, it'll stop hurting.

Because the nerve endings are destroyed. And if you do enough damage, you will stop hurting. Your conscience can be desensitized.

It can be burned. can be seared so that it is not a good witness to the reality of good and evil. But we have those witnesses built in.

And it's interesting, sociology, anthropology, the study of cultures has shown us thus far that there has never been a people anywhere on the face of the earth that didn't have an inherent belief in God. And the interesting thing that's happened in our own, in this century, and in really this generation is that we've demonstrated conclusively that the earliest form of belief everywhere on the face of the earth in all of history is belief in one God, a high creator God, from whom people have turned away to other things. It's not as if we work through a process of religious evolution coming from animism to polytheism to magic and finally up to monotheism, the worship of one true God.

In fact, it's exactly the opposite way. We started with the knowledge of one true God and fell away from that into all kinds of superstition and nonsense. God has not left Himself without a witness anywhere at any time.

But secondly, as I've already begun to suggest, in spite of that witness man left to himself will inevitably draw the wrong conclusions. He'll turn away from that. He'll distort it.

He'll begin to project vain imaginings of his own. The book of Romans put it this way. Listen closely.

What can be known about God what can be known about God is plain to all men. because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world, His invisible nature, namely His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.

But, although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him. But they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened, claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. The history of religion is not an evolution upward to the knowledge of the one true God.

It is a devolution downward of falling away from the truth of God into animism, superstition, polytheism, the worship of many gods. Emerson said the half-gods go when God arrives. And the opposite is equally true.

When you turn away from the one true God, you fall into all manner of nonsense and the worship of half-gods. Scripture says God created man in His own image, and ever since then we've been returning the compliment. create gods of our own imagining man left to his own will inevitably fall away from the truth of god and so the third thing is praise god he didn't leave us on our own but throughout all of history he's been giving us more and more light on the subject more and more truth about himself an ever clearer witness to who he is.

Now I want you to follow this. It's as if this sheet of paper were in the sunlight, but not very brightly. It's a cloudy sky or perhaps it's twilight.

There's just a little bit of light on the subject. There's not much there. I can't see it very clearly.

What I can see, I follow up to my highest ability. But my highest ability isn't all that great. So what does God do?

He sheds more light on the subject. He gives me a brighter picture. Do you follow what I'm saying?

As I begin to respond to a brighter picture, to more light, to more truth, to a clearer witness about God, I don't have to leave behind that which has been true of Him in my previous understanding. I build upon it. I clarify it.

I leave behind the error. but I build upon the truth. Do you see what I'm saying?

If I already knew that there is a Creator God, the creation itself brought me to that realization, I don't have to leave that behind when I hear more of God. I build on that. God gives more light on the subject.

You might picture it. I said some years ago that it's sort of like a big bullseye. Everybody has the witness of creation.

That doesn't tell us too much, but it tells us something. Then there's a circle inside of that. The witness of our conscience makes it a little bit clearer.

It's not just a Creator God, but it's a holy Creator God that we have to deal with. But He doesn't leave us there. He sends more light on the subject by making covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob, by revealing Himself through generations of holy history, down through the nation of Israel in particular, and more light on the subject.

The picture is getting clearer. It's getting clearer. As history unfolds, it gets clearer and clearer as God demonstrates His faithfulness, as He exhibits His character to us.

Then the prophets begin to speak that a day will come when God is going to visit us in person. And now we have much more light on the subject. You don't have to leave behind what you've previously seen, but it's becoming clearer.

Until finally, that one, prophesied for centuries, emerges and says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. God has not left us without a witness. But beyond the general witness of creation, there's the special witness of revelation, which culminates in the person of Jesus.

Change the image slightly. Instead of a bullseye, picture in my hand a magnifying glass. and I'm capturing the rays of the sun, you know what happens as it begins to come into focus.

A bright light appears in the middle of the page, but it's sort of fuzzy around the edges. Right? You've done this.

And as you draw it still closer, it sharpens. The picture becomes clearer and clearer until it comes into perfect focus. And if you've ever done this, you know that what you see at the moment of perfect focus is an exact replica of the sun, and then it bursts into flame.

I think that's a pretty good picture. God is bringing the general revelation of Himself into focus. Into focus it's becoming ever clearer.

When it comes into perfect focus, what we see in the Lord Jesus is the exact representation of the Father Himself, and it bursts into flame. praise God he didn't leave us to our own devices and so I'd make this fourth point to you and this is the real grabber the one that you really have to wrestle with is that the proof of the pudding of whether or not a man or a woman really is responding as fully as he or she knows to the highest that they know about God the proof of the pudding will be what happens when they hear more? What happens when they see more?

What happens when the witness is brought perfectly into focus? That's the issue that Jesus pressed with the Jews. He said, you claim to be following God.

You claim to be descendants of Abraham. But I tell you, I'm the one that Abraham saw. Abraham rejoiced to see My day.

Moses prophesied of Me. I don't need to condemn you with My words. Moses' words condemn you.

If you were really believing what Moses said, you'd immediately recognize who I am. Because I and the Father are one. And if you're rejecting Me, then what does that say about your faith in God?

Do you see it? How we respond to Jesus Himself is the measure of the reality or falsehood of what we claimed was our faith in God. God didn't send Jesus to make it harder for people to respond to Himself.

Here the Jews were doing just fine. They had all these centuries of revelation and holy history. They had a relationship with God.

Who needs Jesus? Now we've got this additional barrier that we've got to somehow get beyond. We had it all very well.

No, no, no. God sent Jesus because they didn't have it well together. They thought they were following Him. They thought they believed in Him.

But in fact, they were off on vain imaginings. And so He sent the person of His Son in whom He was reflected totally, perfectly. And Jesus says, the fact that you reject Me demonstrates who your real Father is.

It's not God. It's not Abraham. You are of your father, the devil.

So I submit to you that it's an act of mercy that God has sent the Lord Jesus to make it easier for us to respond to Him. But if we reject Him, Where do you think you're going to find God? If you happened to catch the sports news this week, you might have noticed that in the Canadian hockey semifinals between Edmonton and Calgary, a young rookie named Smith shot his hockey puck right into his own goal and won the game for the opposite side.

That was a very sincere shot. we worship a God who has been reaching out to us in every generation everywhere there is no one in all of history who hasn't heard enough about God to begin to respond to him but he doesn't leave us there he gives us more light on the subject more ovations of love, more witness so that it's easier to respond. And in these latter days, He's come to us in the person of His own Son that we might see Him more clearly, love Him more dearly, and follow Him more nearly.

Let's bow our heads together. Father God thank You for loving me thank You that Jesus is not just my way but He's the way thank You that He's not just my life but He's the life thank You That He's not just my truth but He's the truth about You and I pray that you would give me clarity of understanding about that and boldness to share it with those around me for I ask it in his name Amen