The One and Only True God

GOD GAVE US THE BIBLE SO WE CAN KNOW HE’S THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE GOD America welcomes people from all over the world – we don’t just welcome Christians. And in many ways, having people from every country makes America an amazing place! You can hear people speaking languages from anywhere! You hear all different types of music and get to eat all different types of food. America is a richer culture because of all these different people. I would imagine your neighborhood may have children from different backgrounds, or maybe you go to school with kids who may not speak English as their first language, or maybe you have friends or classmates who are from many different backgrounds. (Ask children) You probably know children who are Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu. Maybe some of these children have become your friends. I hope so. We can learn so much from people who are different from us! At AWANA we learn that one reason God gave us the bible was so we can know He is the one and only true God. Do you have friends who believe in another god – perhaps Allah or Buddah? . What do you do, then, when you learn that your friends don’t believe in Jesus? So how can Christians say that other gods are false gods, and there is only one God, and it is the one of the Bible? Who are we to say our God is the only God? Let’s try to help understand this important question by thinking about medicine. (bottles of medicine & candy) Have any of you every gotten very, very sick? What do your parents do when you don’t just have a cold, but you have a really high fever? (take me to the doctor) Why do they do that? (Because the doctor understands about being sick and can help). When you see the doctor, sometimes he or she will write a prescription on a blue pad. What is that for? (to get medicine to help me get better). Amoxicillin? Strong medicine to fight the infection and help you get better. Have you ever been to CVS or Rite Aid? When you look at the pharmacy, do they have just one bottle of medicine for every type of sickness? No! They have hundreds of different types of medicine – medicine for infections, medicine for asthma, medicine for people with bad hearts, medicine for allergies. Your doctor has hopefully rightly figured out what’s wrong with you and prescribed just the right medicine to make your fever go down and start to get you well. Now what if your mom took the prescription to the drug store and the pharmacist said – all medicines are the same – so the pharmacist just grabs any bottle behind her and maybe that bottle is full of medicine for someone with really bad skin infections and she says – use this – it will make your child’s fever better? Is this a good pharmacist? What’s wrong with that? Or what if she says – oh, just grab a package of starbursts and have your child eat one at night and one in the morning. Really, anything will work? Is that true?? When we are in serious danger of being sick, we need the right medicine – not just anything will work. In fact, a doctor or pharmacist who would say anything will make you better would be a very evil person indeed and could do lots of harm, not good! Sometimes people think about God that way – that it doesn’t matter what God you believe in as long as you believe in some type of God. They say you don’t have to believe in Jesus or the God of the bible. In fact, some may say you are being mean if you say one God is real and the others gods people believe in are not real. Are we being unkind if we say that there is only one true God? Would a doctor be mean if she said – there’s only one medicine that will make you well, and I will write a prescription for only that medicine? No! She would be a good doctor to do that. But what if the God of the Bible is the one and only God? And what if he has written a book so everybody can who He is. You learned 2 verses that say just that Why did God give us the Bible? So we can know he is the one and only true God. Acts 16:31- Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Jeremiah 10:10a – But the LORD is the true God; He is the living God Some of you know another verse: Acts 4:12 – there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. The Bible teaches that every human being has sinned – and the wages of sin is what? Death is far worse than any kind of infection that your doctor would look at The Bible also tells us that God has made a way for sinners to be forgiven – and that is by faith in Jesus – (repeat Acts 4:12). But the Bible says there is salvation in no one else. There is salvation only in Jesus. If I were making that up, perhaps you could say I was being mean to people who don’t believe in Jesus. But if God Himself is saying it, that means it is the truth and it is absolutely important that people believe in the real, true God. God calls us to love all people – whether they are Christians or not. And one way to love them is to tell them the Bible says there is only one true God.