Download Four Essential Hindu Beliefs:

Especially for those who are here for the first time, please take note of the insert in your
worship flier. It gives you an outline of today’s message so you can follow along now and be
reminded later of the key scripture verses. On the back is a daily guide to help you in your
personal study of the Bible. Each day you get a verse and a few questions to help you better
understand what you’re reading. I hope you’ll use this to continue the conversation at home.
Will you read this together with me? (1 John 4:17-18a) – This is how love is made complete
among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like
Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear …Hold that thought as you
listen to a few stats (I got this list from Tim Tennant of Asbury Seminary):
 When William Carey went to India in 1793, 90% of all Christians were white and lived in
the western world. Today, by a vast majority, the face of Christianity is non-white.
 William Carey was a famous missionary in India. But the William Carey Memorial Church
in Luster, England is now a Hindu temple.
 The top two most receptive nations to Christianity are India and China.
 At the turn of the twentieth century, nine of the ten countries with the highest rate of
Christians were in Europe or North America. In 2009, only four of the top ten most
Christian countries are in the west.
 Meanwhile, this year the top ten most resistant nations to Christianity are all in Europe.
 A Christianity Today article says that 85% of Yale’s Campus Crusade for Christ are Asian
while the Buddhist temple meetings on the Yale campus are exclusively attended by whites.
 More Nigerians attend church every week than all the Episcopal and Anglican churches in
the west combined.
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 China now boasts the fastest growing church in the world, producing 16,500 new Christians
every day.
 Africa – once called the missionary graveyard … is now the fastest growing church of any
continent as a whole … producing 24,000 Christians every day since 1970.
 The most representative Christian in 1909 was a 44-year old British male.
 The most representative Christian in 2009 is a 24-year old Nigerian woman.
In this world we are like Jesus. In a world that’s rapidly changing, we have this choice. We
can be fearful, turn inward and become concerned only with “me, mine, and our ticket to
heaven,” or we can be fearless in understanding and engaging the world around us … becoming
active participants in what Christ is doing all around us to bring the Kingdom in.
Understanding the world around us is one way we can be like Jesus.
That’s what this series is about. It is about understanding. Each week, we will hear by video
from people who practice another religion. Obviously, I don’t share their belief system, but
I’ve tried to ask questions to help us understand what they believe, and I’ve tried to let their
responses inspire the message. To me, it just wouldn’t be fair to interview someone only to tear
them down here … so I’ve done my best to respect them while raising issues that I hope will
inspire greater faith and practice in our walk with Christ.
Today, we meet Rakesh Sharma, a friend of mine for nearly three decades. Let me give you a
bit of an introduction to Rakesh. I need to ask your patience with the video. I shot it myself so
the quality isn’t great, but I hope you’ll still appreciate the content.
VIDEO: INTRODUCTION (Three clips – 7 minutes)
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(SLIDE: “The Basics”) Rakesh is what I would call an American Hindu. Hinduism is the
third largest religion in the world, practiced by about 13% of the world’s population …
primarily in India, the second largest country in the world and projected to be the largest
country by 2030. Hinduism is probably the most tolerant of the major world religions. What
binds Hindus together are their sacred books … called the Vedas. And there are a bunch of
sacred writings beyond the Vedas. Probably the most popular is the Bhagavad-Gita, which my
friend, Rakesh, follows. The Bhagavad-Gita is his Bible. Let’s listen to more of his story.
VIDEO: Clips 4 and 5 (initiation and nature of God – 3 minutes)
(SLIDE: Big Ideas … God) To me, this is the real difference between Hinduism and
Christianity. Its in the nature of God. From the outside looking in, it sure looks like they
worship literally thousands of gods, but most Hindus would say they only worship one. They
believe in a personal god known as Krishna, who is served by about 330 million deities. A
deity is a manifestation of God. So, like I said … from the outside looking in it looks like they
worship many gods, but most Hindus would say that all those gods are just different faces of
one god.
Clearly we have an opinion about this. In the Bible, there is the grand opening of the Shema,
the Hebrew statement of faith in Deuteronomy 6:4, which says – Hear o Israel, the Lord our
God, the Lord is one. And the first two commandments make it very clear what that means
(Deuteronomy 5:6-10 – 6) - “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of
the land of slavery. 7 “You shall have no other gods before me. 8 “You shall not make for
yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the
waters below. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God,
am a jealous God …
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Now … before we get too confident about our obedience to this commandment, let me ask you
… are you putting anything before Him? His explicit command is this: “You shall have no
other gods before me.” That means not just idols but anything that compromises our ability or
even desire to be brought up out of slavery. Or anything that threatens to send us back down
into it. “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image of
God …” That’s about re-making God to suit to our preferences … about adjusting his holiness
and modifying the expectations so we don’t ever have to feel any guilt or obligation. Are you
putting anything before him?
My friend who runs an orphanage in India shared this story with me yesterday. She said that
Reinhart Bonke … an evangelist … was speaking to a crowd of several thousand in India. He
shared the gospel message, and at the end he asked all those who wanted to give their lives to
Jesus to stand and come forward for prayer. More than half the crowd stood and up and began
walking down the aisle. Bonke's translator started frantically speaking to them in Hindi, and all
but about a hundred went back to their seats and sat down. Bonke was angry with the translator.
What had he said to make several thousand sit back down again? The translator said, “I told
them that they could not simply add Jesus to the other 30 or 40 gods they worshipped … but
they had to make a decision to follow Him alone.”
What a great word for anyone. You can not simply add Jesus to the half-dozen other gods in
your life. The call is to follow him alone. “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Are you
putting anything before him? Job … status … financial security … comfort … family …
anything?
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(SLIDE: The Human Condition and the nature of salvation) The goal in both Hinduism
and Buddhism is spiritual perfection. These three words capture the spiritual journey for a
Hindu. First, Karma … Here’s how Rakesh defines it:
VIDEO: clip #6 (Karma - :30 seconds)
(SLIDE: Karma/ Samsara/ Darma)
Karma is the spiritual condition of my life. The more good karma I have, the better my
spiritual condition. Samsara is the process of rebirth after rebirth as I work toward salvation.
That’s reincarnation. Darma is how I work it out. It is how I practice my religion. There is a
pretty strong emphasis in Hinduism on works. They strive for perfection. There are three ways
to get there (Way of Salvation): The way of works (serving), the way of knowledge
(knowing God) and the way of devotion (loving God). Any one of these ways will get you
out of that relentless cycle of one life after the next. So, for example, in this third way, if I
devote myself completely to Krishna, then Krishna will take care of my karma problems and
usher me into fellowship with him when I die.
We can understand this … because it’s our nature to want to do something to earn our place.
And Jesus told us to love our neighbors … to give to those who need it … to go into our closets
and pray. So which is it? Faith? Or works? What will break us out of this endless cycle of
meaninglessness? Someone has said that most of the New Testament can be boiled down to
this one line: All is grace, and all is gratitude. For us, salvation is all grace. There is no
earning our way to heaven. Either Jesus paid it all, or he did nothing. So we don’t give to get
salvation. We give because we are saved. 1 John 4:7-10 says - Dear friends, let us love one
another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his
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love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning
sacrifice for our sins.
I go back to the opening line of the ten commandments. God said, “I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the land of slavery.” That tells me that if God had wanted slaves for
children, he would have left us in Egypt. But God didn’t want slaves. He wanted children, so
he set us free. Galatians 5:1 says – It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm,
then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 3:26-28 says
– You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized
into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,
male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Jesus makes us free. He sets us free not just from the power of sin and guilt, but from the idea
that we somehow have to earn our significance in this world. That ends up being a pretty huge
contrast to just about every other religion. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve interviewed two
Muslims, two Jews, a Hindu and an atheist, and I want to honor them for so kindly giving us
their time. So I say this strictly as an observation … that there was a common theme running
through all those conversations. It is the idea that if I’m going to have any lasting significance,
I’ve got to make it for myself. Depending on the belief system, the end game varies … but in
every case, significance starts with me. And that has me thinking about my own life … and
how I live that way, too, even though that’s not the offer Jesus places on the table. It is for
freedom Christ has set us free, not so we can turn back around and enslave ourselves to a selfgenerated significance. He set us free from the need to prove ourselves. Do you believe that?
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This has been my breath prayer lately: “Lord, put to death any unholy ambition in me.”
Any ambition that makes me want to work for Christ rather than following him. Any ambition
that makes me care about my own ticket to heaven but leaves me passionless about the salvation
of others. Any unholy ambition that says if I’m going to amount to anything, I have to make it
happen. And I have to tell you … that one little prayer has been doing a number on me lately.
Because I am full of unholy ambitions. I am full of wanting to prove my worth, rather than
finding it in Christ. I want to earn my way, when God has so clearly said we can not. What
unholy ambitions are you serving?
(SLIDE: Life after death)
One last thought: this is about what we are all heading toward. Both Hinduism and Buddhism
teach that the material world is generally a place of suffering, and that the spiritual world is the
goal. And both believe there is a progression from one life to another until we achieve spiritual
perfection. Buddhism basically believes that we become part of God when we reach that place.
Listen one more time to Rakesh on reincarnation.
VIDEO: Clip #7 (Reincarnation – 2 minutes)
So … the idea is that we’re trapped in this material world … moving up through a series of
rebirths … while we strive for freedom through our actions. That’s how a Hindu sees it.
Christians would say that Jesus Christ has the key to freedom. Jesus himself said (John 14:1-6)
- "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2 My Father's house has
plenty of room; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a
place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be
with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going."
5 Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the
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way?" 6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me.
Early in this interview, Rakesh mentioned an article I found in a magazine years ago that started
a conversation between us. The article was about some Americans living in India as Hindus.
They were part of a temple that was had been robbed more than once, and so they had a meeting
to decide what to do about it. Someone suggested they make an idol of the Hindu god of
vengeance. Maybe that god would protect them. To bring in a new god, they had to find
someone who would worship him … who would worship this god of vengeance … and they
managed to do that. Then they had to find an idol-maker who would make an image of the god
of vengeance. They did. He lived about a day’s drive away so someone traveled to visit this
idol-maker. He told them to come back in about six months. When the guy went back six
months later to get their idol, the idol-maker told him he hadn’t even started on it. “Why?” the
guy asked. “Because,” the idol-maker said, “in order to make a god, I have to have living
stone.” “Well … what makes a stone live?” “I know it is living stone when I place a worm on
it and the worm begins to eat into the stone.” The idol-maker said, “I’ve found a lot of rocks
this year, but I haven’t yet found a living stone.”
And the Word says (1 Peter 2:4-5) – Come to him, the living Stone – rejected by human beings
but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into
spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through
Jesus Christ. For in the scripture it says, “See I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious
cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” I can’t think of a better
prayer for us to pray as we learn what the rest of the world believes. Let’s pray together that
those who are searching might find the Living Stone.
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