Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same Deity?

00:00:00.000 | Brett, a listener who lives in Warner Robins, Georgia, writes in to ask, "Pastor

00:00:09.160 | John, do Christians and Muslims worship the same deity?" I was on a panel a few

00:00:16.960 | years ago at the Evangelical Theological Society with a Muslim and another

00:00:23.520 | believer, and we each gave presentations, and that was a very eye-opening

00:00:26.920 | experience, because the way most people pose this question is almost a defeater.

00:00:34.560 | If you get into a conversation where they want you to start listing the

00:00:39.640 | attributes of Yahweh, or the attributes of your Christian God, and they list the

00:00:45.960 | attributes of their God, you wind up with things like sovereignty, wisdom, eternal,

00:00:56.080 | infinite, just, and here's Allah, they say, with all those, and here's your God with

00:01:03.760 | all those, and they say, "Look, it's the same," and the case is closed. That's not a very

00:01:10.160 | biblical way to go about it. Here's what I did in my presentation, and when the

00:01:15.360 | Muslim stood up after me, he said, "Well, I didn't know you were going to be so

00:01:21.320 | Christological." He almost had nothing to say, and here's what I said. I said, "The

00:01:27.800 | best way to tell if you, sir, and I are worshiping God is to ask Jesus what the

00:01:40.080 | test is for the true worship of God," and Jesus said, "If you reject me, if you

00:01:47.320 | reject me as the crucified one," and Muslims do reject Him as crucified, "If

00:01:52.280 | you reject me as the risen one," and they do reject Him as the risen one, "If you

00:01:56.200 | reject me as the one who atones for sins through the shedding of my blood," and

00:02:00.920 | they do reject Him for that, so there's no question that Muslims reject the

00:02:06.240 | Jesus of the New Testament. They have their own Jesus, but the Jesus that's

00:02:10.320 | presented as the Gospel in the New Testament, they explicitly and admittedly

00:02:16.320 | reject, and Jesus says, "You don't know God if you reject me." So John 8, 7 or 19,

00:02:26.800 | they said to Him, "Where is your Father?" and Jesus said, "You know neither me nor

00:02:32.880 | my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also." If you knew me, John 8, 19,

00:02:39.480 | "You would know my Father also," but they don't know Him, and therefore they don't

00:02:43.720 | know the Father. He's talking to the Pharisees of all people. I mean, if

00:02:48.080 | that's true of the Pharisees who claim to know the Father of the Old Testament,

00:02:52.280 | then how much more true of Muslims. Or He said, "You don't love God,"

00:02:59.120 | because He said, "You don't have the love of the Father within you. I have come in

00:03:04.520 | my Father's name, and you do not receive me." So He's coming in the Father's name,

00:03:09.880 | they don't receive Him, therefore He says, "You don't have the love of God

00:03:14.200 | within you." Or He says in John 8, 42, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for

00:03:23.120 | I came from God, and I'm here." So you don't have Him as your Father. Or in

00:03:29.720 | 1 John 2, 23, "No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son

00:03:37.160 | has the Father also." So they don't have the Father. Or John 6, 45, "Everyone who

00:03:44.840 | has heard and learned from God comes to me, but they don't come to Him, and

00:03:48.960 | therefore they haven't heard and learned from the Father." So you get all these

00:03:53.160 | passages where Jesus and 1 John say that the litmus test, the proof of

00:04:01.960 | whether anybody has a relationship with God, is truly worshiping God, is whether

00:04:10.040 | or not they truly embrace Jesus. So if you just list it out, they don't know God,

00:04:15.000 | they don't love God, they don't honor God, they don't have God as their Father, they

00:04:18.940 | don't have Him at all, those are all texts where Jesus said, "If you don't have

00:04:23.400 | me, you don't know God. If you don't have me, you don't love God. If you don't have

00:04:27.200 | me, you don't honor God. If you don't have me, God is not your Father." From which I

00:04:31.720 | conclude, I don't care how many attributes line up between your God and

00:04:36.400 | my God, Jesus says you can't be worshiping the Father if you're

00:04:42.920 | rejecting Him. And that's the approach I think we should take with all Muslims.

00:04:48.360 | We should befriend all the Muslims in our lives, and there are many, at least in my

00:04:53.840 | neighborhood, there are many people who you can befriend like that. And we tell

00:04:59.600 | them the unsearchable riches of Christ, and we especially go to the Gospel where

00:05:05.560 | the glory of God is revealed in the death and the resurrection of Christ.

00:05:11.480 | Thank you, Pastor John. The panel mentioned at the beginning of this

00:05:15.160 | podcast was recorded at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting on November

00:05:19.280 | 18th, 2009, and it can be found online at DesiringGod.org. There you can search

00:05:24.440 | for the resource by its title, "Evangelicals and a Common Word." That's

00:05:29.000 | "Evangelicals and a Common Word." I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.

00:05:35.520 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same Deity?

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