Brett, a listener who lives in Warner Robins, Georgia, writes in to ask, "Pastor John, do Christians and Muslims worship the same deity?" I was on a panel a few years ago at the Evangelical Theological Society with a Muslim and another believer, and we each gave presentations, and that was a very eye-opening experience, because the way most people pose this question is almost a defeater.

If you get into a conversation where they want you to start listing the attributes of Yahweh, or the attributes of your Christian God, and they list the attributes of their God, you wind up with things like sovereignty, wisdom, eternal, infinite, just, and here's Allah, they say, with all those, and here's your God with all those, and they say, "Look, it's the same," and the case is closed.

That's not a very biblical way to go about it. Here's what I did in my presentation, and when the Muslim stood up after me, he said, "Well, I didn't know you were going to be so Christological." He almost had nothing to say, and here's what I said. I said, "The best way to tell if you, sir, and I are worshiping God is to ask Jesus what the test is for the true worship of God," and Jesus said, "If you reject me, if you reject me as the crucified one," and Muslims do reject Him as crucified, "If you reject me as the risen one," and they do reject Him as the risen one, "If you reject me as the one who atones for sins through the shedding of my blood," and they do reject Him for that, so there's no question that Muslims reject the Jesus of the New Testament.

They have their own Jesus, but the Jesus that's presented as the Gospel in the New Testament, they explicitly and admittedly reject, and Jesus says, "You don't know God if you reject me." So John 8, 7 or 19, they said to Him, "Where is your Father?" and Jesus said, "You know neither me nor my Father.

If you knew me, you would know my Father also." If you knew me, John 8, 19, "You would know my Father also," but they don't know Him, and therefore they don't know the Father. He's talking to the Pharisees of all people. I mean, if that's true of the Pharisees who claim to know the Father of the Old Testament, then how much more true of Muslims.

Or He said, "You don't love God," because He said, "You don't have the love of the Father within you. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me." So He's coming in the Father's name, they don't receive Him, therefore He says, "You don't have the love of God within you." Or He says in John 8, 42, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God, and I'm here." So you don't have Him as your Father.

Or in 1 John 2, 23, "No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also." So they don't have the Father. Or John 6, 45, "Everyone who has heard and learned from God comes to me, but they don't come to Him, and therefore they haven't heard and learned from the Father." So you get all these passages where Jesus and 1 John say that the litmus test, the proof of whether anybody has a relationship with God, is truly worshiping God, is whether or not they truly embrace Jesus.

So if you just list it out, they don't know God, they don't love God, they don't honor God, they don't have God as their Father, they don't have Him at all, those are all texts where Jesus said, "If you don't have me, you don't know God. If you don't have me, you don't love God.

If you don't have me, you don't honor God. If you don't have me, God is not your Father." From which I conclude, I don't care how many attributes line up between your God and my God, Jesus says you can't be worshiping the Father if you're rejecting Him. And that's the approach I think we should take with all Muslims.

We should befriend all the Muslims in our lives, and there are many, at least in my neighborhood, there are many people who you can befriend like that. And we tell them the unsearchable riches of Christ, and we especially go to the Gospel where the glory of God is revealed in the death and the resurrection of Christ.

Thank you, Pastor John. The panel mentioned at the beginning of this podcast was recorded at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting on November 18th, 2009, and it can be found online at DesiringGod.org. There you can search for the resource by its title, "Evangelicals and a Common Word." That's "Evangelicals and a Common Word." I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.