Young people are always seeking for pleasure. They love all kinds of sports and entertainment. Of course, man needs pleasure, and this need is God-created, but such a need has to be kept under control. To illustrate this, we human beings need to eat, and this need was created by God. God created us with a stomach as the organ to digest food, and He also created us with a body to absorb all the nutrition. These are facts. However, God also set various limitations on the amount of food we can take in. We should not overeat, because overeating leads to obesity, and obesity results in illness. There is an old Chinese saying: “Eat one less mouthful at suppertime, and you will live to be ninety-nine.” If a person desires to live to an advanced age, he must eat less at dinnertime. If he stuffs his stomach before going to bed, he will kill himself. This is a law for our physical health.
On the one hand, we have to take care of the needs created by God. On the other hand, we should not be excessive, because excessiveness is harmful to our health. Although eating is necessary, overeating is harmful to our physical health. Although entertainment is necessary, too much entertainment is harmful to our mental health. In our human life we need relaxation and proper balance. The more balanced and relaxed we are, the healthier we are naturally. As Christians, we also need entertainment, but our entertainment should not be excessive, and it should be proper. Today in the United States, every kind of entertainment has gone beyond its proper limits; because of this, they have all become corrupted and evil. There are many dark, chaotic, and dishonorable things, and there are numerous cases of people falling into immorality, neglecting their families, ignoring their parents, and disregarding their marriages. All these are due to excessive entertainments. In the United States, you do not even dare to open your eyes in many of the places of entertainment, because all the things going on inside are sinful.
Our meeting life in the church is the most noble and balanced entertainment. We not only have a meeting on the Lord’s Day, but we also have meetings during the week. We come together to worship the Lord and to rejoice. This is the healthiest balance to our human life. Therefore, the Christian life is the most balanced and relaxed life. Young people, I advise you that while you are still young you ought to pursue to achieve progress in life, but even more importantly you ought to pursue to know the Lord. By knowing the Lord you will be able to understand the mystery of the universe and the origin of the universe, and consequently you will know how you should live your human life. Therefore, do not consider that going to this meeting or going to that meeting is a waste of time and energy. Our human life needs balance and relaxation, and the church life as a balance can best help us to enjoy a proper human life. The church life really has a proper balancing effect on our human life. If you keep this principle from your youth, you will surely receive the greatest blessing and the maximum benefit throughout your entire life.
May the Lord give grace to each one of you that, starting at a young age, your eyes would be opened to understand the mystery of the universe. At the very center of the mystery of the universe is God. In other words, the mystery of the universe is God. If God were to be taken away from the universe, there would be no mystery of the universe. That is, if God is taken away, there would be no universe; the universe would not exist. God Himself is the hub, the center, of the universe as a great wheel. If God as the center, as the hub, were taken away, the universe as the wheel would not exist. Therefore, God is the mystery of the universe. The mystery of the universe is God.
Colossians 2:2 tells us that the mystery of God is Christ. This indicates that without Christ, there is no God. The story of God, the mystery of God, is Christ. Christ is God’s mystery, God’s story. Christ is God. Without Christ, God is just a term; with Christ, God becomes a fact, a reality. Where is God? God is in Christ. Who is God? God is Christ. This is why we say that God is not in a mere religion, because without Christ there is no God.
Religion does not have God because it does not have Christ. Likewise, the Chinese Confucianism does not have God because it does not have Christ. Religion talks about moral conduct and cultivation of behavior, and Confucianism talks about human relationships and ethics. Both do not have Christ, so both do not have God. Luke 15 narrates a story of a prodigal son. When the prodigal returned home, he told his father, “I have sinned against heaven and before you” (v. 21). Actually, this translation is not quite accurate. A more accurate translation should be that the son told his father, “Father, I have sinned against you in the presence of heaven.” Many expositors of the Bible believe that heaven in this story refers to God in heaven. This is similar to the Confucian proverb that says, “There is no one to pray to when heaven is offended.” The Confucian philosophy is pure; it talks about ethics and the relationships among people, and by inference it teaches that in the universe there is a sovereign Being called “heaven.” Even though this is quite meaningful, it is without Christ and without God.
The most proper and orthodox religion should be Christianity, which was derived from Judaism. Besides Judaism and Christianity, there is a side branch, which is Mohammed’s Islam. The Islam religion was produced by copying the stories from the Old Testament and adding some of the stories of “Isa” in the New Testament. In Mohammedanism Jesus is called Isa because the two names sound similar in the original language. Islam claims that Isa did not die on the cross; instead, when evil men tried to crucify Isa on the cross, a multitude of angels came and rescued him, bringing him up to heaven. Therefore, Isa is greater and higher than Mohammed. Today Isa is in heaven at the right hand of God. It can be said that the Koran is an entire counterfeit of the Holy Bible. In the Koran there are stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael, but it does not have Christ and God.
The orthodox Christian religion is the only religion that speaks about Christ. Perhaps some would feel that we are self-boasting in that we consider that every other religion does not count, while considering that only the Christian religion counts. Nevertheless, we have to say that whatever counts always counts, and it can never be replaced by any counterfeit. Take gold as an example. Since gold is gold, it cannot be replaced by anything else; neither copper nor any kind of gilding can replace gold, because gold is gold. Likewise, Christ is God, and Christ is simply God; this is the mystery of God.
There is not one religious teacher who would dare to say that he is God. Confucius said, “There is no one to pray to when heaven is offended.” He dared not to call himself God, and he never did. Confucius was very humble. Even Islam’s Mohammed acknowledged that Isa is the Son of God and is greater than Mohammed. As for Buddhism, it teaches that “a butcher becomes a Buddha the moment he drops his cleaver”; that is, a person can achieve spiritual progress by practicing asceticism. In Buddhism nothing is said about God, and there is no element of God at all.
In all of the religious scriptures, there is only one person who claimed that He is God. Who is this One? He is Jesus Christ (Matt. 26:63-64). Some of the Jews were convinced that He should be condemned and put to death because He told them that He is the Jehovah whom they worship and that He alone is God. The Bible shows us that this person, under the risk of losing His life, told people that He is God. This is quite an amazing thing. Furthermore, no one who adheres to a mere religion says that he is a believer of the Lord. Only those who believe in Jesus are called the believers of the Lord because Jesus is Lord.