The way of salvation is first and foremost coming to understand that you have a great spiritual need. You are blind spiritually, and do not know where you are going, or how to navigate life. It is coming to understand the great danger of trying to fob it off, or shut it out that great need with fickle material pleasures. It is coming to realize that you are a limited, narrow, carnal being, while your soul is dead and you do not know the Saviour, and that it is the Christian who knows life in its height and depth, length and breadth. That is the first thing. But the second thing is that it is vital that we understand there can only be one true message to our souls from God. If you go into a place of worship as someone who does not know God, there is probably a very reasonable question in your mind: ‘How do I find God? There are so many people who have their opinions about God. I have some opinions; I picked them up from my friends – a friend who is a Roman Catholic says this; another friend who is a Buddhist says that. How do I know which is the true message?’ The Lord Jesus Christ replies in these terms, ‘Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?’ It is really a very simple parable and it means this: you will know the true message of God quite easily by this simple test: does the message come from a proven source?
There are, for instance, various philosophers and teachers in this world who will set themselves up to tell you what life is about and how it ought to be lived and what its meaning is, and try and fathom it out. So the question is, are they the blind leading the blind, or is this a message which has real integrity or merit? Are these blind guides, or are they sighted guides? They can only be one or the other. Take these men who purport to tell us how we should live, and what life is about. It may be philosophers of the existentialist school, or of some other school, but here's the great test: what of the man himself? What sort of a man is he? Invariably, the answer is simple. He is a mortal man just as you are. He has his failures just as you have. This great philosopher, this great guide, he is perhaps on to his third marriage, or he has children who are in chaos and have gone wrong. He is one who is subject to tragedy and heartache and failure just like you. Well then, do you really want him to be your guide?
How do you know which is the true message? You say to yourself, who is the messenger? Where does the message come from? Is there power and life in it? What does it achieve? And you will soon find that there is only one credible message. There is only one message in this world that has this kind of integrity. ‘Why,’ you say, ‘what about this? What about that?’ Just look at the nations where such religions are the staple diet of the people and the enforced national religion. Just look at them. Just look to where it has got them. Look at their moral structure. Look at the social structure of the people. What do these religions achieve? What do they bring about? There is only one voice in this world that is attended by life and power.
When the Lord Jesus Christ walked on earth, there he was, the Son of God, a dynamic and a magnetic personality, one attended by the ability to do great signs and wonders, one who could not be faulted though surrounded by enemies, a man of the most indescribable love and compassion. It didn't matter what they did to him: still, he was possessed with sympathy and compassion, proved in every way, attested in every way. Then look at the course of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ down the centuries. It has changed men; it has changed nations. It is a gospel of power, a gospel which has brought life into so many thousands, millions of darkened hearts. This isn't a question of the blind leading the blind. When you're listening to the Christian gospel, you're listening to a message which sheds light and understanding and power and peace, transforming power.
So how are you to know what to believe? You believe the message that has antiquity. You believe the message that has authority. You believe the message that is self-vindicating, attested, and has power and has been proven. That test leaves you only with the word of God, the message of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It alone is the sighted guide that is proven and attested and has power.