| Andrew Lim
8 June 2008 - Colossians 1:15-23
This line of the Apostles Creed / the very mention of the name Jesus
is a most critical part of our Christian belief
When the creed says “I believe in God”
we are joined by millions upon millions of people on earth
When we say “I believe in God the Father”
again we are joined by untold millions of people on earth
When we say “I believe in God Almighty”
again millions of people on earth / are happy to agree with us
But beginning from last week
millions have already fallen away from walking with us
For when / last week we made the declaration
“I believe in God Maker of heaven and earth”
we parted company with Hinduism and Eastern faith
These faiths are pantheistic in philosophy
and God is believed to very much a part of the world process
But we still have the Jews and the Muslims walking with us
But this morning / by making the open declaration
that we believe in Jesus Christ / His Only Son Our Lord
the Jews and Muslims drop away / and we stand alone
Dr Griffith Thomas once said that Christianity is the only religion
in the world which rests on the person of its founder
At the core of the Christian faith / stands a person / J. Christ
not a set of abstract ideas / or beliefs / or philosophy
Christianity is not another "ism" like Buddhism or Marxism
Consider Socrates / or Buddha / or Confucius
Their chief passion was never to fix any attention on themselves
They never asked us to look at them as people
No / rather their chief concern was to get us to buy into their message
“Forget about my name / It not about me / Follow my teachings”
they seemed to say
But with Jesus / When you hear Him teach
you’ll find that His message is integral to His Person
Quite deliberately / and consistently
He made it clear that His message is life personified
He put himself at the very heart of his own message
Without His life / there is no message / His life is His message
His person and his message are one and the same thing
Take away Buddha / and Buddhism still stands
Take away Mohammed / and Islam still stands
Take away Marx / and Marxism still stands
but take away Christ / and Christianity collapses
This sets Christ apart from all religious teachers or thinkers
Jesus does not come to teach us a way of life
He comes to command our worship
He does not merely claim to have found the answer to all human needs
He claims to be the answer
“Come to me all you who labour and I will give you rest”
No prophet or preacher / either before or after Him
except those on the fringe of sanity
have ever dared / to say a thing like that
His words stagger us / with their blatant audacity
The figure of Jesus has haunted the conscience of human people
for twenty long centuries / that’s twenty hundred years
Who is this man that it is with reference to his birth and death
that human history is split in two so that every event is now dated
either before his birth or after his death
You take a closer look at this man / you may be forgiven
if you concluded / that His life is full of contradictions
James Stewart points some of these out for us:
He was the most humble man you could ever meet
Yet he claimed that he would come
on the clouds of heaven in the glory of God
He was so austere
that evil spirits and demons shrieked out in terror at his approaching
Yet he was so engagingly attractive / and likable / and approachable
that the little children climb all over Him and nestled in his arms
No one was ever half so kind and compassionate to sinners
Yet no one ever spoke such scorching words about sin
He would not break a bruised reed / ever so gentle
Yet he was ready to damn people / and consign them to the fires of hell
He was a lowly and humble servant to the disciples / washing their feet
Yet when He walked into the temple that morning
the traders fell over one another / in their mad rush
to get away from the fire they saw blazing in his eyes
He saved others / yet in the end he would not save himself
These are some the most agonizing / inexplicable / befuddling mysteries
that surround the Person of Jesus
And it puzzles you even more / when you pause and take a look
at the way this lone individual has shaped the world
Historian Philip Schaff described the overwhelming influence of Jesus
“This Jesus of Nazareth / without money and arms
conquered more millions
than Alexander / Caesar / Mohammed / and Napoleon
Without science / he shed more light on things human and divine
than all philosophers and scholars combined
Without the eloquence of schools / he spoke such words of life
as were never spoken before or since
and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet
Without writing a single line
he set more pens in motion / and furnished themes
for more sermons / orations / discussions
learned volumes / works of art / and songs of praise
than the whole army of great men
of ancient and modern times”
Richter said / “with pierced hands / He lifted empires off their hinges
and turned the streams of centuries / out of its channel
and still governs the ages”
As James Stewart says / Rome
with her philosophical argument and the might of her legends
could not stop Jesus
Instead it was Jesus who stopped Rome
And upon the dust and ashes of her broken splendour
He set the foundations of the empire of God
Great empires have been built up through laws that came from his lips
Great movements of reform have swept the earth
through his great influence
In his name / men and women of every age and race
have fought for righteousness and justice
Emerson rightly said of Jesus / “His name is not so much written
as ploughed into the history of this world”
After 20 hundred years / we still baptize our children in His name
When we join two people in marriage / His is the blessing we invoke
When a man and a woman pledge their promises to live together for life
it is before His altar / that they plight our troth
When a life is over / it is beneath his cross that we lay our dead
and it is in His message of eternal hope / that we find comfort
Encyclopaedia Britannica devotes more space to Jesus
than to any other religious figure or political leader / over 20,000 words
Who then is this man?
Have you ever thought / that somehow / by sheer instinct
we cannot get ourselves to class him among other humans
Carnegie Simpson says / if you should come across a list of names
beginning with Confucius and ending with Goethe
and if that list included the name Jesus
you will instinctively find the list offensive
and you will sense that it is an offence against decency
You may talk about Alexander the Great / Napoleon the Great
but you just can’t get yourself to speak of “Jesus the Great”
You will know instinctively that He stands apart / He’s not the Great
He is the only one / He is simply beyond our human understanding
He baffles and mystifies us
It is simply the case that Jesus stands in a world apart
We simply cannot ever get ourselves
to say that He was the greatest man who ever lived
It just doesn’t make sense / it’s just not right
Stott quotes Charles Lamb as saying that:
“If Shakespeare were to walk into this room
we should all rise to meet him / But if Christ were to walk in
we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of His garment”
How else could we respond to Someone like Christ
There is no other response than worship in its full sense of the word
Who is this man?
Two thousand years ago / at that street-corner in Jerusalem
the people asked “Who is this man?” / Matt 21:10
Now 2000 years have come and gone
and people all over the world are still asking “Just who is this man?”
The creed gives us the answer
Let’s first talk about His name
Strictly speaking he ought to be called “Jesus the Christ”
as you would call William the Conqueror
Richard the Lion Heart / Ivan the Terrible
In the same way “Christ” is a title / not a surname
So He ought to be referred to as “Jesus the Christ”
The name “Jesus” is simply the Greek form
of the Hebrew name Joshua / “Yehoshua”
which means “God is Saviour” or “God is Deliverer”
The angel had spoken to Joseph and Mary
“You shall call his name Jesus
for He will save his people from their sins” / Matt. 1:21
We would not think of calling our children Jesus
but in the time of Jesus it was one of the commonest of all names
- at least 5 Jewish high priests were called Jesus
- there appeared about 20 people called Jesus
10 of them were contemporary with our Lord
The name “Jesus” is simply the Greek form / of the Jewish name Joshua
The title “Christ” comes from the Greek “Christos”
which is equivalent for the Hebrew word “Messiah” Anointed One
So if you refer to Him as “Jesus Christ”
you’re recognising that Jesus is “God with skin on”
you’re really saying / that at the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem
God Himself / entered the arena of human history
The name “Jesus” speaks of the humanity of Jesus
Here in the Person of Jesus / in humanity in all its fullness
Spurgeon says of the humanity of Jesus
“Infinite and an infant / Eternal / and yet born of a woman
Almighty / and yet hanging on a woman's breast
Supporting a universe
and yet needing to be carried in a mother's arm
King of angels / and yet the reputed son of Joseph
Heir of all things / and yet the carpenter's son”
He who was larger than the greatest galaxy / took the form of an embryo
He who loved among radiant seraphs and angels
joined the company of mortal human people
He who charted the course of every migratory bird
chose to be nourished / from the breast of a young girl
He who is totally holy
subjected Himself to the brutality of human temptations
He who is the font of all wisdom
subjected Himself to having to learn to read and write!
He was born into a carpenter family from Nazareth of Galilee
And having a human body He had all the limitations a human body has
The strain of His work made him tired
One day / when He couldn't go any further He sat at the well to rest
Another day / He fell asleep in a boat
On the way to His death / Jesus was so weak following the torture
he did not have strength enough to carry cross himself
He felt the pangs of hunger
On the cross his throat became parched with thirst
And he experienced the whole range of human emotions too
He could love / He could laugh
He burst into tears / at the graveside of Lazarus
He wept over a city / which refused to repent
He felt compassion for the hungry crowd
He was capable of deep anger
And He also had a human spirit
which needed to be in touch with God in prayer
He was born just as all human babies are born
He grew through childhood to adulthood just as other children grow
And Jesus had a human mind
He learned how to eat / talk / read and write
One day they found Him in the Temple sitting in the midst of the doctors
both hearing them and asking them questions” / Lk 2:40, 52, 46
He learned to be obedient to his parents
He frequently asked questions:
He asked father of epileptic boy "How long has he had this?"
So the name “Jesus” speaks of His full humanity
But He is also “the Christ” / And this speaks of His deity
Although he was born into this world / as other babies are born
he was conceived in the womb of his mother
as no other child has ever been conceived
He wasn’t conceived through the seed of an earthly father
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit
In the womb of the Virgin Mary
God the Son took on and became man
When the Creed says He is God’s “Only Son”
it tells us that Jesus’ relationship with God the Father is unique
Jesus had the audacity to refer to God as His Father
The Jews on hearing this / thought / What arrogance
Who is this man that He should have gall and presumption
to assume such a standing before God
The Jews were furious for they recognized that in calling God His Father
He was making himself equal with God himself / Jn 5:18
And yet / repeatedly / right through the John’s gospel
He claimed a special standing with God
The Father shows the Son what he is doing / 5:20
The Father has given judgment to the Son / 5:22
The Father taught the Son / 8:28
What the Son says / He has heard the Father / 8:38 12:50
The Son knows the Father / as the Father knows the Son / 10:15
The Son and the Father are one / 10:30
No one comes to the Father / but through the Son / 14:6
To see the Son / is to see the Father 14:9
The Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son 10:38, 14:10,
It sounds strange but Jesus had a Father before He had a mother
The creed is careful to include the word “only” / “unicum”
It insists that while we are sons of God / we are sons by adoption
Christ’s sonship is “sui generic” / meaning natural
God may have many adopted children
But He has only one natural / begotten / Son / Jesus Christ
The Nicene Creed makes it even clearer by declaring
that the Son was “the only begotten Son of God
begotten of the Father before all worlds
God of God / Light of Light / very God of very God
begotten / not made / being of one substance with the Father”
The word “begotten” / means “unique”
He is the Son of God in a way we never could be
By inserting the word “only”
the creed sets Christ apart from us / His adopted brothers sisters
We were created / He was never created
What is created cannot be God
God created all things from ant-eaters to angels
Or to put it poetically / from aardvarks to archangels
None of these is God
But what God begets / not made / is God / And the Son is begotten
His sinlessness is proof of His deity
Satan tempted Jesus / but failed to seduce him to sin
When He challenged people to convict Him of sin / No one spoke up
At the end of His life / He could say:
“I have kept my Father's commandments” / Jn 15:10
Pilate was forced to conclude: “I find no sin in him” / Jn 18:38
Peter found Him “a lamb without blemish or spot” / I Pet 1:19
In fact Peter simply said “He committed no sin” / I Peter 2:22
The Book of Hebrews say:
“He was tempted in every respect as we are / yet without sin” / Heb 4:15
As John Stott puts it so eloquently:
We may read of His temptations / but we will hear nothing of his sins
He was continually telling others to repent of their sins
yet never once / did he repent himself
He showed no consciousness of moral failure
He appears to have no feelings of guilt
and no sense of estrangement from God
It is the universal experience of all godly people
that the nearer they come to God
the more sensitively aware they become of their own sins
But not so with Our Lord Jesus
He lived more closely to God / than anybody else ever did
yet never once / did He carry a moral guilt
This puts him in a class utterly distinct
not only from sinners / but also from saints
And He does things that only God could do
He claims to be able to forgive people their sins
To the paralysed man / he says
“My son / get up and walk / your sins are forgiven”
To the immoral woman / he says: “Your sins are forgiven”
He claims to be the light of the world / and the only way to God
He does not teach people to go to God / He invites them to come to Him
He dares to forgive people's sin
and brings on himself the terrible charge of blasphemy
And then He shocks his hearers
by saying that he is going to come back to judge the world
and to settle the eternal destiny of every human person
He appears to know everything
He knew the thoughts of his friends / Lk 8:47 / enemies / Lk 6:8
He could read mind of Nathaniel / Jn 1:47-48
He knew Samaritan woman had five husbands / Jn 4:18
He knew Lazarus was already dead / even before he arrived / Jn 11:14
He knew Judas would betray him / Mt 26:25
He knew Peter would deny him / Mt 26:34
In fact Jesus knew all that was to happen to him
“He knew all man/ knew what was in men” / Jn 2:25
So in the Person of Jesus / we see God in skin
Paul put it very simply / “He is the image of the invisible God”
“For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” / Col 2:9
But the Creed goes on to say He is “Our Lord”
I’ve said a number of times that the Apostles’ Creed
is our entire belief / encased in a nutshell
But if we need to whittled down the whole creed into one line
its got to be this / “Jesus is Lord”
Right there / in those three words / is all we stand for
Jesus the man / is also God our Saviour
who demands absolute worship / obedience and surrender
In the New Testament / this little word “Lord”
is used to speak of Jesus in about 600 occasions
Comes from the Greek word “kurios”
He is the “Lord of Glory” / 1 Cor 2:8
The Christians in the early church were confronted
with a life-threatening dilemma
Either “Kyrios Christos” or “Kyrios Kaisar”
Either Christ is Lord or Caesar is Lord
And each time they stood up / to recite and affirm the creed
the early Christians declared their answer
They declared Jesus to be their Lord
And that confession “Jesus is Lord” is the lynchpin of the Christian faith
When Paul and his friends were dragged before the authorities
they defied Caesar’s decree and declared Jesus Lord / Acts 17:7
To refer to Jesus as “our Lord” is to accord to Him
a status no less than the Godhead
for the title Lord was used of the Supreme God in the OT
Let’s not forget that Jesus Himself accepted the honour
He said / “You call me Lord and teacher
and you are right / for so I am” / Jn 13:13
It was Karl Barth the great theologian who said
“The New Testament has left no doubt / as to the fact
that there is only one Lord and that this Lord is Lord of the world”
Jesus is Lord of all / and all of life
Everyone and everything should be subjected to Him
The world may defy Him now / but one day / before Him all will bow
and acknowledge Him as Lord / Phil. 2:9-11
And if He is Lord / then He should be revered / obeyed and worshipped
And we ought to shaped our lives in line with His will
How will I stack all this up? John McArthur put it this way
If God became a man / we would expect His entrance into the world
to me miraculous / It was / He was born of a virgin
If God became a man / we would expect Him to be sinless
He was / Neither the Pharisees nor Pilate nor Herod
could find a fault in Him
If God became a man / we would expect His words
to be clear / true / purest / most authoritative / they were
If God became a man / we would expect Him to be supernaturally powerful
He was
If God became a man / we would expect Him
to have a universal and permanent influence on the world / He does
If God became a man / we would expect Him to accomplish His purpose
He has
Confronted with Jesus / you have only two choices
He is either Who He said He is / or He’s a blasphemer
Those are the only two alternatives open to us
You can stone Him as a blasphemer / You can embrace Him as God
At one time or another each one of us will have to answer this question
Who is Jesus Christ? / Blasphemer? Or God?
Only two options
And your answer will determine your eternal destiny
When Saul of Tarsus / in that supreme moment of his life
was confronted by God / He asked: “Who are you Lord”
And almost immediately / he asked a second question
“What will you have me to do”
It is the same for you and me
When we catch a glimpse of the glory of God we too need to ask:
“What will you have me to do?”
It’s a question you and I must ask / if we haven’t asked it before
Most of you have heard the popular song by Joan Osborne
called “What if God Were One of Us” / It goes:
“If God had a face / what would it look like?
And would you want to see it / if seeing meant
that you would have to believe / in things like heaven
and in Jesus / and the saints / and all the prophets?”
Many don’t believe in Jesus because they are afraid
Jesus would require them to change / and they don’t want to
But if Jesus is Who He is / the Only Son / our Lord
then it is crucial that you submit yourself to Him
and ask Him what He wants of you
for if He is God / you owe Him your worship
Whatever you do / just make sure / you are not among those
to whom Jesus will one day ask
“Why do you call me ‘Lord Lord’ and do not do what I tell you”
for that / will be the verdict of eternal death (Lk 6:46)
|
