One day a little girl was drawing a picture, and even skipped recess because she was so focused upon it. Her teacher asked what she was doing and she said she was drawing a picture of God. “Oh honey, you can’t do that...no one knows what God looks like.” She held up the picture and said, “They do now!”
Does an image of Jesus Christ exist? If so, where is it and how did it come about. Do we know how tall Jesus was, the color of His skin, or the color of His eyes? Do we know about His physical attributes? Was He weather beaten from being in the sunshine day after day after day? The climate in and around the Sea of Galilee and the city of Jerusalem is much like San Diego when it’s mild. In the summertime, the temperature can climb much higher.
Was Jesus muscular, slight, thin, heavy? Did He have a beard and mustache? How did the painted images of Jesus Christ come about?
Throughout scripture, nowhere are we given a physical description of Jesus. Historical accounts never once mention how He appeared, just that He did, in a powerful way.
Do we need to know what someone looks like to know who they are? Human nature thinks so. When we are asked to describe someone, the first description will be physical. If we are asked to describe anything, our first description is physical. But the physical is secondary. How would someone describe you? I would hope people would say that I was compassionate, loving – unconditionally, kind, respectful, Christ-like, patient, forgiving, a good listener, a good heart. I really don’t care about what my physical description would be.
It’s not what you know, it’s Who you know.
The text this morning is a simple one, from the Gospel of Matthew, early on in Jesus’ ministry on earth. Matthew writes in chapter 4, verses 23-25: “Jesus was going throughout all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people. The news about Him spread throughout all Syria (to the north) and they brought to Him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases, and pains, those possessed by demons, epileptics, paralytics and He healed them. Large crowds followed Him from Galilee and the Decapolis (10 Hellenized Greek cities south of Galilee) and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan River.” These 2 verses sum up the main aspects of Christ’s public ministry. Teaching, proclaiming the Gospel and healing.”
Think about how we would describe Jesus, based on what we know? We discussed last week that Jesus could have easily blended in a crowd, or He could have stood out from all men during His time. Remember, when Jesus was betrayed and sold for thirty pieces of silver, Jesus had to be identified first. Matthew gives us the account. “That last night, while Jesus was speaking to His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas came up accompanied by a large crowd with swords and clubs saying, Whomever I kiss, He is the one, seize Him.”
How often had these soldiers seen Him before, but they still needed to make sure they were arresting the right person.
So who was this Jesus?
He was an immensely popular teacher despite His unassuming nature and ordinary looks. The places He taught could scarcely hold the tightly packed multitudes that mobbed Him everywhere He went. The Gospel writer Luke records our first encounter with Jesus as a young man. At thirteen, a Jewish boy was called a bar mitzvah, a “son of the commandment.” In preparation for His thirteenth Birthday, Jesus might have undergone a rigorous program of instruction and preparation for this passage into manhood. But the modern bar mitzvah ceremony and celebration evolved from Jewish customs in the Middle Ages, so we can only speculate as to what first century Jews did. Regardless, one year prior to officially becoming a man, Jesus accompanied His family’s caravan to the Holy City of Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover feast and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. These back to back celebrations spanned eight days, a time taken together as the Passover.
After the celebration came to a close, Joseph and Mary began the seventy mile journey north to Galilee along with hundreds of other pilgrims, including dozens of friends and extended relatives. Perhaps thinking Jesus had joined His cousins farther back, the couple discovered only later that He was not in their number at all. Immediately, Joseph and Mary turned again for Jerusalem and retraced their steps. After three days of searching, they finally found Jesus in the Temple, surrounded by the nation’s foremost experts on Jewish law.
Luke writes, “Then, after three days they found Him in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard were amazed at His understanding and His answers.”
The Greek word used to describe the response of the religious leaders is intriguing. First, “amazed” literally means to “remove oneself”, figuratively “to lose one’s wits” – “go out of one’s mind.” We would say “they were beside themselves.” So “amazed” doesn’t even capture the utter astonishment and excitement felt by these gifted Jewish teachers. They had discovered a prodigy. As Chuck Swindoll puts it in his book entitled “Jesus, the Greatest Life of All”, It’s the kind of reaction we might have if we were to see a four year old play Rachmaninov’s 3rd Piano Concerto perfectly from beginning to end. The Greek terms indicate that Jesus was able to put things together and come up with insights that should have been far beyond His grasp at age twelve. He could go to the heart of an issue like no one they had ever seen.
Joseph and Mary looked for Jesus for three days and were surprised to find Him in the Temple. They had seen the signs, they experienced miracles since birth. Wouldn’t that have been the first place they would look to find Jesus?
And we still search for Jesus today – looking for Him in all the wrong places.
For all we know about Jesus and His brief life on earth, there is so much we do not know, including his physical appearance. Remember last week we read the last verse from the Gospel of John when he wrote, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.”
Jesus was the only man to walk this earth making claims that He was the Son of God, with proof to back Him up. The many miracles, healing the sick, raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, food to the multitudes, all the while preaching a Gospel of love and forgiveness. Less is more, to be last is to be first. Giving is more of a blessing than receiving.
Over the centuries, lots of people have had a desire to be equal with God. It was March 44 BC, and Julius Caesar had just been assasinated. He was put to death by the same men who declared him to be a god just two years earlier. You remember the Shakespearian account, “Et tu Brute?” All of the Dictator’s wealth and power then became the birthright of his adopted son and sole heir, Gaius Octavius, who over a twenty year span transformed himself into the unrivaled leader of the Roman Empire. Eventually he held the titles of “Princeps” – leading citizen; “Pontifex Maximus” – high priest; and ultimately, “Agustus” – supreme ruler.
When Halley’s Comet painted a blazing stripe across the night sky in the fall of 12 BC, Caesar Agustus made the most of it, claiming it was the spirit of his Father, Julius Caesar, entering Heaven. The superstitious Romans barely flinched when Agustus suggested that he too should be worshipped. He was, after all, the son of a god. This is the same Caesar Agustus we read about in Luke’s account regarding the miracle birth of Christ.
When Historical Israel demanded that they have a king like all of the other surrounding nations, who did they choose? The prophet Samuel writes in 1 Samuel chapter 9; “Now there was a man from the tribe of Benjamin whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Becorath, the son of Aphiah, the son of a Benjamite, a mighty man of valor. He had a son whose name was Saul, a choice and handsome man, and there was not a more handsome person than he among the sons of Israel; from his shoulders and up he was taller than any of the people.”
Later, when the spirit of God left Saul, and new king was anointed. We read Samuel’s account after he arrived in Bethlehem, chapter 16; “Now the Lord said to Samuel, fill your horn with oil and go, I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have selected a king for Myself among his sons. So Samuel obeyed the word of God, sought out Jesse and his sons. When they were together, he looked at Jesse’s first son, Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before Him. But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, The Lord has not chosen this one either. Next Jesse made Shammah pass by. And Samuel said; The Lord has not chosen this one either. Thus, Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said the same thing. Samuel said to Jesse, Are these all the children? There remains yet the youngest, and behold he is tending the sheep. And Samuel said to Jesse, bring him here”, and the rest is history as we read about the life of David, a man after God’s own heart.
God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
So who is this man Jesus? For centuries men and women have been asking the same question, searching, longing to know. Who is Jesus? Ruler, teacher, Rabbi, judge? Leader, forgiver, Redeemer, friend? Prophet, Priest, Son of God?
Yes, He is all of these.
Is it any wonder that people in Jesus’ day – even his own disciples – struggled to comprehend who He was? God became man, what an incredible thought! Here’s how teacher, Pastor Ray Stedman put it:
“But if we find it difficult, how much more did His own disciples! They, of all people, would be least likely to believe that He was God, for they lived with Him and saw His humanity as none of us ever has or ever will. They must have been confronted again and again with a question that puzzled and troubled them, “Who is this man…..”
I have often pictured them sleeping out under the stars with our Lord on a summer night by the Sea of Galilee. I can imagine Peter or John or one of the others waking in the night, rising up on an elbow, and as he looked at the Lord Jesus sleeping beside him, saying to himself, “Is it true? Can this man be the eternal God?”
The Apostle Paul who became a disciple after Jesus was crucified wrote in his letter to the Colossians, chapter 1 verses 15-17; “Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the Heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
Paul went on to write in the second chapter, “In Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.” Before God became man, He was the Word. According to John’s Gospel, chapter 1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”
And in verse 14 we read; “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Who is this man? He is Jesus from the tiny obscure village of Nazareth. He is God in human flesh. This is how He presented Himself to the world and, in the end, how we must either accept or reject Him.
