Introduction:
A. I hope you’ve had a great Christmas and holiday week.
1. We are really enjoying having our girls home from college, and seeing so many others who are visiting during the holidays.
B. With all the difficulties that come with traveling these days, I thought you might get a kick out of this story.
1. A family was flying to visit relatives during the Christmas holiday.
2. They arrived at O’hare airport for their trip.
3. As you may know, O’hare airport is long known for it’s winter-weather flight delays and cancellations, long security-check lines, and lost luggage.
4. As the family was checking in their luggage, they noticed mistletoe hanging over the weigh-in scale.
5. The young son asked his dad, “Why is that mistletoe hanging up there?”
6. Without missing a beat, the father replied, “Well, my guess is so you can kiss your luggage goodbye.”
7. I hope and pray that everyone’s travels are safe and without incident on their return trips.
C. Today, as we worship on the last Sunday of 2007, we are finishing up our series called “Devoted To Jesus.”
1. About four months ago we started this series with the hope that we would be able to take another look at Jesus, and in doing so we would come away with a clearer understanding of Jesus, which would result in a greater appreciation for and devotion to our Lord and Savior.
2. I hope and pray that that is exactly what has happened as we have taken another look at the pre-existence of Jesus, the Jewishness of Jesus, the birth of Jesus and His quiet years.
3. We have looked at His baptism, His temptation, and the Dream team He assembled.
4. We have looked at His relationship with Sinners, His power, and His teaching.
5. And we have investigated His crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and second coming.
D. So how do we wrap up such a study?
1. I think we start by admitting that the study of Jesus has no end.
2. Jesus is impossible to categorize; He cannot be boxed in.
3. Jesus is radically unlike anyone else who has ever lived.
4. One person described the difference between Jesus and everyone else in this way, “It is the difference between the one who is an example of living and the one who is the life itself.” (Charles Williams).
5. What I would like to offer you today is a series of impressions of Jesus.
6. These impressions in no way form a whole picture of Jesus, but these are facets of Jesus that we should be trying to understand and appreciate.
I. Jesus is the God Man.
A. Sometimes I think that it would have been easier if God had just given us a set of ideas to either accept or reject.
1. But that’s not what God gave us, He gave us Himself in the form of a person.
2. Jesus pointed to Himself and said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” (Jn. 14:6)
B. The duel nature of Jesus is part of the mystery of Jesus.
1. How did this Galilean Jew with a family and a hometown come to be worshiped as God?
2. Jesus never trivialized or waffled about His identity. He knew who He was!
3. He accepted Peter’s prostrate worship.
4. To the lame man and an adulterous woman and to many others, He said authoritatively, “I forgive your sins.”
C. Jesus’ audacious claims about himself pose what may be the central question of all history, the dividing point between Christianity and other religions.
1. Although Muslims and many Jews respect Jesus as a great teacher and prophet, no Muslim can imagine Mohammed claiming to be Allah any more than a Jew can imagine Moses claiming to be Yahweh.
2. That’s what makes Jesus and His claims so different from any other religious leader before or after Him.
3. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher, He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.”
D. And so, Jesus’ entire life stands or falls on His claim to be God.
1. I cannot trust His promised forgiveness unless He has the authority to back up such an offer.
2. I cannot trust His words about the other side, “I go to prepare a place for you…,” unless I believe what He said about coming from the Father and returning to the Father.
3. And unless He is and was in some way God, then His death on the cross is no different from the death of the thieves who died on each side of Him.
4. Either Jesus is the God Man, and therefore the Lord and Savior, or he is no man worthy of our attention or adulation.
5. I believe that Jesus is the God Man – that’s what the Bible teaches.
II. Jesus is the Portrait of God.
A. George Buttrick, the former chaplain at Harvard, recalls that students would come into his office, plop down on a chair and declare, “I don’t believe in God.”
1. Buttrick would give this disarming reply, “Tell me what kind of God you don’t believe in. I probably don’t believe in that God either.”
2. Then Buttrick would talk about Jesus, the corrective to all our assumptions about God.
B. The apostle Paul boldly called Jesus “the image of the invisible God.” (Col. 1:15)
1. Jesus was God’s exact replica: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.” (Col. 1:19)
2. God is, in a word, Christlike.
3. Jesus presents a God “with skin.”
4. In this visible model, we can discern God’s features more clearly.
5. Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)
6. Martin Luther encouraged his students to flee the hidden God and run to Christ, and now I know why.
C. There are so many spiritual questions and speculations about God, and truth, that we can get lost in them.
1. If we speculate about such things as, the problem of pain, or providence verses free will, then everything becomes fuzzy.
2. But if we look at Jesus Himself, at how He treated actual people in pain, at His calls to free and diligent action, then clarity is restored.
3. We can worry ourselves into a state of spiritual quicksand over questions like “What good does it do to pray if God already knows everything?,” but Jesus silences such questions: He prayed, and so should we!
D. Jesus introduced profound changes in how we view God.
1. One of the main things He did was, He brought God near.
2. To Jews who knew a distant, indefinable God, Jesus brought the message that God cares for the grass of the field, feeds sparrows, and numbers the hairs on a person’s head.
3. To Jews who dared not pronounce the Name of God, Jesus brought the shocking intimacy of the Aramaic word Abba, “father.”
4. It was a familiar term of family affection, like “Daddy” or “Dada,” the first word many children speak.
5. Before Jesus came, no one would have thought of applying such a word to Yahweh, the Sovereign Lord of the universe.
6. An event happened as Jesus hung on the cross that seemed to seal this new intimacy with God.
7. Mark records that just as Jesus breathed His last, “The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” (Mk. 15:38)
8. This massive curtain had served to wall off the Most Holy Place, where God’s presence dwelled.
9. The tearing of this curtain showed beyond doubt exactly what was accomplished by Jesus’ death – no more sacrifices would ever be required, and no earthly high priest would be necessary.
10. We, Christians, live under a new intimacy that we might take for granted.
11. We sing choruses to God and converse in casual prayer, and call God our Abba, Father – all this because of Jesus.
12. And so, Jesus gives us and incredibly clear and wonderful portrait of a God who is near and intimate.
III. Jesus is Love
A. Left on our own, we all would come up with a very different notion of God than the one that Jesus revealed.
1. More than anything, Jesus revealed a God who is love.
2. Would anyone of us have come up with the notion of a God who loves and yearns to be loved?
3. Not once does the Qur’an apply the word love to God.
4. Aristotle stated, “It would be eccentric for anyone to claim that he loved Zeus” – or that Zeus loved a human being, for that matter.
B. But in dazzling contrast to that, Jesus and Christianity teaches that “God is love.”
1. The apostle John tells us that love is the main reason Jesus came to earth, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” (1 Jn. 4:9)
2. Jesus’ own stories about God’s love express a quality almost of desperation.
3. In Luke 15, He tells of a woman who searches frantically until she finds the valuable coin and of a shepherd who hunts in the darkness until he finds the one sheep who has wandered away.
4. Each parable concludes with a scene of rejoicing, a celestial party erupts over the news of another sinner welcomed home.
5. Finally, building to an emotional climax, Jesus tells the story of the lost son, a prodigal who spurns the love of his father and squanders his inheritance in a far country, but in the end returns to the open, loving arms of his father, who offers forgiveness and throws a party.
6. In a nutshell, the Bible from Genesis3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless with desire to get his family back.
C. The truth of the matter is that God loves you and me.
1. The Maker of all things loves and wants you and me.
2. The Savior, who died and is alive, loves and wants you and me.
3. Have you come to the place where you are letting God love you?
4. That’s pretty important, don’t you think?
IV. Jesus is the Friend of Sinners
A. When Jesus came to earth, demons recognized Him, the sick flocked to Him, and sinners doused His feet and head with perfume.
1. Meanwhile, pious Jews with their strict preconceptions of what God should be like were offended by all this.
2. Their rejection of Jesus makes me cautious about my own reaction to Jesus and sinners.
B. Jesus was a friend of sinners.
1. Jesus commended a groveling tax collector over a God fearing Pharisee.
2. The first person to whom Jesus openly revealed Himself as Messiah was a Samaritan woman who had a history of failed marriages and shacking up.
3. With His dying breath, Jesus pardoned a thief who would have no ability for spiritual growth or service.
4. You would expect the friend of sinners to be a sinner, but we know that Jesus Himself was not a sinner.
C. Jesus perfectly blended a graciousness toward sinners and a hostility toward sin.
1. Unfortunately, often Jesus’ followers reverse the two.
2. Sadly, we far too often love sin and hate sinners.
3. If we are honest, we struggle to practice the principle, “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”
4. How does one hold to high standards of moral purity while at the same time showing grace toward those who fail those standards?
5. How can we learn to embrace the sinner without encouraging sin?
6. Jesus did that better than anyone who has ever walked this earth.
7. The man from Nazareth was a sinless friend of sinners, a pattern that should convict us on both accounts.
8. I suggest that we keep our eyes on Jesus.
V. Jesus is the Wounded Healer
A. What was it that possessed Christians to seize upon the execution device of the cross as a symbol for faith?
1. It seems that they would have done everything in their power to squelch the memory of the scandalous injustice of the cross, right?
2. They could have stressed the Resurrection and come up with some symbol to represent it.
3. Why make the cross the centerpiece of the faith?
4. In John Updike’s words, the cross “profoundly offended the Greeks with their playful, beautiful, invulnerable pantheon and the Jews with their traditional expectations of a regal Messiah. Yet it answered, as it were, to the facts, to something deep within men. God crucified formed a bridge between our human perception of a cruelly imperfect and indifferent world and our human need for God, our human sense that God is present.”
B. Ultimately, the cross gives hope when there is no hope.
1. As the apostle Paul suffered with something in his life. We are not sure what it was. He called it his thorn in the flesh, and three times he begged God for it’s removal.
2. God sent him this message, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9a)
3. Paul then concluded, “Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:9b-10)
4. Here we see Paul not speaking about resignation, but of transformation.
5. The very things that make us feel inadequate, the very things that plunder hope, these are the things that God uses to accomplish His work.
6. If you question that, just look at the cross.
C. In an act of transformation, God took the worst deed in history (the cross) and turned it into the greatest victory. Because of the cross, we have hope.
1. It is not through Jesus’ miracles that we are healed, but through His wounds that we are healed, said Isaiah the prophet.
2. If God can extract such triumph out of the jaws of apparent defeat, if God can draw strength from a moment of ultimate weakness, what might God do with the apparent failures and hardships of our lives?
3. The fatally wounded healer came back from the dead, and that gives us a sneak preview into how all things will look from the vantage point of eternity.
4. From that point, when we look back, every scar, every hurt, every disappointment will be seen in a different light.
5. Between the cross and the empty tomb hovers the promise of God, the hope for the world, and the hope for each one of us who lives in it.
6. We are all wounded, and Jesus is our wounded healer, who will someday bring complete healing and blessing to all of us. Don’t you look forward to that day?!
Conclusion:
A. I hope and pray that we will be inspired and captivated with Jesus the Christ.
1. There is none like Him. He has done so much for us and continues to minister to us from His position in heaven.
2. My suggestion for all of us is to keep our eyes on Him.
3. Bible teacher Tony Evans tells of a farmer who was teaching his son to plow with a mule.
a. He told his son, “To make a straight furrow, son, just pick out an object beyond the field and keep your eyes fixed on it.”
b. The boy nodded his understanding, and the farmer left.
c. When he returned an hour later, the farmer was shocked to see a field of twisted furrows.
d. “What happened, son? I thought I told you to keep your eye on an object?”
e. “I did, Dad,” said the boy.
f. “What was the object you focused on?” asked the father.
g. The boy pointed to a cow in the adjoining pasture. OOPS.
4. The Bible says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Heb. 13:8) He is our fixed point and we must focus on Him.
5. We would do well to emulate Paul’s passion in Phil. 3:10, when he said above all else, “I want to know Christ…”
6. How badly do we want to know Christ? How badly do you want to become like Him?
7. May we always gives ourselves fully to that end!
8. May we be devoted to Jesus!
Resource: Philip Yancy, The Jesus I Never Knew, chapter 14, “The Difference He Makes.”
