Mel Gibson’s film "The Passion of the Christ", will be released this week in local theatres. The film graphically captures the final moments of Christ’s life as he is taken to trial, falsely accused, executed on a Roman cross, and laid in a tomb. The fact that this movie is already selling out in theatres around town suggests that there is great curiosity about Jesus even among regular churchgoers. People are eager to see and experience Jesus’ life reenacted; uncensored and unsterilized.
We are already anticipating that the film will raise many questions about our faith. Obviously we want to make the most of this exciting opportunity and use it as an opportunity to invite people to have their questions answered. On Sundays during our worship services we want you to bring anyone here to Lakeside who has questions about the life, death, burial, or resurrection of Jesus. We talk about Jesus every week, but starting today and in the weeks leading up to Easter we are going to kick things into high gear here and begin an adventure into the heart and mind of Christ. What made him tick? Why did he give up his life? What was he passionate about? Why is he our center and our focus?
But there is more! During each hour of worship we also have a number of Lifestage Bible Fellowships. These are medium-sized gatherings where you join with people of a common life stage to build relationships and dig into God’s word. Our Lifestage Bible Fellowships, in all classes of all ages, are investigating the life of Christ. These Lifestage Bible Fellowships are an exciting place to get connected to God and into our church family. I know these Lifestage Bible Fellowships have been instrumental in my life in helping know God in a very deep and real way. Don’t forget that we have a midweek Lifestage Bible Fellowship group meeting here Wednesdays at 6:30 PM.
But I want to tell you about one more exciting opportunity. Starting next week on Sunday evenings at 5:30 PM, we are going to have an open forum here at the church on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We will be leading this forum and will come prepared to dialogue, explore any questions or objections, and present a clear Christian perspective on Christ’s life. This will be a perfect time to bring your neighbors or friends who have seen "The Passion of the Christ" but who are not necessarily ready to attend a church service. You can walk with them and encourage them as they seek answers to some of the most important questions we can ask about God. Lee Strobel has published a new book called The Case for the Resurrection. We are going to do everything we can to place a free copy of this book into the hands of every non-member who attends our Sunday night forum.
It is hard to predict how "The Passion of the Christ" will impact our community. One thing is for sure; the Bible instructs us to make the most of every opportunity. Purchase a movie ticket for your unbelieving friends and skeptics, bring them to our events, and start them on a life-changing journey of knowing God. They will literally thank you for all eternity. They will be eternally grateful and so will God.
Some simple truths about Jesus Christ
Now to the life of Jesus Christ. I want to share some simple truths about Jesus Christ that aren’t always understood, not even by regular churchgoers. In sharing these truths I think you will begin to understand why Jesus polarizes our culture and why those who trust in Jesus Christ often become lightning rods. For our purposes this morning, I would like to encourage you to find John 1 in your Bibles.
It is obvious, I think to everyone, that Jesus was fully man. He was born of a woman and had a full childhood before suffering a brutally physical death. But that alone isn’t what makes Jesus Christ so controversial. Rather, it is who Jesus claimed to be. And it is who his followers believed him to be.
Jesus claimed to be the living God.
Jesus lived and died by the assumption that he was the living God, the creator and sustainer of the entire universe. He was the alpha and the omega. He was the God who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and who issued the Ten Commandments. If you want to stir up some controversy, tell your co-workers that you are God. Tell them that you were instrumental in bringing about the creation of the world. Tell them that you knew Adam and Eve personally. Tell them that you designed Noah’s ark and parted the Red Sea. We all know what happens to people who claim to be God. They get labeled, medicated, hospitalized, and often wind up marginalized from society.
People who claim to be God are never taken seriously. In Jesus’ day they would pick up stones to execute anyone guilty of making such blasphemous, delusional boasts. Getting stoned had a whole other meaning in Jesus’ day. You did it only once.
So Jesus passionately claimed to be the living God, the ancient of ages, Yahweh, and Jehovah. You can see this in John 1:1-4 (NIV) where Jesus is referred to as, "the Word." In this passage John writes, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men."
Notice the wording, "In the beginning." This is a reference to creation! Genesis 1:1 (NIV) says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Jesus claimed to have always been with God since the beginning of creation. But even more, he claimed to be God and he claimed to be the source of our very existence. He claimed to have given us breath and our very lives.
There is a new television series on CBS called "Joan of Arcadia" which is about a teenage girl who bumps into unusual people who keep showing up, introducing themselves as God, and who keep giving her specific directions to do things. The show is really popular. The theme song for the show is "One of Us" by Joan Osborne which raises the question, "What if God were one of us?" This question isn’t an idle notion or fanciful thinking, at least not according to the gospel writers. God was one of us. He did live and dwell among us.
Why would God become a mortal man?
So if that’s true, why on earth would God become one of us in the person of Jesus? Jesus came from the Father in heaven to reveal God’s glory. To take the mystery about God away and to make God fully known. Jesus came to be a picture of God for us and to demonstrate what God is like.
John 1:9 (NIV) refers to Jesus as light. "The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world."
In John 1:14 (NIV) we get another clue. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
John 1:18 (NIV) says, "No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known."
There is a story by Paul Harvey that is often told around Christmas. The story is about a man who struggled to understand why God would become one of us. As his family drove off to church for a Christmas Eve service, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud.
At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and in a desperate search for shelter had tried to fly through his large landscaped window. Well he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter if he could direct the birds to it.
Quickly he put on a coat and galoshes and tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs andsprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay the birds ignored the bread crumbs and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms. Instead of going into the barn, they scattered in every direction except in the direction of the warm, lighted barn.
And then he realized that they were afraid of him. "To them", he reasoned, "I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me. That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how?" Any move he made tended to frighten them and confuse them. They just would not follow him. They would not be led or shooed, because they feared him. "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so that they could see and hear and understand." In that moment he understood why on earth God would become one of us.
Jesus came to earth so that men could understand what God is truly like.
In his own words Jesus told us that he came to be, "the way and the truth and the life." John 14:6 (NIV) He came to be as, "the light (that) shines in the darkness." John 1:5 (NIV) Throughout his whole life Jesus passionately bore witness to his own identity as God. In John 5:36-40 (NIV) he says of himself, "I have testimony weightier than that of John (the Baptist). For the very work that the Father has given me to finish, and which I am doing, testifies that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life."
John 8:19 (NIV) states, " 'You do not know me or my Father', Jesus said, 'If you knew me, you would know my Father also.' "
In John 14:11 (NIV) he says, "Believe in me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves." Jesus saw himself as the one hope for mankind knowing and being connected to God. His life mission was to bear witness to the truth about himself, so that in knowing him we might also know the one true living God.
Why wasn't Jesus stoned for blasphemy?
I mentioned earlier that in Jesus’ day, they picked up stones and executed anyone who made blasphemous and reckless boasts about being the Son of God. If that is true, then why didn’t Jesus ever get stoned? One obvious reason is that getting stoned isn’t very healthy. It destroys the mind. You’ve seen the egg in frying pan on those commercials!
All jesting aside, Jesus didn’t get stoned because his claims had a measure of validity. He performed miracles. He cast out demons. He forgave sins. He demonstrated power over the elements of nature. He turned water into wine. He raised the dead. He cured people of chronic illness, sickness, disease, and blindness. He knew men’s hearts. He taught with authority and complete integrity. He did not sin, even while under temptation. He showed other-worldly, divine love. He changed lives. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. God worked in just the way Christ preached. He proved trustworthy. Upon his death, Jesus was resurrected and ascended into heaven in full view of his followers. He fulfilled hundreds of Old Testament prophecies.
Even secular, non-Christian historians attest to a first century miracle worker named Jesus. Jesus gave the masses cause to believe he was who he claimed to be. They didn’t believe just because they were a bunch of naïve, backwoods Jewish shepherds. They believed because there was proper cause. There was evidence. They had undeniable experiences and encounters. Their eyes had beheld the glory of God in the face of Jesus. What Jesus taught and revealed about God proved true.
Jesus' passion was to witness for God; to make God known to us.
In his life and death, Jesus passionately sought to make God known to us. This is what his death was all about. John 3:16 (NIV) says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." Romans 5:8 (NIV) tells us, "But God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
If it weren't for Jesus Christ we wouldn’t know that much about God. It was so important that Christ came bearing witness to himself and to the Father. Imagine if we didn’t have Christ? Imagine if we only had some make-believe CBS television program? Imagine if like so many others, we left wishing and hoping we might someday become a real-life Joan of Arcadia, or get touched by an angel?
Our passion should be to make God known to others.
Listen, we are surrounded every day by people who do not know what God is like. We live in a secular society now. The majority of people who live around us, who attend our family reunions, whose houses we drive by, who we work with every day, don’t even know God. For those around us, it is just as important that we become witnesses of God as it was for Jesus to be a witness of God.
Over the last few weeks I have been greatly encouraged. Okay, I’ve been pumped! There are signs that we are moving out of our comfort zones in witnessing. A member of our church was describing for me how she has begun meeting with co-workers, reading through The Case for Faith book, brushing up, so that she and her co-workers can intelligently share Christ with their boss.
This week another member described his plans to knock on doors in his neighborhood and invite them to a Bible study in his garage that he is remodeling. Dozens of people participating in our Deeper Life groups have finished writing their testimonies and are learning to share Christ with others in clear, powerful ways.
The truth is that like Christ, we can become that person who connects people to God, but only if we get bold and venture out of our comfort zones.
We want to end this morning on a high note. As we close this service out, I want you to consider making one of the commitments displayed on the screen behind me. Before you leave today, I want you to write your commitment down and share it with at least one other person. Become the passionate witness to those in your circle that Jesus Christ is for God.