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Back to Sermons Index Back to Home Page 10th August 2008 PMTHE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST Pastor Colin MeadowsIsaiah 42:1-7, Philippians 2:5-11. Prime Convictions focus Our goal is to discover who God is and how he wants us to live. Remember Blaise Pascal’s comment: ‘It is the heart which experiences God and not the reason.’ Let us seek after God with all our hearts, our whole being – mind, emotions and will! ►Just who is Jesus? Who is this incomparable Christ that history speaks of? I have been reading a book entitled ‘The Jewish 100 – A Ranking of the Most Influential Jews of all time’ by Michael Shapiro. Number one on this list is Moses, the prophet who brought the people out of captivity in Egypt. Number two on the list is Jesus of Nazareth, acknowledged by Jews and non-Jews alike as being one of the most influential people of all time. Who is this Jesus? Let us look to the biblical record to see what we can discover. In particular we will look at a passage from Isaiah, written probably around 700BC, and then at portion of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, recorded around 61AD. What do we discover about Jesus from these and other Biblical writings? ►Jesus is fully divine Our reading in Philippians reminds us that Jesus is truly divine. Philippians 2:5 “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.” The clear teaching of the New Testament is that Jesus is God. But do we have Old Testament references that also point to Jesus as God? Psalm 2 is one strong example I feel in this regard. How do we know that these verses refer to Christ? Because the NT writers frequently quoted this psalm as referring to Christ as God, speaking of Jesus as the great Son of David and God’s Anointed. See for example Acts 4:25-28 where these verses are quoted. Psalm 2:1-2 “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One.” Psalm 2:7 He said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father. Ask of me and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron sceptre; you will dash them to pieces like pottery.” God the Father was revealing himself through God the Son. People are then cautioned in this psalm to submit to the Son and thus take refuge in him. Psalm 2:12 “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” The divinity of Christ was thus not a later development, introduced as some have suggested by the church in the second or third century. The revelation of Jesus as God however becomes crystal clear when we move into the New Testament. John 1:1-3 “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.” Jesus was the divine Word, revealing the Father to the world. When Thomas, the disciple who doubted, was later confronted with the risen Christ his statement of faith is so clear. John 20:28 “Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” Thomas was in no doubt. Jesus was truly God. We as Christians must hold very strongly to this wonderful truth. But there is another side to Jesus… ►Jesus is fully human Jesus was thus with the Father from the beginning of time. But we discover something more that is so amazing – Jesus was also truly human. This was so far removed from the Jewish mind that whenever Jesus spoke of such truths he was reviled. Yet God’s Word is so clear. Jesus, God’s servant, was fully human. We find glimmers of this truth right back in the Old Testament. Isaiah 42:1-2 “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight… He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.” It is in the NT however that all becomes clear. Philippians 2:7,8 “But made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man.” John 1:14, 18 “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…No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” Jesus is thus God, revealed in the flesh, fully human, fully divine. He is not just a good moral teacher, as many people would like to claim, a man who went about doing good. C.S.Lewis, the Christian thinker of the last century, noted that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and that he had the power to forgive sins. These are not the sort of claims a mere human being would make. He went on to comment… “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 a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity Who is Jesus to you? Christians down through the ages have been willing to die for the truth that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. What about you? But we then need to ask another important question…. ►What has Jesus done for us? Jesus came to set us free. The goal of his mission in coming to earth was clearly stated long ago by the prophets. Let’s go to the prophet Isaiah who spoke much about the coming saviour. What was Christ, the Anointed One, to do. Isaiah 42:7 “To open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.” Later when Jesus did come, he explained his mission on earth by using by quoting words from the related servant passage in Isaiah 61:1-2. Luke 4:18-19 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Jesus came to earth as a sinless babe. He lived a life of faith, leaving us a wonderful example of godly living. He then died a lonely death on a cross, was buried for three days and then rose again from the dead. He then ascended again into heaven and now intercedes for us. Why? 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Jesus came to set us free from our sins, to open eyes that were blind, to release us from prison, to bring us new life. These are all images of the amazing restoration that Jesus will bring, set free to become all that God intended for us to be. ►What should our response be to this amazing Jesus? What should we do in response to what the Bible has told us? John 20:31 “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” To believe means to listen to what Jesus has done for us and to act on what you have heard. I like the saying that goes: If you don’t live it, you don’t believe it.” To step out in faith, firstly in the quietness of your heart, acknowledging who Jesus is and thanking him for what he has done for you. Then we need to publicly to identify with Jesus that we are one of his followers. In the New Testament believers did this by telling others of their faith and then by being baptized. Baptism was a public acknowledgement that they were now following Jesus as Lord and Master of their lives. What about you? Have you stepped over the line to follow Christ? If you have, why not publicly tell the world by sharing your faith story with your friends and by being baptized. Why not right now step over the line to begin the journey of faith with Jesus, the One who is fully human, fully divine. Don’t keep putting it off! Like the Nike ad says, ‘Just do it!’
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