What Will You Do With Jesus?
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Our lives are full of countless decisions that we have to make each and every day. Some of them are seemingly very inconsequential, like deciding what to eat for breakfast. Every once in a while, you encounter a decision that alters your life in a way that is honestly incalculable; and sometimes, one of those decisions looms over you and you try everything in your power to avoid making that decision so that you can stay comfortable where you are.
This morning I want to pose to you a decision that I believe is more consequential for your life than anything else ever has been or ever will be. You won’t be the first or the last to be posed with the issue and compelled to choose, and really this is a decision that comes to everyone at some point or another.
The decision is simply this: what are you going to do about Jesus?
Most people I encounter think that this falls into the “unimportant decision” category, and at one point so did C.S. Lewis. He was a firm atheist that assumed Christianity and Jesus were children’s stories, and he was far more interested into discovering fulfilment through chasing true Joy in life by reading the best of philosophers. He even once described himself as “the most reluctant convert in all of England”
This morning, if you believe that what you do about Jesus is anything less than the most important decision you will ever make, please lend me your ear for just a little bit, and I will show you from John 7, along with a story from the life of C. S. Lewis, just how critical this decision really is for you.
Jesus Is A Figure In History Who Refuses To Be Ignored
Jesus Is A Figure In History Who Refuses To Be Ignored
State: To begin, Let’s look in the text of John 7 to see how Jesus, even from the time that he was ministering 2,000 years ago, was someone who could not be ignored. To give some context, remember that Jesus has been performing miracles, healing people, and teaching wherever he went. It has gotten to the point where the Jews are actively seeking to kill him, and so he privately came up to the biggest feast of the year in Jerusalem and began to teach publicly. Where we pick up in our text in verse 25, people are starting to recognize Jesus, and then they begin to deal with him.
Some of the people of Jerusalem therefore said, “Is not this the man whom they seek to kill? And here he is, speaking openly, and they say nothing to him! Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ? But we know where this man comes from, and when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from.”
At first, the people are surprised by how powerful his teaching was. Then, they begin to think to themselves, “isn’t this the guy that the Jews have put a bounty on? Isn’t he the one wanted dead or alive? How is he just standing up in the most public event on the Jewish calendar and continuing to denounce them?”
Then the thought begin to enter their minds and their conversation: “Could he be telling the truth? Could it be that the officials actually know he is the Christ?”
Then someone answers: “How can this be the Christ? We know this guy, we know his parents, we know where he grew up. We won’t know any of those things about the Christ!”
But then as the discourse grows, other voices chip in in verse 40,
When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So there was a division among the people over him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.
One group thinks the Christ would magically appear from nowhere, while another groupp remembers the Old Testament prophecy that the Christ would come from Bethlehem, but then they all forget that Jesus actually was born in Bethlehem. Even in the midst of all the confusion and misinformation, something must be done with this. It builds even to the point where one of the Jewish officials named Nicodemus, a man we read about back in John chapter 3, begins to step in for the sake of Jesus.
Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?”
As the debate continues to drive back and forth, and the people try to figure out what to do with him, at least this one point becomes clear: Jesus is not someone who can simply be brushed off to the side. Something about him refuses to be ignored.
And this would continue to be the case, even after the Jews would eventually make their final decision about him and murder him by crucifixion. Even after they made their final attempt at squashing him, the Word he taught continued to be preached by his followers, which leads to yet another very important decision from the Jews in Acts 5, led by a man named Gamaliel. At this point, Peter and John have been arrested for preaching about Jesus and the Jews are considering putting them to death, but then Gamaliel speaks up and says,
And he said to them, “Men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. For before these days Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him. He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered. So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!” So they took his advice,
Gamaliel was a wise Jewish official, much like Nicodemus, who had seen his fair share of false messiahs pop up, sway a few hundred people, then get squashed as their disciples dispersed and never uttered the name again. But when he encountered Jesus, and the gospel being preached with such boldness by his apostles, he acknowledged that something was different about this one. There was something that demanded attention, and the greatest level of care.
Illustrate: Earlier I mentioned that C.S. Lewis was the “most reluctant convert in all of England.” He described himself this way because for his entire life, he never wanted anything to do with Jesus or God or anything about any religion. He viewed himself as a smart man, and he viewed Christianity as a children's story.
As he looks back on his path to Christianity, he views it like a game of chess that he was playing with God. In his book “Surprised by Joy,” he begins to describe the endgame being played out. He felt something happening almost against his will in his mind: something was causing him to long for something or someone outside of himself. He began reading all the English classics, and he started being confronted with so many Christian intellectuals, and then checkmate came one fateful night while Lewis was working in his study. He says in his book, “You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms.”
Apply: Maybe some of you have a story that is somewhat similar to that of Lewis. Maybe you didn’t start as an atheist, and maybe you weren’t the most reluctant convert. Maybe you haven’t had such a dramatic moment yet in your life, but maybe you’ve begun to feel the same tug Lewis was feeling. Maybe you’ve been grappling with that unshakeable sense that there is something more, something greater, something knocking on the door of your mind at night, something that refuses to be ignored.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, because Jesus is a present reality that refuses to be ignored.
And why is Jesus so impossible to ignore? It’s because Jesus isn’t just another interesting historical figure for your history books; something about him pointed to him being much more consequential than that.
Jesus Is, Beyond the Shadow of Doubt, The Christ
Jesus Is, Beyond the Shadow of Doubt, The Christ
State: Note the direction that the public debate began to take here in verse 40.
When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?”
At some point, the debate was no longer about whether or not Jesus was important, but it became about how important he was.
Some believed him to be the prophet, some believed him to be the Christ, and others still refused to believe because of their own misunderstandings. Some even began to be so convinced by the evidence that they said,
Yet many of the people believed in him. They said, “When the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?”
It’s this question that I want to stop and ponder for a moment. I want us to take a moment and look at the evidence we are working with about who Jesus really is. Today there are so many people who are comfortable calling him a good person, a good teacher, a role model, someone worth listening to. I know that Muslims call him a great prophet, Buddhists consider him enlightened, I have known Hindus who have added him to their pantheon of gods. But who is he really? What does the evidence say? What did he claim?
To answer that, lets back up for a second and look at the claims Jesus made in this passage to stir up such a commotion.
So Jesus proclaimed, as he taught in the temple, “You know me, and you know where I come from. But I have not come of my own accord. He who sent me is true, and him you do not know. I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me.”
Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.”
In the first passage, Jesus confronts their claims about his origins with a shocking statement: though they might think he is from Galilee, and that he is the son of Mary and Joseph, that is only a partial truth. In a much more important sense, Jesus reveals that he is the Eternal Son of God. He reveals and teaches them that he has come from God, not just from the womb of Mary. He’s making a claim that these people don’t know God, but Jesus has come directly from the Father.
In the second passage, Jesus reveals to them that no matter what they do to him, he is going to return to the Father who sent him from heaven. He shows that he has access to places and realms that the Jews don’t have. He teaches them that he will ascend back into heaven, and from there he will not be accessible to those who seek to harm him.
These claims are part of the reason that the Jews begin to get so angry with him, and these are only some of the amazing claims Jesus made in his ministry. He also publicly taught about himself things like
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
After teaching all of these things, he would eventually be murdered by the Jews and buried in a tomb. He would then resurrect from the dead and appear publicly to many witnesses, continuing to teach them about himself. At one point, he even opened up the Scriptures and claimed that everything written in the Scriptures were always pointing to himself.
Does this sound like someone who is inconsequential to you? Is this just a good teacher? A history book character? A prophet?
No, but Jesus is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the Christ, the Son of God.
Illustrate: The story I told earlier about Lewis was one of two conversion stories he tells; that one was his conversion from atheism to theism; but there is another story about his conversion from believing in “God” to believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and the Christ.
After he became a theist, he began attending church, but he didn’t much care for it. He just went because he felt like he needed to do something about his newfound belief in the existence of God. He heard the Word of God, and listened to the hymns, but he didn’t believe yet that Jesus was the Christ.
Then he tells of a day when he was confronted with another conversion, though it was harder for him to explain than his first conversion to theism. All he can say is, “I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I did not spend the ride in thought, nor in great emotion. It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.”
Do you see how relentlessly Jesus pursues us? Do you see how he refuses to be ignored, or brushed off as unimportant?
Apply: Will you commit yourself to investigating the single most important figure in the history of our universe? Will you actually seek the truth? If you do, you will come to find that Jesus is in fact the Christ.
Maybe you confess that already, but has that confession lost its gravity with you? Have you grown comfortable with the idea that Jesus is the Christ? Does that reality still bend everything else in your world around itself, and does that confession still stand as the solid rock upon which you stand or fall?
If you have come to this conclusion that Jesus is the Christ, please allow me to make this third and final point: Jesus Christ changes everything for you.
Jesus Christ Changes Everything For You
Jesus Christ Changes Everything For You
State: Consider for a moment the life of Nicodemus. He is a member of the Sanhedrin, one of the most highly respected Jewish officials anywhere. He has made his name and reputation by being respected and playing the politics of the Jewish religious landscape. He knows that being caught up in what was viewed by the other officials as a scandal, a blasphemy, a cult-like spinoff led by a false messiah, could be the end of his life as he knows it. At the same time, its clear that he just can’t get Jesus out of his head and he can’t sleep at night if he just tries to brush him aside. Thats why, in John chapter 3, he approaches Jesus by night and in secret to find out more about him. But here in chapter 7, Nicodemus begins to make a stand; not only in the presence of other religious elites, but in front of all of Judea. What is leading him to take such risks? Why would he risk his livelihood like that? Its because when you come to recognize that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, nothing else matters to you.
Or consider the Apostles. Even though they experienced fear at times, and even though they were unfaithful at times, look what their lives led to: every single one of them died horrific deaths because they wouldn’t stop preaching about Jesus. Paul was executed, Peter was crucified, the rest were hunted down and murdered, except for John, who was exiled to an island to live in solitude.
Then for generation after generation, men and women were converted to Christ through the preaching of the gospel and willingly sacrificed themselves so that they could continue to spread that gospel to others. Why? Why did the message of Jesus continue to thrive and spread even though the highest authorities on Earth utilized every resource at their disposal to crush it? Why would men and women endure molten lead rather than recant?
Its because they learned the truth about Jesus; and when someone learns the truth about Jesus, there is nothing else in this world for them. The old ways of life, the things they used to care the most about, all began to lose their luster. The stability, the security, the logical life, it all didn’t matter anymore if they didn’t have Christ. And if they did have Christ, then they would happily endure anything and everything, for even death only brought them closer to him. As the Apostle Paul says in the book of Philippians while sitting in prison awaiting potential execution,
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Illustrate: Let me use Lewis one last time here as another example of what this looks like in a person’s life. For Lewis, he spent so much of his life seeking after what he called “Joy.” For him, it was the concept of feeling a longing, and nothing more. But when he came to know Jesus, and to believe that he was the Christ, he says,
“But what, in conclusion, of Joy?… To tell you the truth, the subject has lost nearly all interest for me since I became a Christian. It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer.”
Lewis came to realize that his pursuit of Joy was just a signpost that was leading him to Jesus, who is fully satisfying.
Apply: So I close by asking you, what will you do with Jesus? He refuses to be ignored, and he simply cannot be brushed off to the side as a trivial component of human history. He is, without question, the Christ, the Son of God. He is the most beautiful thing you could ever come to behold. He is life itself, and in him we find fulness of life for our mortal bodies.
Wherever you find yourself on your spiritual journey today, I implore you, behold Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, and be filled in him.
Big Idea: Jesus is simply too important for us to ignore, and what we do with him will be the most important decision of our lives.