Transform: Believe
THE TRUE STORY OF JESUS
The Meaning of Jesus—Part 1; Understanding Him—December 1, 2002
Luke 1:1–4; 24:18–27
1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
18 Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him.
21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. 22 Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, 23 and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive.
24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.” 25 And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
This is God’s Word
Tonight we’re going to start another series on the life of Jesus. We’re going to build a biography of Jesus, but out of the gospel of Luke. Right off the bat, Luke takes ahold of one of the very first issues that confronts anyone who is trying to begin to explore Christianity. It’s interesting. As you can almost immediately intuit from these first four verses of the gospel of Luke that he is writing to someone he calls “O excellent Theophilus,” he’s writing to a cultured, educated man.
Therefore, expects the book will be read by educated and fairly cultured readers. He immediately deals with what the average educated person wonders about. If someone comes along and says, “I’m going to tell you the story of Jesus,” the first question that comes up is, “Where did you get your information? How do we know it’s reliable?”
If you begin to study Christianity or explore Christianity, immediately, in our society, and especially in New York … The question immediately comes up … It’s not a question; it’s actually a premise. The premise is the accounts of Jesus’ life in the Bible and in the Gospels are not reliable, they’re basically legends, and therefore, we can’t really know who Jesus is.
We can’t really know what he said or what he claimed or what he did or who he was, at all. Of course, that’s a huge barrier to any kind of progress. Luke immediately answers the question, immediately confronts it, in a remarkable way, and basically says here, “I’m going to tell you the true story of Jesus.” In that are our three points.
By the way, as we look and see how he deals with this objection to Christianity that we don’t really know who Jesus is because the accounts are legendary, we’re going to actually get a very a good intro, I think, to the gospel of Luke, that we’re going to be looking at over the next few weeks. He’s telling us, “I’m about to give you the true story of Jesus.”
1. The gospel is about Jesus
First, it’s the true story of Jesus. That might seem interesting and obvious, but in the beginning he says, “I’m going to give you an account of,” what he calls, “the things that have been accomplished among us.” Do you see verse 1? That’s a very odd phrase. It might not strike you immediately. “The things among us” are historical events.
He says, “I’m going to recount to you the historic events of Jesus, the things that happened among us,” but he doesn’t use the word happened, which would be the normal word to use with historic events; he uses the word accomplished. Or the word fulfilled is another way you could translate it. It’s a very odd word to use with historic events, and here’s what he’s saying. He says in Jesus Christ, history is fulfilled. Jesus Christ’s life is the proof and the fulfillment of God working in history for centuries, all coming to a climax now in Jesus. What is he saying?
Dick Lucas, a British minister, some years ago, was reading an essay, and in it, the man was a skeptic about Christianity, and he said something like, “I’d love to believe in God. I really would. But it isn’t possible. I could believe in God if someone would just give me a watertight argument, a watertight proof without a single hole, one from which there is no escaping. Then, I could believe.” He says, “I’d believe in God, as long as God would give me an infallible, inescapable argument.”
Dick Lucas said in his sermon, which I got this off a tape some years ago, which helped me a great deal … He essentially said, “I don’t think God has provided us with a watertight argument, though I know some disagree with me. What God has provided you and me is a watertight person, with no holes in him. There’s no escaping him. Jesus Christ is the watertight person against whom, in the end, there could be no argument.”
As I’ve thought about this over the years, I think he’s absolutely right, and here’s what he means. Millions of people have found that God has not given us an inescapable, infallible argument, but Jesus himself is an inescapable, infallible person against whom there can be no argument. Millions of people, just by looking at the life of Jesus have found him intellectually inescapable. What do I mean?
Well, when we look through the gospel, as we go through the gospel of Luke, there’s a one hand and another hand to Jesus. On the one hand, we’re going to see him unbelievably open and welcoming and empowering and inclusive, as it were, of people who, back in those days, were outsiders and outcasts. You’re going to see him reaching out, over and over again, to the poor, to women, to children, to prostitutes, to lepers, to collaborators with the enemy, to Gentiles.
We modern people read this, and you’re especially going to see this in the book of Luke … We read these incidents and we love that. We say, “Isn’t that remarkable?” but it’s more remarkable than you know, because to see him reaching out to those kinds of folks, even now, is remarkable, but in the day where he lived, in that time and place, he was utterly unique, he was utterly outrageous, he was over-the-top, in his inclusiveness, in his openness, in his reaching out to all these people.
On the other hand, also, on every single page, you are going to see him making self-centered claims, claims about himself, that are by any standards megalomaniacal. They’re beyond megalomania. You’re going to see him, routinely, on every page … He claims he’s going to judge the world on the last day. He claims he is the author and giver of life. He claims he alone has authority to forgive sins. He claims he is equal with the Father. He claims he has been sending the prophets to the world over the centuries.
We’ve gotten used to it, but I’m trying to get you not used to it, just for a second. He makes claims that go beyond the megalomaniacs of history, beyond anything anyone has ever said outside of a mental institution. He goes beyond the Hitlers. He goes beyond those megalomaniacs, but here’s what’s weird.
The megalomaniacs we do have are never, in their lives, so beautiful, so tender, so kind, so humble. I mean, Jesus Christ lived a life of such moral beauty that he got hundreds of people who lived with him … Jews, the last people on the face of the earth who would ever believe God could become human … to believe in him. How do you explain claims like that and a life like that? Over the years, millions of people have looked and looked and looked and looked and said, “This is inescapable. He must be who he said he is. He must. There’s no other explanation for it.”
If you’re outside and the sun comes up and it hits you, hot bright sun, you do not need someone to come up and say, “Hey! Do you see that up there in the sky? I can prove to you that’s bright and hot.” You say, “Well, thank you, but don’t waste your breath. I don’t need a long chain of reasoning to prove that’s bright and hot. I know it is.”
How do you know there’s a glorious God? This is what Luke is saying to Theophilus. How do you know God has been at work in history? How do you know there’s a God behind everything? How do you know there’s a glorious God? Not through an infallible, inescapable argument, but through an infallible, inescapable person against whom, in the end, there can be no argument.
As Paul says, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light to shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The face. As you look at who he is, as you look at him living and speaking and interacting with people, as you look at his life, that’s how you know there’s a God of glory.
Is there anybody here who has been waiting around for an inescapable, infallible argument when God has sent you an inescapable, infallible person? You’re going to wait forever. Doesn’t God have the right to send you a person instead of an argument? Is there anybody here saying, “I’d be happy to believe; I’m just waiting for that infallible argument”? What if that’s not how he does it? You might wait forever. Don’t. Look at the face of Jesus Christ. Look at what Luke says. “I’m going to show you the true story of Jesus.”
2. The gospel is true
The second thing, very important, is he says, “What I’m about to give you is not just the true story of Jesus, but the true story of Jesus. It’s true.” Here is where Luke really takes on directly the pervasive belief, in New York, anyway (You see it in the popular media, you hear it on the street; you hear it everywhere), and that is, “Go ahead. Look at Jesus, but we can’t trust the information. Here’s Luke saying we ought to look at Jesus, but basically, these were legends, and we don’t know if any of these things really happened.”
Luke takes it on, and he directly contradicts that. He says no. In verses 2 and 3, he tells us three things that happened. He says, “Let me tell you, Theophilus … I know you’re an educated, sophisticated person. Let me tell you where I got my information.” He says, first, “There were eyewitnesses to who Jesus was and what he did and said.” Secondly, “They delivered what they saw to us.” Thirdly, “I have followed all things closely and written an account.” Let me go through these.
First of all, he says, “There were eyewitnesses.” I mean, Jesus Christ did not … There’s a place in the book of Acts where it says these things were not done in a corner. Jesus’ ministry was incredibly public. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of people who heard him speak and saw him do things, both friends and enemies.
So there were tons of eyewitnesses, but here’s what’s interesting. He says the eyewitnesses took what they saw, and they delivered them. There’s no way in English you could get this word across, but the English word delivered is as good as any, but it says … The Greek word there is the word paradosis, and it’s a technical term for passing along eyewitness material orally down to another generation without changing it at all.
Paradosis was a practice, and it was a very, very binding practice. In the last 20 years there has been a lot of scholarly research about this, that when you were following a teacher and you heard the teacher say something or you saw the teacher do something, you committed it to memory and then you passed the material on down, and you were not allowed in any way to alter it. You did not add to it. You did not embellish it. You did not revise it. You did not change it.
So you had all these eyewitnesses who delivered this down to us, and here’s what Luke says he has just done. Look at verse 1. He says, “There are already other accounts. Many have undertaken to compile a narrative.” So there are already other written accounts. He says, “So I’ve taken the other written accounts, and I have checked them out with the eyewitness sources I have, and having investigated and done all this work, I have put them all into an orderly account for you.”
This completely contradicts what the average person in New York believes about the Bible, certainly about the accounts of Jesus’ life. The average person says these are legends and we can’t trust them, and Luke says that’s not true. Actually, Luke raises three reasons why the idea that the life of Jesus in the Bible is legendary will not hold up to scrutiny.
You see them not only in these four verses, but you’re going to see them constantly, over and over again, as we go through the book of Luke. Here are the three reasons why these can’t be legends. Because the timing is too early, the content is too counterproductive, and the literary style is too detailed for these to be legends. What do I mean?
First of all, the timing is too early. King Arthur, if he lived, lived in fifth or sixth century AD, but the first written-down accounts we have of his life were 400 years later. The problem with that is when there are no written-down accounts about someone’s life until centuries after the person lived, there are no eyewitness checks; there is no eyewitness memory around to check on whether this was embellished or revised, or whether there were additions, or whether this was totally fabricated.
There are no checks, and therefore, when something is written down centuries later, we say it’s legendary. There’s no way to check out whether or not it happened. But everyone knows, and Luke claims it … By the way, every historian would agree, everybody agrees, Luke wrote within 25 to 40 years after the death of Jesus. In which case, most of the eyewitnesses would still be around. You cannot just make up legends of major public acts that quickly.
I cannot fabricate a story that says on the tip of Manhattan in 1977 five thousand people saw a man fly through the air without any mechanical means. I can’t do that. Why? Because 25 years is not long enough. You have cops who were on the beat down there all that year, and they’ll say, “I never saw anything like that.” You can’t do it. It wouldn’t even be accepted.
I could write and say in 1777 five thousand people … Of course, there weren’t 5,000 people living here, but anyway, I could say, “They saw this man …” and somebody says, “Well, how do you know that? There’s no verification. There’s no empirical, external support for that.” I say, “Well, I just heard it.” Of course, nobody could disprove it, but nobody could prove it. It’s a legend.
You see, Luke was not writing centuries afterwards; he was writing them almost immediately after, and you just can’t make up a story that says Jesus fed 5,000 people in the wilderness. You can’t make up that story unless something happened out there in the wilderness with 5,000 people, because you have friends and enemies who are still alive.
You can’t make up a story like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, where he says 500 people saw Jesus Christ risen from the dead at once. You can’t make up a story like that 15 or 20 years after the event, unless there were 500 people who claimed to see him. You can’t just make it up. So the timing is too early for legends.
Secondly, the content is too counterproductive for legends. One of the more irritating things to me is … I read it and I hear people say this all the time. They say, “Well, do you know the reason why you can’t trust the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life? You can’t trust them because they were written by Christians, people who believed in Jesus.
So these were Christians, and they had an agenda. You can’t trust historical records by people who have this heavy agenda, and their agenda was to promote their movement, to get people in the first century to believe in Christianity, so they had an agenda; therefore, we can’t trust their reliability,” but I want you to know we can trust that reliability because they had the agenda of wanting people to believe. Here’s the problem.
When you say they had an agenda they were trying to get people to believe, that implies they made up things. Right? That is ignorant of the fact that almost every major event in the life of Jesus was confusing, repugnant, and offensive to first-century readers, and that nobody would have made up those things if you were, and they were …
They were trying to promote belief in Jesus, but the major events of the story of the life of Jesus were offensive to first-century readers and would never have been made up by people with the agenda in order to promote the movement. What do I mean? For example, look at the account of the death of Jesus.
The night before the death, every single one of the gospel writers says Jesus was in the garden saying, “God, could you get me off the hook? Could I get out of this please?” You don’t make up a story that your Messiah wanted to get off the hook of his mission the night before. Then, on the cross he says, “My God, you have deserted me; you have forsaken me.”
No one, in a million years, who is trying to promote the movement of Christianity would write those things down and make those things up, because they’re utterly offensive and confusing to first-century readers. The only historically plausible reason those incidents were recorded was they happened. There is no other good reason for them to be there.
Or let’s take a look at the birth of Jesus. So we have these wonderful accounts of the birth of Jesus. Who were the witnesses at the birth of Jesus? Shepherds, the dregs of society. Everybody knew that, but more than that, the accounts of the birth of Jesus have his mother giving birth to him, but she wasn’t married. He was the child of an unwed mother.
Why in the world would you ever make up that? That was, by the way (we know this), utterly disgraceful and utterly repugnant to first-century readers who were reading. So why would you make up a story that is utterly repugnant to the people you were trying to convert? The answer, again, is the only historically plausible reason that would have been recorded is if it happened. There’s no other good reason.
Or take a look at the account of the resurrection. Like I said, every single major event in the story of Jesus’ life … We even have it down here in Luke 24, which we had read. All of the gospel writers tell us the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus were women. I like to bring this up every Easter.
In the first century, in all ancient cultures, women were of such low social standing that women’s testimonies were not admissible evidence in court, and therefore, if you were making up a story of the resurrection, why would you include that women were the first witnesses? The answer is you wouldn’t. You would never do that.
All that did was create a lack of credibility in the mind of the first-century readers, and therefore, again, the only historically plausible reason that would be recorded is if it happened. The content of the story of Jesus is so counterproductive to the agenda of the Christians that the basic features of the life of Jesus Christ could not possibly have been made up.
Thirdly, the literary style is too detailed. What do I mean by that? Well, you’re going to see this as we go through the Gospels, but the gospel stories are filled with detail … what I’m going to call narratively unnecessary detail. So for example, in Mark 4, in the story of Jesus Christ before he stills the storm, we’re told he was sleeping on a cushion in the boat.
Well, how does that help the story? It doesn’t, at all. How does that fit into the story? Is this like the movie Signs …? At the very end of Signs, everything matters … the fact that the little girl liked to keep water in glasses everywhere, the fact that the uncle had been a baseball player. Everything matters, but at the end of these stories … He was sleeping on a cushion. How does that help? Not at all.
John 8, we’re told that before Jesus Christ saved the woman who was about to be stoned and executed for adultery, that famous story in John 8 … We’re told Jesus was doodling in the dust with his finger. What was he writing? It doesn’t say. Why was he doodling? It doesn’t say. How does that help the story? It doesn’t. It just mentions it in one verse then goes on with the rest of the story. It never gets back to it.
In John 21, when John and Peter, after the resurrection, see the risen Christ on the shore and they bring their boat in, after they had this great haul of fish, we’re told … John 21, tells us they brought their fish in, and there were 153 fish. Well, why do we need to know there were 153? Well, we don’t. It doesn’t help at all.
When you read the legends of King Arthur and the legends of Hercules, why don’t you see details like that? The reason why we as modern readers don’t notice how interesting and significant it is that you have all these details in the Gospels is that for the last 200 to 300 years, in modern times, we have developed what’s called realistic, novelistic fiction.
In our fiction today, short stories and novels, there are lots and lots of details that don’t necessarily move forward the narrative, but they’re there to give an air of reality. That’s natural today for fiction writers, but it was not natural 2,000 years ago. That’s a modern innovation. What this means is for an ancient writer to talk about the doodling and the cushion and the 153 fish …
There was no reason for the ancient writer to write that down, except that the eyewitness source of the story remembered it. It was there because someone remembered it. See, these can’t be legends. Legends weren’t written like this. C.S. Lewis, who was a professor of literature at Oxford and Cambridge, puts it perfectly and rather devastatingly, for people who think, “Well, these are just legends,” when he says about the Gospels …
He essentially says, “I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, and myths all my life, and I know what they’re like. I know none of them are like this. Of the gospel texts there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage, or else, some unknown ancient writer, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern novelistic, realistic narrative. The reader who doesn’t see this has simply not learned how to read.”
See, this is devastating. These can’t be legends. Do you know that? They can’t be. The timing is too early, the content is too counterproductive, and the literary style is too detailed. This is what Luke is saying … Luke is going to enormous pains to say, “O Theophilus, O readers, the story of Jesus I’m about to tell you is true. Don’t believe the gospel because it’s exciting, though it is.
Don’t believe the gospel because it’ll meet your needs, though it will. Don’t believe the gospel because it’ll give you a personal relationship with God, though it does. Believe the gospel because it’s true. If the story of Jesus isn’t true, it’ll be of no help to you. It might be touching, it might be exciting, it might be moving, but if it’s not true, it won’t help you.”
Modern people, when they hear that, they say, “Wait a minute. The story of Jesus does make me feel close to God. It’s working for me. I don’t know if it’s true. It doesn’t matter. It might be true for me and not be true for somebody else. It works for me. Who knows if it’s true?” The answer to that is if it’s not true for everyone, it can’t work at all. You say, “Why would that be true?” That leads us to our third point.
3. The gospel is a story
Last of all, this is the true story of Jesus. Look at verse 1. What Luke is trying to put together is a narrative. That’s a very important word. He says, “Many have tried to compile a narrative, and I’m going to provide a narrative.” It’s the Greek word diēgēsis, which means a story. He says, “My purpose is not to compile the teachings of Jesus. My purpose is not to create an anthology of little vignettes out of the life of Jesus.”
If you look at the other scriptures, of other religions, you’ll see that’s what you get. It’s not a compendium of the teachings of Jesus. It’s not a compendium of the sayings of Jesus. The gospel is not the teachings, it’s not the sayings, it’s not a series of vignettes that show us principles for living from the life of Jesus; the gospel is a story.
We have to be careful because the word story in English has connotations of fiction. I just try to say it’s a true story, but you have to realize it’s a story. Someone says, “Well, what does that mean? What is the significance of it being a story?” Oh, all the significance in the world. Here’s why.
The fact that it’s a story means it’s not the teachings of Jesus but the actions of Jesus that saves you. If it’s the teachings of Jesus that saves you, then basically what saves you is how you live; but if it’s the story of the actions of Jesus, then you can be saved by grace. Here’s what I mean. Look at all other religions, and you’ll see that what really is crucial in the life of all the other religious founders is not what they did, but what they said; it’s not their actions, but it’s their teaching.
Why? Because in every other religious system, you are saved by how you live. You’re saved by living a particular kind of life. That means what’s really crucial about the founders is not what they did so much, except as an example, but their teaching, because you need to know how to live and their teaching says, “Here’s how …”
Buddha says, “Here’s how to find enlightenment.” Muhammad says, “Here’s how you submit and please god.” They all have somewhat different teachings, but they’re all the same in that it’s the teachings that are important, because it’s how you live that saves you. In Christianity, we’re completely the opposite.
First of all, notice that even though there’s teaching in the gospel, it’s not the teaching that saves you, because Luke is not saying, “I’m creating a compendium of teachings.” He says, “I’m creating a story.” Why? Because the teaching of Jesus is not elevating. It’s not inspirational. It’s terrible. It’s devastating. If you think the teachings of Jesus are elevating and they’re just morally uplifting, you have never read them.
Virginia Stem Owens, some years ago … She was an English professor at a college, and she knew most of her students had heard of the Sermon on the Mount but they’d never read it. So she assigned all of them to read it and then she asked for response papers. She said the response papers were remarkable. Here’s what one student said. “I did not like the Sermon on the Mount. It made me feel I had to be perfect, and no one is.” Here’s another student. “The things the sermon asks for are stupid.”
Virginia Owens said the students essentially noted, “First, Jesus does not just require that we give most of our money away, but to do it joyfully. Secondly, Jesus does not just forbid killing people, but he forbids disdaining people, feeling superior to people, and even treating someone with coldness or indifference.” You can imagine how that went down with college students.
“Thirdly, Jesus does not just say I can’t revenge myself on someone persecuting me but that I have to love them and hope for them and care for them. Jesus does not just forbid worry, but he says I have to live gratefully and happily content with whatever situation I have.” Virginia Owens said what’s so devastating about the teaching of Jesus was two things.
On the one hand, when you read the Sermon on the Mount, you know, unavoidably, “These are the kinds of people I want to live near. This is the kind of world I want to be in,” and therefore, you know, unavoidably, “This is the way I need to live,” and yet, second, it’s impossible. So the only reasonable response to a compendium of teaching of Jesus Christ would be, “God, save me from the Sermon on the Mount because it exposes me, because it strips me, because it condemns me.”
The teaching of Jesus would be nothing but an eternal horror, and that’s the reason why Luke says, “I have not given you a compendium, an anthology. I’m giving you the story of Jesus,” because the teaching of Jesus proves that we don’t need teaching; we need a story. We don’t need a way for us to live the right kind of life, but we need the actions of Jesus Christ to come in and live the life we should have lived and die the death we should have died.
We don’t need a teacher; we need a savior. We don’t need someone who tells us what to do; we need someone who does what we should have done. We need someone who has to do things. I’m going to say this with all due respect. This is the reason why the story of Jesus Christ has to be true for everybody or it doesn’t work for anybody. The miracles of Buddha, the miracles of Muhammad, the things that they did … With all due respect, those accounts work for their believers within the context of their own religious system, whether they’re historic or not.
Do you hear me? The accounts of what Buddha and Muhammad … their miracles, the things they did … they work for the religious believers within the context of their own religious systems, whether they’re historic or not. Here’s the reason why. Because the purpose of miracles in those other religions is to instruct us, to inspire us to live in a certain way, but the miracles of Jesus … his miraculous birth, his miraculous resurrection … actually have to have happened because the purpose of miracles in Jesus’ life is not to instruct us how to live, but to save us.
Here’s the perfect illustration that I know. Think of the birth of Jesus. Wonderful account. Very famous. You’re going to hear a lot about it in the next four weeks. Jesus born in a manger. Angels. Shepherds. The whole nine yards. Let me ask you a question. How does that work as an inspiring parable? How does that work? What does it inspire you to do? Be a shepherd? To have your children out of doors? To have your children out of wedlock?
Think. As an inspiring parable, it’s useless, but as a fact, it changes everything. If it’s an inspiring parable, it doesn’t work, but if it’s true, if it happened, it means God has landed; it means God has broken into history. It means there’s hope that someday death and injustice and poverty and disease and despair will be gone.
“The stories of Jesus. Well, they work for me. I don’t know whether they’re historically true or not. They might be true for me. They may not be true for you. Maybe they’re true for you; they’re not true for me.” If they’re not true for everybody, they don’t work at all, because salvation in Christianity is by grace.
It’s not by Jesus coming and inspiring us and instructing us and through an example showing us how we should live; it’s by Jesus Christ coming and living the life we should have lived and dying the death we should have died and saving us. If you know that, you’re saved by the story of Jesus, not the teaching of Jesus; you’re saved by the actions of Jesus, not the sayings of Jesus. It changes everything. It’s utterly different than any other religion, and therefore, it’s the true story of Jesus that saves you.
One last thing, if you’re saved through the story of Jesus Christ, what is the story? Little Red Riding Hood took her grandmother goodies is not a story. Little Red Riding Hood took her grandmother goodies, and the Big Bad Wolf chased her, and a woodcutter saved her. That’s a story. Why? A story has a hero. A story has a protagonist. There’s something you care about threatened by antagonistic forces, and then there’s a protagonist, or hero, who saves things.
If that’s true, who’s the hero of the world’s story? Who’s the hero of your life’s story? Who’s the hero of your friend’s story, your family’s story? Who’s the hero of the Bible’s story? At the very end of the book of Luke, three days after Jesus died, there were two disciples who were walking along, and they were discouraged. A stranger showed up and said, “What’s the matter? Why are you so unhappy?”
They said, “Well, this Jesus guy, we thought he was going to be the Savior. We thought he was going to redeem Israel, but he died.” Do you see the irony? This is in verses 20 and 21, “We thought he was going to redeem Israel, but he died.” Jesus, who was the mysterious stranger, says, “O foolish and slow of heart to believe …” He said, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”
What he said is, “Do you know the reason why you’re despondent? Do you know the reason why you’re upset, the reason why you’re confused about yourself, about your life, about everything else? Because you’ve read the Bible, but you don’t know who the Hero is. You don’t know who the Bible is about. Who is the Bible about?”
Let’s look at the story of Abraham. What’s the point of the story of Abraham? Is the point of the story of Abraham that you and I should be as faithful as he was? What’s the point of the story of Moses? That you and I need to be as strong as he was? What’s the point of the story of David going out to Goliath? Is the point of the story of David that you and I need to be as courageous as David?
In other words, are all the stories about us? He says, “The reason why you’re all screwed up is that you thought … The reason you can’t understand why a Messiah would come and die … You thought the Messiah had to just come and teach because you thought all the stories were about you. You thought you were the hero, but every one of them points to me. I’m the true Moses, I’m the true Abraham, and I’m the true David.”
Let me show you how that works. If I look at the story of David and say, “The hero of that story … Basically, that story is about me. I’m going to have to go out and face the giants of life, like my failure this year economically or like the fact that I have cancer and I might die, but I have to be strong.” You’ll never be strong like David unless you look to the one who David points to. “The real hero of every one of these stories …” Jesus says, “Everything is about me, not you.”
Jesus is the ultimate David. He went out, like the little David did, and fought for his people so that his victory was imputed to them. Well, Jesus Christ went and took on the ultimate giant, which is eternal death, which means you can face physical death bravely only if you know Jesus, your ultimate David, has already faced eternal death and has saved you.
So no matter what happens to you now, it’ll be all right. You’re never going to be a little David, unless you recognize the big David, Jesus Christ … the ultimate David. Jesus says, “Unless you begin to see that I’m the Hero of your story … The pressure is off. You don’t have to save yourself. I’ll save you.”
Do you know what happens? You look at your family and you say, “I have to save my family. If I’m not good, if I’m not … I have to show them the truth. I have to help them. I have to save my family.” Jesus says, “No. The pressure is off. I’m the Hero of your family story. I’m the Hero of your story. I’m the Hero of the world’s story. I’m the Hero of heroes. I save by grace. The pressure is off.”
Here’s the irony of the whole thing. It’s not until I realize that I’m not the hero … he is … that I can start acting heroic. Because it’s not until the pressure is off of me that I really start to be able to face life fearlessly, just as in every tournament the team that does the best is the one where the pressure is off because they have nothing to lose and they have nothing to prove.
It’s interesting that the two English authors who are the most read authors in the English-speaking language in the twentieth century were friends, and one of them led the other one to Jesus Christ. One was an atheist; one was a Christian. J.R.R. Tolkien was the Christian, and C.S. Lewis was the atheist. They took a long walk one day on the grounds of Magdalen College in Oxford.
Do you know what? Tolkien led C.S. Lewis to Christ talking about heroes. Lewis said something like, “I love the old stories of ancient heroes. They really stir me up. What a shame they’re all myths.” Tolkien said, “They’re not all myths.” Lewis said, “What do you mean?” Tolkien essentially said, “Well, listen. Do you know the story of Sleeping Beauty? It points to the truth that true love can break the most powerful evil spell. Do you know the story of Beauty and the Beast? It points to the truth that sacrificial love can transform the greatest horror.
Now comes Jesus, and what a great story. He’s born in a manger, and the king tries to kill him, but he’s saved at the last minute, snatched away, and escapes. Then he grows up, and he takes on the great oppressive forces of life and of the world, and they take him on and they kill him. But no! He’s raised from the dead! Isn’t that another great story? Great story, isn’t it?
But here’s what the gospel is. The wonder of the gospel is Jesus Christ is not one more story pointing to those great truths, but Jesus Christ is the truth to which all the great stories point. In other words, Jesus Christ comes into the world saying, ‘I am the Prince who can break the spell with my kiss. I am the Beauty that can transform the beast. I am the Hero of heroes, and I have entered into the world’s story, and I’m going to slay every dragon.
I’m going to put down every villain, and someday, every tear will be wiped away, so come with me. I’m going to enter into your life, and I’ll be the Hero of your story, so come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will take pressure off you, and I will give you rest.’ ” The pressure is off, and when the pressure is off, you can start to live with courage yourself. Don’t be foolish and slow of heart to believe. Believe. Let us pray.
Thank you, Father, for showing us the true story of Jesus is what we need. No other story but the story of Jesus. No other story but the true story of Jesus. Not just a compendium of teaching, but the story of Jesus. This is the thing we most need. Show us how to bring it into our lives so that we’re going to be able, finally, to have the pressure taken off of us and we can start to live really heroic lives, because Jesus is the Hero of every story. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.