Who is the Jesus we follow?
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Intro:
Intro:
OFFICE CLIP
Story about driving into Canada.
The question is: Who are we following?
We’ve been talking for 8 weeks about how to follow Jesus, that following Jesus means loving God well and loving others well, but I never want us to lose sight of WHO it is that we’re following. Is Jesus even worth following? or will he lead us into a lake, or, worse, Canada?
- Jesus the Messiah. The book of Matthew tells you right up front who Jesus is, the Messiah - the true KING of Israel. (That will be important.) The Kings of the OT kinda stunk, but God promised a better king. That’s the Messiah, that’s Jesus.
So, how is he better than the old kings? Well, he goes around doing miracles and forgiving sins and calling himself Lord of the Sabbath, stuff only God should be able to do.
Jesus walks on water, and they WORSHIP him, and call him “the Son of God.” Divine.
So, Jesus is the KING of Israel, but he’s also the Son of God.
Imagine you’re the king of a country: What are you going to do? What’s your first move? You can do whatever you want, because you have all the power.
Have you ever played king of the hill? You’re on top, and you push everyone else down. That’s the world’s version of kingship. But it’s not Jesus’
Jesus isn’t just a king, he’s the Son of God. (: he created the universe, everything exists for him).
And what does this God/King do?
Read
Did you catch the sign above Jesus’ head? There’s Jesus—naked, bleeding, hanging from the cross, and the sign says, “This is Jesus, King of the Jews.” They meant it to mock him, but they didn’t realize its truth. This is your King, alone and abandoned—abandoned even by God the Father, part of his very being. This is your king, innocent, humiliated, murdered.
Why?
The answer is simple: love.
“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
When I was five years old, my Sunday School teacher said, did you know that if you invite Jesus to live inside of your heart, when you die, you will get to go be with him in Heaven? And I thought, “Im not sure how he’s going to fit in there, but that sounds great. So I prayed with her to invite Jesus into my heart.
But I didn’t understand anything about who I had invited in. As I got older, I thought following Jesus was about doing the right thing, being a “good kid.” Then, I was reading this book with my small group: Mere Christianity. And I started to realized that I was missing it, and sometime in there, I came across that last verse I read, , and I realized that it didn’t matter if I did the right thing or was a good kid, GOD LOVED ME NO MATTER WHAT. And now, Jesus really does live in my heart because I love him with everything I have.
But
I don’t follow Jesus because my parents do, or because he makes me happy, or because he helps me to be kinder, I follow Jesus because he loves me more than anyone has ever loved me or will ever love me.
If you decide to follow Jesus, I want you to know who you are following. You are following the God of all creation, who isn’t some distant being in the far reaches of the universe, but became human and assumed his role as King by putting a crown of thorns on his head and being raised up on the cross. You are following Love itself, who gave himself up and died for you, and who has the power to bring the dead back to life, just like he did three days later.
Follow Jesus.