Wonder of Jesus

The Wonder of Jesus

Intro

Tonight we are going to be talking about Jesus.  We are going to talk about knowing Him, experiencing Him, following Him.

Did you know that Jesus wants you to have an experience with Him?  He doesn’t just want you to believe in Him from a distance, but to actually feel Him, and experience being in His Presence.  In fact, the Bible really emphasizes this.  There should be a time in your life where you can look back and say things are different now because of Jesus.  In fact I would have to say that if you have never had any kind of experience with Jesus, I have serious doubt about your salvation. 

Following Jesus means being in His Presence.  For most people, especially today, there is a definite experience that you can look back upon and say that was when I was truly “born again.”  I was changed, I was a different person.  That was the day when worship and gratitude to the Lord bubbled up from within my soul!  It was like I was blind, but then my eyes were suddenly opened. 

You see being a Christian isn’t about belief.  It’s not about what you believe to be true in your mind…it’s about fully committing yourself in worship and obedience.  Many of you have been deceived by what you have seen of religion, what you have been told is ok.  But all you have to do is examine the life of Jesus…really look at Him with the idea of discovering what God is truly like.  You will find that once you truly see Who Jesus is, that it demands a response from you

“I love Jesus” test

His Example

Jesus extended love to the unlovely, grace to the wicked.

He turned against the moral Pharisees who were stuck on their pride.

He extended compassion and forgiveness to the prostitutes and whores, to the thieves and murderers. 

He touched the untouchable…extending healing to the lepers when everyone else avoided them.  He healed a blind man consumed by self-pity. 

By His actions He showed that everyone had value, simply because they existed. 

In our world where we are obsessed over looking just right, dressing just right, knowing the right people, Jesus obliterates that kind of thinking by His life and He calls us to live a life of rebellion as well. 

Rahab Meets Jesus

Joshua story of Rahab.  Rahab was a whore but she got in line with the purposes of God by faith and was saved.  She is listed in the Hall of Faith heroes in Hebrews 11, and guess what she is also the great, great grandmother of King David and So Rahab the harlot, by faith, finds herself in the lineage of the Savior of the world!

1 Corinthians 6:11 (NKJV) "And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God."

There is no change possible without total commitment.  Half-hearted devotion to Jesus will do nothing but leave you dry and thirsty.

Experiencing Jesus

Have YOU really come to understand the breathless wonder that is Jesus?  The overwhelming sense where you try to fathom how could my God, my Creator choose to do this for me? 

          Have you had the experience with Jesus that takes you beyond feeling sorry for your sin, to releasing the kind of grateful worship from the depths of your being because out of all the people in the world He chose YOU. 

          As He was hanging on the cross, the thing that kept Him going through pain that no one has come close to experiencing was you.  The thing that kept Him from summoning 12,000 angels to destroy humanity in righteous vengeance was the fact that He would then have to exist without you by His side.  The reason that the sinless Holy Son of God would allow our sin to saturate His very being.  Every hateful act, every shameful moment, every evil deed committed from a rebellious heart covered him like filth, and as a result He experienced for the first time in all eternity separation from God the Father…the trinity was broken, the divine unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit was broken.  All to clear the way for you; all to secure the grace and forgiveness needed for you to be free

What to do with this

Acts 4:20 (NIV) "For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”"