Well,
I am super excited to begin a brand new series today. For the next few weeks and
concluding on Christmas Eve, we are going to be looking at: One Child.
Billions of opinions. Jesus. What Child is this? (Display
background)
This
is an interesting question, isn’t it? What child is this?
Many
people all around the world have a different opinion as to who Jesus is. I’m
sure if I took a few minutes to ask you your opinion of Jesus, you might tell
me that He’s:
·
God;
·
Savior;
·
Lord;
·
Redeemer;
·
A Constant Companion;
·
The Lover of your Soul;
But
if we were to move out from these four walls and ask the same question, chances
are pretty good that we would get a response similar to this:
PLAY WHO WAS JESUS VIDEO
The contrasting opinions
about who Jesus was/is are nothing new. The question about who He was has been
asked for thousands of years.
Apparently
this question even surfaced as Jesus was walking on earth.
Shortly after
the feeding of the 5,000 with only 5 loaves and 2 small fish, Jesus withdrew to
a quiet place to pray, and separated from the crowds asked His disciples this
question:
“Who do people say I
am?” (Luke 9:18b, NLT2)
Jesus
knew people were talking about Him, so He conducted a quick poll and asked what
the popular consensus was as to His person.
The
reply put Jesus in very special company: “…some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say
you are one of the other ancient prophets risen from the dead.”
(Luke 9:19, NLT2)
It’s
interesting to note that the response the disciples gave Jesus was almost
verbatim the response Herod Antipas, the Ruler of Galilee, received when he
questioned who Jesus was. (Luke 9:7-9)
Word
was getting out about Jesus—people were talking about Him: who He was and what
He was doing, and you can tell from the response the disciples gave that the opinions
people had about Jesus varied.
Some
people thought Jesus was Elijah, the great Old Testament Prophet who wiped out
the prophets of Baal with a fire-show from heaven; still other people said that
Jesus was John the Baptist, who was a forerunner to Jesus’ ministry.
Another
group of people thought Jesus was another great Old Testament prophet who had
come back from the dead…
Please
don’t miss the importance of this responseà people thought Jesus was a good Man; some even
thought He was a great Man, but no one declared who He really was.
So
Jesus pushes a little deeper. He asked His disciples who they said He was.
Peter, the
spokesman for the disciples, said: “You are the Messiah sent from God!” (Luke 9:20b, NLT2)
The
New International version records Peter’s answer this way: “The Christ of God.” (Luke 9:20b, NIV)
The word “Messiah” is a Hebrew
term, and the word “Christ” is a Greek term, both meaning: “The Anointed One.”
Peter,
on behalf of the disciples, was admitting that Jesus, the Man who sat before
them, was in fact, the Christ, the Chosen One, the Son of the God most High.
After
this confession, Jesus warned His disciples not to tell anyone this news,
partly because the disciples still needed to work through this news on their
own, and then Jesus proceeded to tell them about His impending sacrifice for
the world.
But
it’s not His sacrifice that we want to look at this morning, because that’s
Easter and this is Christmas, and what we celebrate at Christmas is the birth
of Jesus.
So,
let’s go back to the beginning, all the way back to the passage Jennifer and
Trevor read for us a few minutes ago. I hope it’s still fresh in your mind…
it’s the story of how Jesus was born.
As
we’re told Matthew 1:18-25, and angel appeared in a dream to Joseph that he was
to continue on with his engagement to the already pregnant Mary, because the
Child inside of her was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
Then
the angel gave Joseph specific instructions of what he was to do after the Baby
was born.
These
instructions are found in verse 21 of Matthew 1: “She will give birth to a son, and you are to
give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."
(NIV)
While
Mary was told the Name of the Baby growing inside of her in Luke chapter 1,
Joseph is given the name of the Child and the reason why He was to be given
this name.
Did
you pick it out?
Look
at it again. The Angel told Joseph: “…you are to give him the name Jesus…” (Matthew
1:21b, NIV)
The Name Jesus
is the Greek from of Joshua which means either “the Lord is salvation” or “The
Lord saves.”
The
Child was to be given this name, because “…he will save his people from their sins.”
(Matthew 1:21b, NLT2)
The
Child growing inside of Mary would be the One who, as His very name suggests,
would save people from their sins.
At first, this
salvation was for the Jews, but later on, we learn that Gentiles would also be
included in Jesus’ plan to save the world.
Jesus’ sole purpose in coming to
planet earth was to save people from sin.
Write it down
Church; tattoo it on your arm church, Jesus’ sole purpose in coming to planet earth was to save
people from sin.
That
sounds great, but often times, it’s not what we want to hear. We don’t like to be reminded that we are
sinners, after all, we’re human beings, and we’ve invented some really cool
things:
·
The Light bulb
·
The telephone
·
The iPad,
·
And my personal favorite: BACON!
For
as far as we have come in society, there is still one issue that we have yet to
solve on our own. The issue of sin.
You
see, since that fateful day in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve disobeyed
God’s command and ate from the tree God told them not to eat from, we have been
plagued with sin.
Paul
tells us in Romans 5, that: “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought
death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.” (Romans 5:12, NLT2)
Every
person on planet earth has been, and will continue to be, plagued by sin.
This is why Jesus was born!
(WOOOOO!!!)
He was born into
our world to save us from sin! Think about it:
ILLUSTRATION- If our greatest need had been
information, God would have sent us an educator;
If
our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist;
If
our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist;
If
our greatest need had been pleasure, God would have sent us an entertainer.
But
our greatest need wasn’t information, technology, money, or pleasure. Our
greatest need is forgiveness, and God sent us a Savior. (From my files)
Our greatest need is not another
Wal-Mart; our greatest need is Someone who can heal our heart!
Someone
who will take away the anger, the bitterness, the impurity, the sexual sin, the
hurt from failure, the selfishness, the pain….
We
don’t need a self-help seminar, we need a Savior, and a Savior is exactly what
was promised to Joseph and Mary that night over 2000 years ago.
Jesus
was given to save people—you and me—from sin.
Over and again,
the Bible speaks of how we, because of our sin, are separated from God, but it
also demonstrates just how far God is willing to go to redeem sinful man.
Author and
Pastor John Ortberg reminds us that: “The story of the Bible isn’t primarily about the desire
of people to be with God, it’s about the desire of God to be with people”
(Ortberg)
God sent Jesus
to save us from our sins.
“The verb
‘save’ can refer to deliverance from physical danger (8:25), disease (9:21-22)
or even death (24:22) but it focuses (in this verse) on what is central,
namely, salvation from sins” (Zon. Com for NT)
With this verse,
Jesus’ purpose and mission begins—He was born to save people from their sins,
He went to the cross to save people from their sins, He rose again to prove to
people that He has the power to save us from our sin.
The Bible says: “God made him who
had no sin to be a sin offering for us, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21, NIV)
This is what the
Bible has to say about this Man named Jesus.
The question I’d
like for you to consider today is the same question Jesus asked His disciples: “…What about
you…Who do you say I am?" (Luke 9:20a, NIV)
Who do you say
Jesus is? Is he a good man… is he a great Man…. or is He Lord?
One of the great
writers of the past was a man by the name C.S. Lewis. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis addresses this very issue. He writes:
“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 the man who says he is a poached egg — or else
he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make
your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or
something worse.
You can shut
him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon 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.” (http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/801500-mere-christianity)
Who is Jesus in
your life? Who is this Man who has influenced every square inch of our
society—from the creation of hospitals, from education, from the abolition of
the slave-trade, to the belief that all persons are created equal--who is Jesus
in your life?
Jesus is much
more than a good moral teacher. He’s much more than just a brilliant thinker.
He is the Savior of the world.
“She will give
birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, --which means the LORD saves-- because he will save his people from their
sins.”(Matthew 1:21, NIV)
One Child.
Billions of opinions. Jesus. What Child is this?
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