Is Jesus God? (part 1)

Christianity is held together by a single thing. It is not a belief, a place, a mosque, a temple, a synagogue, a language, a race or culture or political party, or nation. The centerpiece of Christianity is a PERSON, the person of Jesus Christ.

But WHO IS JESUS? If we ask people in today's culture, you would hear a lot of different opinions but you would probably hear something like this:

• Jesus is my Homeboy: He’s a cool pop culture icon that makes a nice accessory to my fashion and hip persona. He’s a punchline.
• Jesus is a Good Teacher: He taught really good principles and was a great Eastern philosopher and moral teacher but that’s about it. He's not God.

But did Jesus leave these as an option? Did He claim to be God? I want to look at a few of these instances that help back up Jesus's claim to divinity.

Mark 10:17-18 (NIV)
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 18 "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone.
Jesus is saying, “Only God is good, and I am not merely to be called, “good teacher”. Don’t call me good unless you are also going to call me GOD”.
People are all constantly trying to say, “Well, I think Jesus is a good guy, He’s a good man but not the GOD-Man”, and Jesus says that is incompatible with Him. It’s not a valid choice.
Jesus made some extreme claims, and did some incredible things, so is it okay to call Him “good teacher”? No, and I’d like us to see why it is NOT.

Now, there are some that have speculated that Jesus never actually said He was God. But Jesus said and did some things that would dissolve that theory. For example:

1. He said He Came Down from Heaven John 6:38-42 (NIV)
   For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 41 At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." 42 They said, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I came down from heaven'?"

The Jews were upset because they said, “Jesus? From heaven? We saw Him grow up! We watched Him on the playground and at school and working with His father in the carpenter’s shop! We know Jesus isn’t from heaven!”
They saw the humanity of Jesus, but not His origin. Jesus said, “I have come down from heaven”.
This is NOT a near-death experience where someone went to heaven for a glimpse. It seems like a lot of people have had near-death experiences and have come back to talk about heaven and the afterlife.
Just recently on the #1 show “Gray’s Anatomy” the main character Gray dies and sees her mom, and doesn’t want to hurt the people in her life and leave them changed forever, so she wants to come back.

Jesus didn't just get a glimpse of heaven, but claimed to have origins IN heaven. That is a lofty claim and in the next blog we'll look at a few more.

Pilgrim

"We Still Sing Hymns"

"We Still Sing Hymns"
I drove past a church with those exact words on their overly-priced, non-evangelistic sign and almost drove off the road. Do they even know what they are implying?

Could it be that the emphasis this church has is simply on a style of worship, rather than emphasizing Christ? Plenty of churches have found what we could innocently call their 'niche' or more honestly, their 'rut', or as my grandfather would say, "their one-stringed guitar". Whether it is being a "community" church that emphasizes small group fellowships, or a "seeker" church that wants non-Christians to feel comfortable, to the "programmed" church that longs to entertain and dazzle, or the "Bible" church that feels they have the monopoly on doctrine and theology.
Is that what our focus should be on?

It astounds me how subtle this attitude can be. We can see a large ministry and point the judgmental finger thinking "they're big because they aren't really preaching the gospel" or whatever. You and I do the same things with other people we tend to envy. We think we've got the edge over them, and therefore we are better.

How does "We Still Sing Hymns" communicate to the lost? What does that tell the average blue collar family man up early to head to work? Does that touch his life in any way? The style of worship has nothing to do with spiritual truth or the need for you and I to connect with God. It is simply missing the mark, and so often I believe churches are...they're just not advertising so on their billboards!

May you and I not be broadcasting the wrong message to a dying and needy world. May we be beggars telling another beggar where we've found bread, and not why they should appreciate the way we sing a certain song.

Pilgrim