Jesus Is God's Answer - Sermon I: Jesus Is God's Answer To Life's Supreme Quetions Series

JESUS IS GOD’S ANSWER TO LIFE’S SUPREME QUESTIONS

With declining church attendance, a church in Maryland used market research and focus groups to design its weekly services. They did this to determine what type of services people would attend. As a result of their findings, the type o service they designed is astonishing. The founders of the new church deliberately de-emphasized Jesus Christ as the focal point.

What they learned from the focus groups was that “a lot of people feel disenchanted with Christianity because they say it’s too exclusionary”. Based on this finding, this new type of church used a blend of Hindu and Zen intermingled with a few passages from the Bible around which to center their worship services. Their music consisted of recordings by Willie Nelson.

One of the pastors was quoted as saying, “We’re enabling people to discover God for themselves - maybe thru Jesus, maybe thru Buddha, maybe thru any number of ways.”

Surely we are appalled by such defamation of Christianity – nothing more than yet another form of political correctness that would have us adapt our faith to accommodate many “gods” not just One God. Rather, it behooves us to tell the truth about who Jesus is and what Christianity is all about.

Jesus is not a magician with a solution to everybody’s problems so that “if you belong to Jesus, life will be a bed of roses with no thorns.” Not so!

“What Jesus can do for me materially” must be secondary to “What Jesus has done for me spiritually”. Jesus saves . . . sanctifies . . . expects total surrender!

We don’t simply “add” Jesus to our lives as just another aspect of all that we have going on. No! We are called out of sin into salvation and sanctification!

Our commitment to Him must be such that we can say and mean it from the depths of our hearts - “Christ Is Lord”! I have found that:

When serious inquirers become aware of the “preeminence” of God’s Son (seeing Him as God’s answer to life’s supreme questions) . . . submit to His authority over all of Creation . . . quit trying to accommodate every wind of doctrine, including the one that promises a rosy life that never again will have to deal with thorny issues, they will respond to the Christian challenge - IF they truly mean business.

One of life’s supreme questions always has been, “How did we get here?”

Then comes the follow-up question: “Why are we here?”

These questions trip up many people in our age of information technology. “To man be the glory, great things he has done!”

Everywhere we turn we encounter agnostics, atheists and polytheists . . . academics searching for proof of the big bang theory . . . political factions attempting to drive wedges between professing Christians . . . rulers of darkness gaining ground all over the world.

Thus, Christians are confronted with a challenge! Do we firmly believe, and if so to what extent, that Jesus is God’s answer to all of life’s essential questions?

Long before Jesus came, the psalmist declared the glory of the LORD as the Creator who stays involved in His Creation - Psalm 33:6-9, 13-15 - with a significant distinction made between the name “God” and the name “LORD God” . . .

The God of Creation through His spokesman established the fact of One Great Creator - the One God who revealed Himself to His People and whose name was considered so Holy that His People dared not speak His Name - YHWH (Yahweh). They substituted the Hebrew word adonai meaning lord. Translators of the Hebrew into English capitalized the word LORD so that when Believers read it they immediately associate it with the original four letters YHWH. This was done on purpose to remind Believers of the word’s significance – ONE Great Creator! So,

“How did we get here?” The LORD God! The LORD God spoke and it was so! Was His speaking verbal or otherwise? Both! You’ve heard it said, “One picture is worth a thousand words” . . . “Together, by our action, we will send a powerful message” . . . “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14)!

The very presence of Jesus spoke volumes! In whatever ways God spoke, here we are - in a world of His designing and making - and we are here “for making” (Genesis 2:3 - "created for making" or "created for growing and developing" - as translated by OT scholar J. Wash Watts) . . . whether our growing and developing, and our serving, be in the form of words or deeds. A wise minister, Fred Moore, once said: “As you go, be witnesses, and if necessary, use words.” God spoke in various ways! So do we!