Advent 2021 - Who Do You Say The Son Of Man Is? Series

Advent 1 - Who Do YOU Say Jesus Is?

Please stand with me as we go over our current memory Scripture:

Job 19:25-27

“I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes - I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”

And our memory Scripture “refresher” verse(s) is(are):

1 Thessalonians 5:22-23

“May God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through

and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept

blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The One who calls you is faithful and He will do it.”

Today we will be reading from

Matthew 16:13-16 & Matthew 1:18-25

This week, at our home, an amazing thing happened.

In only a few hours that spanned over two and one half days, five people put a 1,000 piece puzzle together. It came out of the box as a mess; some pieces right side up and others upside down.

I couldn’t believe it. When it was about 90 percent done I went over and tried to find one piece that would fit but I gave up after a few minutes. When it comes to jigsaw puzzles I head for the church nursery to find one I can do!

We had gotten the puzzle from the town library and I kept thinking, “What if one or a couple of pieces are missing?”

Wouldn’t that be awful? After all that work wouldn’t it be frustrating?

But even as frustrating as that would be it would soon be forgotten and left in the past.

Now … try imagining your hopes for eternal life. Try to imagine that you have struggled and strived for literally decades to secure a place in heaven only to find that when you stand before the judgment throne on that Day of the Lord’s reckoning, the one, most vital piece is missing and the awful judgment of “depart from Me” is heard from the throne of God.

What is that piece of the puzzle that is missing for so many who call themselves by the name of Christian?

Please join me in your Bibles as we read two different passages:

Matthew 16:13-16 & Matthew 1:18-25

(Prayer for help)

I have talked to many people who say that they “believe in Jesus”.

And often I have taken that phrase at face value without asking for any further information.

Great! They believe in Jesus so they are saved, right?

Maybe … maybe not …

Some follow up questions might be …

- What do you mean by “believe”?

- Who is Jesus?

- Where did you these beliefs about Jesus?

Now, these can all be phrased as simple questions and not as an interrogation, but, without the information that would be provided by these questions the person may mean something radically different from what the Bible means about believing in Jesus.

But the most important question in all of human history is this, “Who is Jesus” or more pointedly, “Do do you believe Jesus is?”

Can we even know who Jesus REALLY is?

How would some eyewitness accounts do?

Well, the entire Bible is about Jesus. The entire Old Testament points forward to the Redeemer who is to come, starting in the third chapter of Genesis and on through to the very last and least prophet!

And, then, when you get to the New Testament what you find is that it is ALL about Jesus and our relationship with Him. In fact, Jesus is SO predominant that every other person mentioned in the New Testament is nothing greater than a minor character in the account. In fact the sign language motion for the Bible is basically two words, Jesus and Book combined.

The name Jesus is found in the New Testament 1,310 times. There are 7,956 verses and 260 chapters in the New Testament. That means that the actual name of Jesus is mentioned on the average once in every six verses and over five times in the average chapter.

These are just references to Jesus’ proper name and do not include pronouns referring to Jesus or the titles of Jesus such as “Son of God”, “Son of Man” and “the Lamb of God”.

With such an abundance of information you can be assured that all we need to know about Jesus and His life on earth is contained in the New Testament and that it is abundantly available if we will take the time to study and read the Bible.

But … without the Bible things can really go off the rails.

Here is a really wild one!

The Mormons believe that there are an innumerable number of gods but that for this planet we call earth, there are three gods. The three gods are known as; The Father, Jehovah/Jesus and the Holy Spirit and they claim that each one of these gods are actual humans who were once as we are but were elevated to the position of being a god through their own righteousness.