Jesus The Master Series

Jesus the Master December 10,13 & 30 2007

Jesus Who?

Brian McLaren writes in his book “A Generous Orthodoxy” in the chapter that asks the question “Would Jesus Be a Christian?”

“…the more one respects Jesus, the more one must be brokenhearted, embarrassed, furious, or some combination thereof when one considers what we Christians have done with Jesus. That’s certainly true when it comes to calling Jesus Lord, something we Christians do a lot, often without the foggiest idea of what we mean. Has he become (I shudder to ask this) less our Lord and more our Mascot?”

From that paragraph, Mclaren talks about what “Lord” could mean and how we have missed the boat.

King, Master of a slave/servant, Master of a trade – some one to apprentice after

Master Painter – Torston Hahn

4 years apprentice – 4 years watching the master paint, learning techniques, learning the trade.

This is the kind of master I want to talk about today

You may remember the Rob Bell Video, when he talk about what it meant when Jesus the Rabbi asked people to follow him. – he was asking them to apprentice under him – as a disciple, you learned to do what the Rabbi did.

I guess I’d like to put out a challenge in this last week of the “Jesus Who?” course. I’d like to challenge you to follow Jesus.

Early on in the second session of Alpha at the pub, we had the talk on “Why did Jesus Die?” Almost everyone in my small group was able to see Jesus as a great model for life, someone that they would like to follow, but the didn’t get the whole cross thing. How does his death affect my life? As I mused and talked about that discussion in the weeks to come, I started to ask the question, “what is the greater wrong, to accept Jesus as a model for life and to try to do as he did but not get the cross, or to embrace the cross for forgiveness of our sin but only give lip service to shaping our lives to mirror his life?

Christians have a strong emphasis on believing in Jesus’ death & resurrection for the salvation of our soul, but we have downplayed the things that Jesus said about doing the things that he did, about doing the things that he taught, about obeying all that he has taught us. Jesus tells a story of two sons – their dad comes and asks them to do a chore – the one says, “sure thing Dad!” and then does nothing, the other says, “no way!” and then latter changes his mind and does the chore. Jesus asks, “which of these does the fathers’ will?” Of course it is the second. But we would rather both say an enthusiastic “yes” and do the task.

I think asking questions about the greater wrong is usually wrong headed – if they are both wrong, the thing to do is to look for the right. The right thing is to believe in Jesus for the salvation of our life, and to recognize that the life that we are saved into is a life shaped to mirror his.

In the Jesus Who? Course we’ve looked at the things Jesus did and said; we’ve looked at Jesus’ character; and we’ve looked at his identity in the grand scheme of things.

You may have “believed” in Jesus for a long time – Accepted his death and resurrection for the forgiveness of your sins – I’d like to challenge you to follow him.

You may not be so sure about the Identity issues of identity, like divinity, messiah and savior… I’d still like to challenge you to follow him.

Doing what Jesus did and doing what he taught were very important to Jesus.

Matthew 7:24-27

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

In Sunday School we used to sing a song based on this story, the last verse was “so build your life on the Lord Jesus Christ…” That concept is a little to esoteric for me – and it is not what Jesus said – what he said was “DO WHAT I SAY!”

“Follow Me” – 20x