Why Jesus Who? September 9, 2007
2 Corinthians 4:1-6
The Bridge Illustration:
The Bridge Illustration – thanks to the Navigators
This illustration has been used to lead thousands of people to Jesus. It is great in that all you need is a writing instrument, and something to write on. A pen and a napkin, a stick on the beach…
I want you to draw this with me – to help you remember it.
1. God wants to have a relationship with us.
2. However, we have rebelled against Him and broken off that relationship.
3. Most of us are aware of this and try to do things to get back to God, but it doesn’t work.
4. Furthermore, the sins we have committed have to be punished, and that punishment is death.
5. But God did for us what we could not do, and that is build a bridge back to Himself.
6. He did that by paying our death penalty when He died on the cross.
7. One last thing. It is not enough just to know this. We must act on it by admitting that we have rebelled and by telling God that we want His forgiveness and leadership.
8. Where do you think you are on the diagram?
This is a great way to tell someone the gospel – even if you don’t show them the illustration, but just use it as a memory tool so that you can explain your faith to someone.
The difficulty is that most people these days are not standing on the edge looking over the precipice of sin trying to get to God on the other side. There are people who are nowhere near the diagram!
Many people who have some sense of journey toward God have a number of chasms to get over before they even get to the chasm of sin and death.
I’m going to put them into two categories.
1) Intellectual Issues, things like the Historicity of the gospels, & the deity of Jesus, how Science and Faith relate to one another and if they are compatible, or what C.S. Lewis calls “the Problem of Pain.” Or “how can a loving God allow so much pain in the universe.” It is not that all of these issues are solely intellectual, some issues are close to the heart as well as close to the head, but they are chasms that people need to cross just to get to the point of understanding their need for Jesus.
The process of crossing the intellectual chasms isn’t necessarily linear – it reminds us that we are talking about a relationship, not a intellectual discussion. There are times when people might have a number of intellectual issues with faith in Jesus, and then God touches them in some miraculous way and the intellectual issues become so much smaller than they were. It can work the same in human relationships – it’s why God gave men things like flowers, good food and poetry, because if we had to convince women’s brains that marriage is a good idea, we’d be lost!
I think that if we are looking for a church program to help people get over the intellectual issue chasms to meet the living Christ, Alpha is great. Nicky deals with many of the issues that people have, and the discussion time can help work through the issues that Nicky leaves out. For some people the course helps them work through the issues and come to Christ, for others, they come to Christ and then start to work through the issues
2) There is another Chasm, or set of chasms that people have in the way of coming to God through Jesus. I’m going to call these moral issues. It is not that people believe that Christianity doesn’t make sense, (although they may believe that as well) but they believe that some of the things that we Christians, and or the Bible, teaches or practices are morally wrong. Things like what the Bible says about women, and how the Church has treated women, How the church treats homosexuals, the exclusivity of Jesus’ claim and the Bible’s teaching that he is the only way to God, the violence in the Old Testament and the violence that has been used and continues to be used by Christians in God’s name. The hypocrisy that you find in the church can also be a moral chasm as well.
I was having this conversation with Gene Templemyer, the Sr. Pastor at Spring Garden Baptist church (the diagram actually comes from him) and we were talking about how we help people over the moral issues chasm so that they can continue on their journey toward God through Christ. Gene was saying that he thought that if it is the death of Jesus that gets people over the sin and death chasm, then it is the life of Jesus that can get us over the moral issues chasm.
If we switch metaphors from a chasm to get over, to blindness to God’s goodness and the goodness of his good news, what Paul writes to the Corinthians applies very well to our situation.
2 Corinthians 4:1-6
People seem to be wondering why, if Paul is preaching the Good News rightly, why is the whole of humanity not accepting it. – They may be charging Paul with miscommunication.
Paul says that the problem is not poor communication on Paul and his friends’ part. – They aren’t keeping secrets, they are not being manipulative or deceptive: they are simply talking about Jesus. The difficulty is not in the speaker; he says that the listeners are not able to see what they are saying because the god of this age has blinded their minds.
The good news is that God heals blindness!
For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
What we hope when we hope that our friends, family, neighbours and colleagues come to faith is not that they be convinced by some great argument, or that they come around to agreeing with us on sexuality, or abortion or the exclusivity of Jesus: what we hope is that they see the face of Jesus, and they fall in love.
Because it is in the face of Jesus that we see the Glory of God. Can you imagine being that blind beggar on the side of the road who cries out to Jesus to heal him, Jesus comes over, puts his hands on your eyes and suddenly you can see, and the first thing that you see is the face of Jesus – the glory of God.
John writes, at the beginning of his gospel, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” (John 1:18)
The picture that we have of Jesus’ life in the gospels is a life of humility, service, love for the outcast, and self-sacrifice. If we start from the source, it maybe easier to workout the things that have been done in Jesus’ name. And if people get to know Jesus they might cut God a little slack in terms of the things that God says or does that they don’t agree with morally. At least enough to begin the discussion with him.
Attributing motives to other’s actions – getting cut off on my bike – ended up to be a really nice guy who wasn’t trying to kill me. The face-to-face meeting changed my opinion – even though I started the encounter rather badly.
So I’ve been thinking about creating a course similar to Alpha that would concentrate on the life of Jesus. It would be a sort of “pre-Alpha.” It also has the benefit of spending a longer time on the person of Jesus. In Alpha, the first two weeks are on Jesus, but often people have so many of their own issues filling their brains that they miss what Nicky says!
The difficulty is that so many people have differing ideas of who Jesus is. We are quite happy to create him in our own image so that what is important to us is very important to him. Or on the other hand, if we would rather discount Jesus and Christianity, we can create him into a disagreeable or impotent person that is easy to put down.
Luke 9:18-20
18 Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, "Who do the crowds say I am?"
19 They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life."
20 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Peter answered, "God’s Messiah."
Video from rejesus.com
Who is Jesus
Just a great teacher
A life model
A god, or spiritual being that fits in with my present collection of Buddha, crystals, and native spirituality…
A spokesperson for my cause – the environment, communism, capitalism, non-violence, bombing Iraq…
Jesus Who?
What we are going to do is take a look at many of these images of Christ and show how he may fit some and more.
Jesus Who? Course
Jesus the Superstar - intro
Jesus the Rabbi – Just a good teacher?
Jesus The Guru – a Spiritual Guide?
Jesus the Revolutionary – against the powers that be?
Jesus the Friend -
Jesus the Liberator
Jesus the Healer
Jesus the Christ – is Jesus God?
Jesus the Savior
The Spirit of Jesus
Jesus the Master
Call for prayer
My main concern in doing this new course is that if God is not in it, we might as well not do it. I know that God has blessed Alpha greatly. He has blessed it beyond Nicky’s engaging presentation, beyond the food and friendship. I think that it is God’s blessing on Alpha that has taken it all around the world and drawn so many new believers to Christ. So I do not want to come out from under that blessing because of doing something new.
That is really why I’m letting you in on my plans so far ahead. I need your prayers!
Pray for My preparations
God’s inspiration
Pray that the message is not just for
the head, but the heart and
experience as well
Pray that the message speaks to the
real questions people have.
Pray for the group discussion
questions
Pray for the course – for God’s blessing
Pray for people to come
Ask God to take down any barriers and clear the way for the people to come
Pray for the people who do come – that they would see the face of Jesus
Ask God who you should bring
