What do you think of this man, Barak Obama? Some see this contender for the U.S. presidency as a breath of fresh air. Others view him with suspicion. Some treat him like a rock star. Others mock him for this celebrity status when he’s done seemingly nothing to earn it. The truth is even if Obama gets elected president, our lives here in Canada and even the lives of those in the U.S. won’t really change that much. In other words, what you and I think of Barak Obama has little consequence.
The same can’t be said of Jesus. What you think of him has both temporal and eternal consequence. So who do YOU say Jesus is? Let’s find out the best way to answer that question.
About a year before his death, Jesus took his disciples near Caesarea Philippi, a city in northern Israel. This was an area where the non-Jews may have outnumbered the Jewish inhabitants. It seems like a strange place to go for someone who once said he had been sent to the lost sheep of Israel. Yet there was a reason Jesus came to this area. Jesus demonstrated what God does when his message and mercy are rejected; he takes it away and gives it to others. For two years Jesus had been traveling through the towns and villages of Israel making the lame leap, turning dower funeral processions into impromptu celebrations and yet when he asked his disciples who the people thought he was they answered that they thought he was John the Baptist or one of the Old Testament prophets come back from the dead. The Israelites thought well of Jesus but not well enough! They thought he was just a man who could make life a little better for them on earth. They didn’t see him as the Son of God who would save them from their sins and hell. Because of this lack of appreciation Jesus took his message and his mercy elsewhere.
There’s a warning here for us, isn’t there? Do we suppose that we’ll always have a Bible to read and a Bible-teaching church to attend? We may not if we take these gifts for granted. Just look at what happened to many areas of the world that were former Christian strongholds. North Africa, for example, used to be one of the greatest centers for Christian learning but look at it today. It’s now a Muslim stronghold. What happened? The Christians there became complacent with God’s message and his mercy so God finally said: “You don’t want what I have to offer? Then have it your way. I’ll take my mercy and leave.” What filled the spiritual void is the work-righteous Islamic religion.
What you say about Jesus and his Word has a consequence – not just for you but also for your children and their children all the way to the fifth generation. In fact sociologists have a name for this: the “five-generation rule.” They’ve found that how parents raise their child influences that child and the four generations that follow. This is illustrated in a striking way by what the New York Prison Commission discovered in 1874. They found that several of their prisoners were not only related, they were all descended from the same family unit, that of “Max Juke” (not his real name). The study was subsequently expanded to include about 1,200 of Juke’s descendants, as well as the sharply contrasting 1,400 descendants of Jonathan Edwards, a preacher who lived about the same time. The Juke family purportedly included 300 convicts, 2 murderers, 190 prostitutes, 509 alcoholics and drug addicts, while the Edwards progeny had 430 ministers, 130 lawyers and judges, 99 college professors, 13 university presidents, 60 physicians, 11 congressmen and governors (Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly V. 105:3 p. 171).
So what’s the moral of this story? Speak well of Jesus at home? Try your best to live like he did and pass those moral values on to your children? The people of Jesus’ day were doing that much but Jesus was still disappointed with them. Why? Because Jesus didn’t come just to set an example for us to follow, he came to save us from our sins and take us to heaven! That’s what we want to say about Jesus. We want to say that he is the Christ, the one appointed to be our Savior, not just our guide and inspiration. He came to give his life on the cross to pay for your sins like disrespecting your mother, filling your mind with unclean thoughts about your co-worker, and worrying about your future. He wants to keep us out of the fires of hell but that’s where we’ll end up if we only see Jesus as a good man or a great teacher.
But we won’t say Jesus is our Savior and lean on him for all our needs unless God first works a miracle – the miracle of faith. Jesus spoke about that miracle after Peter gave his fine confession about Jesus. In response Jesus said: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven” (Matthew 16:17). Try as we might, we’ll never come to the right conclusion about Jesus unless God plants faith in our hearts. And faith, as Scripture explains, comes from hearing God’s Word (Romans 10:17). So if you’re not convinced of what I say about Jesus today, just keep humbly reading your Bible. In time the Holy Spirit will make this truth about Jesus clear to you. In fact he can and does work this faith even in the hearts of babies.
Maybe all this is old hat to you because there isn’t a time in your life where you can’t remember confessing Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God. But it’s one thing to make that confession with your lips and quite another thing to make that confession with your life. For example I don’t honor Jesus as the Son of the living God when I worry. Didn’t Jesus chastise his disciples for this sin? When they worried about drowning because of the stormy sea Jesus said to them: “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Jesus showed they had no reason to be afraid when he stopped the wind and the waves simply by speaking a command. Nor do I honor Jesus as the Son of the living God when I praise him here on Sunday morning but don’t want him butting in on my affairs Monday through Saturday. When I insist that what I do with my time and my money is my business and not his, I treat Jesus as my slave not my Lord. We tend to treat Jesus this way because we think that his lordship is something of a burden. Satan wants us to see things this way because he knows what Jesus went on to say to Peter about all those who stand on the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. “…on this rock” said Jesus referring to Peter’s confession about him, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18b).
Nothing in Satan’s arsenal will be able to overcome anyone who says: “Jesus, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Are you struggling with addiction? Are you fighting the temptation of “boredom” in your marriage? Are you curious about what it’s like to sleep with someone who is not your spouse? No matter how strong these temptations those who stand on the solid rock, the cliff-like truth that Jesus is Lord, know that we have the power to resist the devil so that he will flee from us (James 4:7). And if we do fall into sin, we know that Jesus is the Christ, the one appointed to forgive us for our failings.
Or is Satan trying to crush your heart by prompting unkind words and actions in those who are close to you? Do you feel like he’s pulled the rug out from underneath you when someone you trusted for so long now seems to be no longer there for you? Just keep standing on that rock solid confession that Jesus is the Son of the living God and take to heart the words of the psalmist: “I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. 2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. 3 He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God… 4 Blessed is the man who makes the LORD his trust” (Psalm 40:1-3a, 4a).
But one day we will die. Isn’t that evidence that Satan will win the final round of this war? Not at all. Death’s gates can’t hold those who confess Christ as Lord. We will burst through those gates with glorified bodies when Jesus returns to judge the world!
No, it may not really matter what you think about Barak Obama but it does matter what you think about Jesus. Those who confess him as the Christ, the Son of the living God will enjoy an eternal life of happiness. But we don’t have to wait until then to enjoy the blessings of confessing Christ. Even right now confessing Jesus as the Christ gives us freedom from a guilty conscience. It also gives us the courage to face whatever difficulties we are up against. No matter what the temptation. No matter what the pain. The Son of the God himself has ensured that neither death nor the devil will prevail. So join the Apostle Peter and make the rock-solid confession: “Jesus, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” Amen.
