“Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?”
Matthew 16:13-16
January 10, 2010
TossUp
Think back to your first memories of hearing about Jesus. What do you remember thinking of Jesus? How did He “come across” to you?
In his book American Jesus, Steven Prothero details how Jesus has become a popular American cultural icon. From a book review: Thomas Jefferson famously took a razor to the New Testament to create a Jesus he could call his own; abolitionists and Klansmen, Mormons and hippies, all cast the carpenter from Nazareth in their own image. Liberated from Calvinism and the creeds, Jesus emerged from the shadow of official theology into the spotlight of popular culture. Today, He is even resurrected on the Broadway stage and in a Holy Land theme park.
Jesus is popular these days—at least people’s sometimes misinformed perception of Him. He is regularly thanked by those scoring touchdowns, acknowledged by those accepting awards, and invoked by politicians seeking office. Jesus even has a radio call-in talk show in Los Angeles; a man named Neil Saavedra fields calls on Sunday mornings in the guise of answering questions as he thinks Jesus would answer.
Popular singers sing about Him, from Carrie Underwood to Green Day, U2 to Kanye West; the Byrds and the Doobie Brothers sang that “Jesus is just all right with me”—though one wonders what they meant by “all right”. Popular movies reference Him; in the film Talladega Nights, comedian Will Ferrell insists on praying to “little 8 lb., 6 oz. baby Jesus in golden fleece diapers” because, he says, he likes the Christmas Jesus best. Here’s a brief review of just a few instances of Jesus in contemporary culture. Celebrities from Brad Pitt to Ashton Kutcher to Madonna to Ben Affleck have been seen sporting t-shirts that say, “Jesus is my homeboy”, and there are even wrestling foundations that bill themselves “Christian”, with wrestlers with names like Zion and Satan. Sometimes, people project onto Jesus what they want to see. One well-meaning former NFL player, a Christian, envisions Jesus as an NFL lineman:
“I guarantee you Christ would be the toughest guy to ever play this game…If he were alive today (sic!), I would picture a six-foot-six-inch, 260 lb. defensive tackle who would always make the big plays and would be hard to keep out of the backfield for offensive linemen like myself.” Kinda “Jesus, All-Pro”, I guess.
It’s just things like this that make it vital that we get the right answers when we ask the Big Questions about Jesus.
The Big Idea:
If we don’t get Jesus right,
we don’t get anything right!
Today’s message is an introduction to the study that we’ll engage in over the course of the next several months. Back when my home pastor would do this, he’d make it clear: “I’m not preaching today”—and I feel like saying the same thing: today, we’re setting the table; the series begins in earnest next Sunday—but today is necessary to set the table.
The passage we read earlier takes place on the heels, in Matthew’s account, of two particular things. The first is a confrontation with the religious leaders who, true to Jewish form, asked Jesus to give them a sign to demonstrate that was indeed the Messiah. Ironically, signs and wonders were a hallmark of His ministry; none of the religious busybodies demanding a sign from Jesus were able to perform the miracles He had—but still, they expressed their desire for more. Jesus upbraids them for their inability to see what was right in front of them, that the kind of miracle-marked ministry that He had carried on was itself a sign of the times. But even there, Jesus indicates that there will be a sign—the sign of Jonah. As recorded in Matthew 12, Jesus explains for the religious leaders—and for us—that sign: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” The verification of Christ’s life would take place after His death; He would be raised to life again from the dead. Ironically, Jesus points out in that same passage that the people of Nineveh, “that wicked city”, would rise up in judgment against those religious leaders in Jesus’ presence because these supposedly religious folks didn’t get it, while the wicked Ninevites repented at Jonah’s preaching! And so the first element of context is these hard-hearted, strong-willed, dull-of-hearing religious leaders rejecting Jesus’ because He didn’t measure up to what they expected, because He was unwilling to ape some trick or perform some other sign just to garner their approval.
The second element of context is Jesus rebuking His followers for their lack of understanding at a reference He made to what He called “the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees”. Their false doctrine had the effect of permeating everything they said, as leaven permeates, and rendered tainted even the things they got right—and there were some things they got right, of course. Jesus is teaching His followers that right teaching matters, and that if they give credence to false teaching, they will suffer greatly for it.
And thus it is on the heels of an instance of the Pharisees misunder-standings and Jesus’ warning His followers to beware their teaching that He decides to give them a pop quiz. Question 1: “what’s the word on the street about me?” He didn’t ask because He didn’t know, but rather to set up the second question. And they give their report, that some folks have Jesus confused with John Baptist; others believe Him to be Elijah or Jeremiah or another prophet come back to life. Jesus doesn’t say much about this, because His concern isn’t the popular understanding of the masses, but rather whether or not these apprentices into whom He’s poured His life understand Who He is. “Who do you say that I am?” We can take this passage as the touchstone for our entire series: who do you say Jesus is? More critically, what does the Bible say of Jesus?
Notice that Jesus asks as question of His followers. We will be asking questions of Jesus over these next several months, and so I want to talk a bit today about asking questions.
I. On Asking the Right Questions
People have always asked questions of Jesus and about Jesus. And Jesus welcomed those questions:
• “Are you the One, or ought we to expect someone else”, asked a befuddled John Baptist when Jesus’ actions puzzled him.
• “How do you know me”, asked a shocked Nathanael when Jesus called him to follow.
• “How can these things be”, a puzzled Nicodemus exclaimed, when Jesus told him that he must be born again.
• “What’s this living water all about—and where do you get it”, asked the woman at the well.
Jesus asked questions; Jesus’ words and actions prompted questions. In fact, I did a little survey of the book of John, and in nearly every chapter, someone asks Jesus a question (and He asks a lot too!). When we speak of the “Big Questions”, I want over the course of the next several months to seek answers from Scripture to the pivotal questions about this Man, Jesus. Who was He? Where did He come from? What did He claim? What did He accomplish? He is the Subject of our faith; Christianity takes its name from Him, and without Him, we have exactly nothing. Everything in Scripture presupposes this: Jesus is Lord. The Old Testament points to Him, and the New Testament fleshes Him out.
The evangelical church has gotten a bad rap, though it is likely deserved in part; here it is: “when I was in church growing up, I was told never to ask questions, but just to shut up and believe.” Ever hear anybody say that? Ever said it yourself? And for some, there is truth to it. But a couple thoughts about asking questions:
A. Truth need not fear honest scrutiny.
If our faith cannot withstand honest questioning, then it’s not a faith worth having. The field of Christian apologetics boasts some great scholars who have made it their lives’ work to present credible reasons to believe in the gospel of Christ, to defend the Scriptures against the attacks of its enemies. But the point is that when we come to faith in Christ, we are not asked to check our brains at the door; to the contrary, we ought to encourage people to look at the facts—all of the facts—honestly. I believe that Christian faith stands the tests that the world throws at it.
B. The value is not in the asking, but in finding the right answers.
We live in this postmodern world where doubt has become a value in and of itself, where the mere asking of questions is hailed as praiseworthy. Now as we said, there is everything right with asking questions, but granting the importance of an inquisitive spirit—inquiring minds do want to know—it’s nonetheless true that the goal of asking questions must be to arrive at the right answers. With regard to Jesus, there are right answers and wrong answers. Now, I may not have all the right answers—I promise I don’t—but this doesn’t deny their existence, as the postmodern mindset does. And so, thoughts
II. On Getting the Right Answers
Getting the right answers is critical to several things we can mention:
A. Our Understanding of God
“No one has ever seen God; the only God, Who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known” (John 1:18). We know what God is like by understanding Who Jesus is—because if Jesus is God in the flesh, as we understand the Bible to teach, then there is no contradiction between Jesus and God the Father (and the Holy Spirit, for that matter). Jesus never did anything in His time here on Earth that God the Father wouldn’t have done in exactly the same manner. If that’s the case, then understanding Who Jesus is, knowing Him better, is a critical concern, and to the degree that we get the wrong answer to any of the questions we raise these next few months, we misunderstand God.
Christian faith is, at its core, about truth—and it does matter if the things it claims as “truth” are, in fact, factually accurate. If “in the beginning, God didn’t create the heavens and the earth”, then we have a faith that is founded fundamentally upon untruths. If Christ be not raised from the dead, Paul tells us, then our faith is in vain. There are right answers, and it’s important that we base our belief on those right answers, if we would understand God aright.
B. Our Continuance in the Truth
“Whenever the church forgets its call to engage in the task of understanding more and more fully Who Jesus actually was, idolatry and ideology lie close at hand” (N.T. Wright). Jesus is the Center of our faith; take Him away, and we have nothing left; the whole system of belief centers on Jesus, and everything else is secondary to knowing and honoring and worshipping Him. When a false Jesus is promoted, such as the “Jesus” promoted by the Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or others we’ll talk about in a moment, we have ventured into idolatry. And thus, we can say that on this hangs
C. Our Eternal Destiny
As much as it may be true that there is more to know of Jesus than we’re capable of learning in a lifetime, it’s still true that, as Jesus said in John 17, “this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” False gospels don’t deliver; false Christs don’t save. Our eternity hangs on getting Jesus right. But there are
III. Obstacles to Getting the Right Answers
A. Woeful Biblical Ignorance
The majority of Americans are Biblically ignorant. Half of Americans in a recent poll couldn’t name any of the four gospels; only one in three knew who preached the Sermon on the Mount. Less than half could name the first book of the Bible, ah, but three in four could identify a Bible verse: “God helps those who help themselves.” Oh, wait…that’s not actually in the Bible, huh? Sadly, the percentages of evangelical Christians getting the answers correct, while greater, wasn’t all that much greater!
Christians don’t know their Bibles—and some don’t seem too concerned about that fact! Theologian J.I. Packer says that the challenge is convincing people who don’t read much to read more, and those who don’t read at all to begin. He adds, “in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries there were more people who wanted to learn to read than there were people to teach them. Neither do you have a problem with wanting to read in primitive tribal situations; they beg visiting moderns to teach them to read. You have enormous problems nowadays with illiteracy in the modern world because so much is done for us by our technology. People find that life is easier, that they can get along without the “sweat” of reading, and so they choose instead to watch the television, read the cartoons. You don’t have to read, except to fill out a form.”
One of the most important things you can put into place in 2010 is a commitment to read the Bible. You can use the Bible-in-a-year plan we have available on the front table; you can use one of your own. You can avail yourself of devotionals from Walk Thru the Bible or some other excellent ministry. But we have to get the Word into our lives!
B. Terrible Distortion/Disinformation
1. The "Jesus” of Liberalism
Have you heard of The Jesus Seminar? These guys came on the scene a few years back, and their task was to sift through the statements that the Bible records Jesus as making, and then determine which ones He actually did say, and which ones were fabrications. And the press was quite taken with these folks, treating them as scholars of the first rank—when in fact most of them were not that at all. They exist in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, who literally took a pair of scissors to a Bible to excise all the parts that didn’t fit into his idea of Who Jesus was. The Jesus Seminar is but one example of the wreck that liberalism makes of the Scripture and of Jesus. Similarly, there is the so-called
2. The Quest for the Historical Jesus
Here’s the idea: there is a difference between the real Jesus, the “historical Jesus”, and the “cultic Jesus”, the Jesus that was created by Paul and others as one to worship. To these deconstructionists, what we need to do is to unearth the real truth about Jesus, to discount the Bible’s witness to Jesus as being biased by men who wanted to create a religion about this man. Herman Reimarus might be credited with beginning this nonsense back in 1778, when he wrote a book arguing that a pious Jew named Jesus went around calling people to repentance, but accidentally got himself killed. His followers then stole his body, concocted a story about resurrection, and voila! We have Christianity. Many writers have followed in this train, and the ideas have grown more fanciful in recent times. The DaVinci Code popularized a conspiracy theory about Jesus, for instance.
3. The “Jesus” of the Health and Wealth “gospel” – Osteen, Oral Roberts, etc.
Then there’s the “Jesus” you can get when you turn on Sunday morning TV and catch Joel Osteen or Benny Hinn. This “Jesus” was introduced to us by the late Oral Roberts and others, who ripped a few select Scriptures out of context and thus began to suggest that Jesus intended for His followers to be uniformly healthy and wealthy. And people are eating this stuff up; Osteen’s church packs ‘em in on Sunday mornings; his Lakewood Church is the largest in America.
4. Even PETA has weighed in, proclaiming Jesus a vegetarian.
5. The “Jesus” of Political partisanship –
Republican Jesus isn’t Jesus, nor is Democrat Jesus. This is nothing new; when the English fought the French in religious wars, the English would shout, “The pope is French, but Jesus Christ is English!” Chew on that for a minute…
We could mention some other items:
• The devaluation of rigorous thinking
• Sentimentalization
• Political correctness
Point is, there are many ideas about Who Jesus is. With all of these competing images, the question is, “will the real Jesus please stand up?”
We spoke last week about the greatness of knowing Jesus. Paul said that this was his consuming passion in life—and it ought to be ours as well. If so, there is a place for questions, for seeking answers. I don’t have a problem with probing questions; I have a problem with those who have quit asking questions. I have a problem with those who are not seeking—we’ve labeled people who are not Christians “seekers”; I don’t want to give away that term to others, but rather to claim it for myself: I’m Byron, and I’m a seeker of the truth. Are you?
Further, you and I need to know Jesus better. “But I know Jesus! ‘And, He walks with me, and He talks with me…’” Question: whom do you know best on this earth? If you’re married, chances are that the answer is “your spouse”—probably better than you know yourself in some respects. Next question: do you sometimes have misunderstandings, disagreements, even arguments with your spouse? Or, are you ever surprised by your spouse, by a word or an action or a reaction? Now, I speak as a guy, and any guy who suggests that he’s figured out women is lying through his teeth. But there is plenty about my spouse I do not know, and plenty about me that she doesn’t. It is always good/appropriate for us to get to know each other better. How much more so is this true of Jesus, our Lord and Savior?
TalkAbout
• How might some churches give people the impression that asking questions is wrong?
• Are there any “big questions” that you have about Jesus? Any things that you find difficult to grasp or to reconcile in your mind? What are some of them?
