Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up
John 1:1-18
The other day as I sat at my desk I was talking on the phone, communicating by Instant Messenger and answering email all at the same time. I also had the radio playing in the background. It was during this time that I glanced down at my Bible that was providentially opened to Psalm 46:10, a passage that conludes with "Be still and know that I am God."
I hung up the phone.
I closed out of Instant Messenger
I turned off the computer.
I shut down the radio.
And then I hung my head.
To know God we have to be still. That’s not an easy task in our society and I am as guilty as anyone. It’s hard to simply be still. and yet, if we are to know God we must take that time for reflextion and study and meditation.
Well our goal over the next 13 weeks is to know God better as we study the person of Jesus Christ. We are beginning a look at Jesus through the Gospel of John and hopefully we will see him as he is, and not just as we have perceived him to be in the past.
I want to start where it’s always good to start and that’s at the beginning. I want you to hear the words to John 1:1-18 and realize that John is referring to Jesus when he calls him the Word of God. In the beginning was the Word and that’s Jesus. And he will go on to say that the Word was made flesh. Jesus was born.
Read John 1:1-18
Now there is no greater topic that we could study then that of the person of Jesus Christ, and I mean that and I’ll give you two reasons why I believe that.
#1 – He divided History. Think about it. There is no individual in history that has had more of an impact than Jesus Christ. True greatness belongs only to him, and sometimes we forget that.
Sometimes we get carried away with applying the term great and we ascribe it to athletes or movies stars or possessions or food. He’s a great ball-player, she’s a great actress, that’s a great car, that’s a great meal. But the reality is that all of those things come and go and in a few years who remember them. Were they really that great?
Think about the people from Jesus’ time. Who remembers the greatest athlete in Rome? Or the biggest sex symbol of Galatia? Who remembers the Mayor of Thessalonica or the richest man in Jerusalem? Who was the teenage heartthrob in Nazareth. Who knows? And who cares? History validates the question of the greatness of Jesus. He alone is without peer.
Every day when open my appointment book or turn on my computer or peel off one of those desktop calendar pages, it flashes a date that, though I realize it or not, is a testimony to the greatness of Jesus, an acknowledgement to his birth.
And isn’t it amazing that everything that happens on this planet falls in one of two categories, it is either before Christ (BC) or After the death of Christ (Anno-Domini) AD. The separation of history validates his greatness.
Phillip Yancy, in his book "The Jesus I Never Knew" (a book that greatly influenced this sermon and it’s content) tells about the year 1969. The Apollo astronauts landed on the moon and Richard Nixon, swept up in the moment, proclaimed it “the greatest day since creation. And then Billy Graham was quick to remind him of the birth of Christ.
You see, there’s never been an individual that had the impact of Jesus Christ. We can even see his influence in the lives of unbelievers. A golfer misses a put or a carpenter hits his thumb with a hammer, what name comes out of his mouth. It’s not Abraham Lincoln or George Washington, it’s not Mohammed or Buddah, it’s Jesus Christ.
And what I’m trying to say is that you cannot get away from the man, that’s the impact that he had.
Even HG Wells said, “More then 1900 years later even a non-Christian like myself finds the picture centering around the life and character of this most significant man.”
That from a non-Christian. And so we will talk about Jesus because there’s been another person with the impact of this man. There’s never been another that split time in two.
And yet I said there were two reasons I wanted to talk about him. You see I want to talk about Jesus, not just because he divided history, but because he divided my life as well.
I date everything in my life much the way that time is dated, before Christ and after Christ. He was the dividing point of my life. My goals changed, my values changed, my hopes changed and certainly my eternal destination changed.
And so I can’t think of a better topic to look at over the next 13 weeks then the person of Jesus Christ. And in doing so, we are not just looking at Jesus, we are looking at God.
That is the gist of the first 18 verses that we read. Jesus not only came into the world, but in doing so he gave the world it’s first real glimpse of what God is like. What we know of God we learn from the character and the person of Jesus Christ.
“No one has seen God, but God the son…has made him known to us.”
But if we’re going to look at Jesus, let’s really…look…at Jesus. We need to strip away many of our preconceived ideas and get a glimpse at what the real Jesus looks like, and maybe he’s gonna look like a Jesus that I never really knew before.
G.K. Chesterson said, “Suppose you hear of an unknown man, spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was tall and others short, some said he was fat and others lean, some said he was dark and others light. One explanation would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape and perhaps all those men never really saw him as he was.”
Often times, influences give us a warped view of the truth. Jesus is the truth, but what does he look like, what is he like, what does he expect and demand? And that truth is often lost amid the speculation and opinions around us.
And as we look through the book of John, we are attempting to get an honest view of what Jesus is really like. Not the Jesus we’re often presented with. Not the Jesus we may have grown up picturing. Not the Jesus we want him to be. But what is really like? Can we get past our preconceived ideas and find out what the real Jesus is like?
Now one way to do that is to acknowledge just what exactly influences our pictures of Jesus. Often our opinions are rooted in the first impression of image we receive. It can be the same way with Jesus.
Some people’s picture of Jesus comes from Television - in particular perhaps from TV preachers who tell about a Jesus who wants to bless you financially and with good health and he’ll do it for a small contribution to their ministry. The reality is that Jesus condemned those that gouged people in the name of religion.
Some people’s picture of Jesus comes from classical art. We see the beautiful renderings and the classic features. A handsome man. And yet Isaiah 53:2, speaking of Jesus, says “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”
Other people’s picture of Jesus comes from Sunday School. And maybe it’s a vague picture that’s never really been defined because it’s always just been around.
Always the topic, always the subject, always the answer, but never really closely investigated. It reminds me of the Sunday School teacher who asked her young class, “What’s brown, furry, has a long bushy tail and loves acorns? And one little boy said, “Well it sounds like a squirrel, but I bet the answer’s gonna be Jesus.”
Well, for Sunday School kids, and people raised in the church, perhaps he’s just someone that’s always been there – never really thought much on our own about him, we we’re just always in such vicinity to him that we never really looked at him.
Or perhaps our understanding of Jesus comes from pictures or images that we have seen.
Images like the Jesus with the long flowing beard, wearing a robe and cradling a small sleeping lamb in his arms. Isn’t that a beautiful picture? You’ve seen one like it.
And that’s some people’s understanding of Jesus. He’s the kind shepherd. No ragged edges, no wrath, no criticism, no demands. And that’s not a bad impression, but if that’s our only impression we are not seeing Jesus as he really is and we are not seeing God for what he really is like.
He becomes nothing more then a gentle old grandfather. There’s nothing threatening, nothing disturbing, just a really nice guy. And people have this view.
Thomas Paine said, “No religion could be truly divine which has in it any doctrine that offends the sensibilities of a little child.”
But I find a cross very offensive. And if he was just a nice guy, why did he make so many people mad? Why would they crucify the Biblical Mr. Rogers.
I look forward to the end of February when Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ” comes out because it portrays Jesus with all the rough edges. I’ve seen the trailer and read enough about it to know that it’s going to be in your face and very disturbing, but that may be what we need to get an accurate picture.
Well, moving on, other’s people’s view of Jesus is influenced by their relationships. This is one that I had to overcome. We talk about Jesus as the bridegroom and God as the father but our own relationship with a spouse or a parent can then color the way we view God.
Many people were raised with strict, silent fathers and therefore God to them is more like a general then a friend. Very strict, very demanding. We are the subordinates and he is the boss and we must not show affection or weakness. And there may be a part of him that is like that, but he is so much more then that.
You see what we’re saying here. And I would bet that as many people as you ask, that’s how many different pictures of Jesus you will receive. You will find people that picture him as a revolutionary or a subversive, a rabbi, a buddy, a peasant, a charismatic, a prophet, a Pharisee, an anti-pharisee, you name it.
But how many pictures of Jesus can there be? I’ve seen a picture of Jesus in a boxing ring and another one with a rifle over his shoulder. That’s a whole lot different image then the gentle shepherd cradling the sleeping lamb.
The Inuit people who live in the arctic have no word for lamb and so they describe the Lamb of God as “God’s special thing that looks like a caribou calf.”
And so we question, how can we get so many views of Jesus and can they all be right?
And here’s a point I really want to make, that often we are just portraying him as something similar to us.
In African-American pictures his skin is black. In Chinese pictures he looks oriental. And too often in our culture he is very, very white with very similar goals, demands, and expectations to the ones we have.
We portray him as being similar to us. Athletes portray him as an athlete.
In his book, Yancy goes on to talk about Norm Evans, a former Miami Dolphin lineman wrote a book called, “On God’s Squad.” He said of Jesus, “I guarantee you Christ would be the toughest guy who ever played the game…if he were alive today I would picture him as a six foot, six inch, 260 pound defensive tackle who would always make the big plays and would be hard to keep out of the backfield.
Fritz Peterson, former New York Yankee, pictures Jesus as a baseball player. He says, “I firmly believe that if Jesus Christ was sliding into second base, he would nock the second baseman into left field to break up the double play. Christ might not throw a spitball but he would play hard within the rules.”
And here we are projecting our desires, our values, our characteristics on to Jesus. I mean, if we’re gonna worship him we may as well make him into something we’re comfortable with.
And so the football player sees him as a rugged athlete. A mother sees him as a caring parent. A young rebellious individual sees him as the voice against authority. A middle aged business man pictures him as the successful CEO.
But who is the real Jesus? Are any of these accurate pictures of the real Jesus and can I know for sure? Who was this man?
And we’ll find that secular and Biblical history give us very few clues. It’s kind of ironic isn’t it that the very individual who had the greatest impact on history managed to keep his own identity so much of a secret.
You can read the Gospels or the secular accounts such as the works of Josephus and you will find hardly a single word devoted to his physical description, height, weight, eye color, skin tone or any other physical attribute. We know next to nothing about his family or education or training or childhood.
Now that doesn’t mean there isn’t a tremendous volume of material that we can draw from. There are more books written about Jesus Christ then any other individual. His story has been translated in whole or in part into almost 3000 languages. Bible colleges and seminaries contain tens of thousands of books about Jesus.
As the writer John will go on to say, “Jesus did many other things as well and if every one of them were written down then not even the whole world would have room for the books that would be written.”
And I think we’re trying to do it. There so many stories and books and images of Jesus. And yet in writing and preaching and painting and describing have we lost the true picture of who this man really was?
I find that our culture presents him very much like us. Very much interested in material blessing. Very non-demanding, very non-threatening. Very satisfied if we throw a little religious interest his way every now in then. But is that the real Jesus?
Is that the same Jesus that said, "He who comes after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me."
Is that the same Jesus that told a man, "If you really want to follow me, go and sell all your possessions and give them to the poor" and then come back and we’ll talk about it
Is that the same Jesus that said, "He who wants to be first must be the servant of all."
Are they the same Jesus? Who is the real Jesus?
And where we find that answer is not in the thousands upon thousands of books about him. It’s not in the pictures or images or cultures. It’s not from athletes or governments or preachers. The real Jesus is portrayed to us in one place and one place only, the Bible. And so for 13 weeks we are going to attempt to look at this individual who was so unique, the person of Jesus Christ.
My challenge to you, as we wrap up, is to read the book of John. Read it through quickly and then go back and read it again. And as you read and we study and we preach and we pray together, perhaps God will reveal a glimpse of what the real Jesus is all about and what he expects from our lives.
Will you pray with me and then we’ll sing our song of decision.
