What About Jesus?

What do we do when you see a police car? Some say "Slow down," some say "Break!" "Scream." Just even when we’re at a stoplight and a police car pulls up behind us how many of us get nervous? You’re already thinking, "What did I do?... Did they see me run that stop sign last week? I’m making sure my mirror’s going, my cigarette lighter, my stolen jewels are hidden away..." We’re afraid that our actions will have consequences

This image is appropriate when we talk about God. As a matter of fact, I think many, if not most, when it comes to how we view God, a lot of times we view God as a spiritual cop, rather than the Savior that He wants to be. If we’re really honest and think about how do we view God we kind of view God like He’s in heaven with a night stick, just kind of pacing, thinking about us. Or He’s got a flashlight, moving into the darker parts of our lives. We think God is like that, that God is just waiting for us to mess up and what He does is take out a little sin citation and leave it there.

Sometimes through the centuries the image we have of Jesus gets translated into something that doesn’t bear a lot of resemblance of who He really is and how we can know Him. And maybe you’ve been wondering who Jesus is. Maybe you’re a seeker today, you’ve been investigating Christianity and asking questions, Who is this Jesus? What was He really liked?

Or maybe you’re a Christian and maybe your image of Jesus and who He is has been added on over the years. You’d just like to strip that away and get back to the fundamentals of who He is and how we can know Him authentically

We’re in this series called "Frequently Asked Questions". Today as we talk about Jesus, even if you don’t believe in the Bible, we do know a few things about Jesus. We know that He existed, that He lived in the first century Palestine, that He had a group of followers, that He was convicted and crucified under Pontius Pilate and upon His death a huge religious movement started. Those are facts that almost no serious historian will question or contest.

What I want to do is talk about Jesus from the Bible. What does the Bible teach about who Jesus is? There’s a lot of confusion out there about who He is and who He said He was. I’m going to discuss that today.

What if I had a friend who was a spiritual seeker, and who was checking out who Jesus is. We’re down at the local coffee shop and he says, "You say you’ve known this Jesus for years. Who is this guy? What’s He like?" What are the things I would tell him? What are the basic things I would try to communicate to him about Jesus?

The problem with our religious ideas is when we view God as that judge we tend to distance ourselves from Him. We tend to look at all our behavior and evaluate when I’m bad I want to distance myself. When I’m good I want to negotiate: "God, did You see this?" It’s faulty image of God.

God, as revealed in His love letter, the Bible, gives us a totally different picture, than God is a spiritual cop or a judge. In this second part of the FAQs series I want to talk about the Jesus I have known since I was child. I was fortunate to have parents who took me to church all of my life and in that setting I came to know Jesus.

So today I want to help you understand some of the questions you may have had about Jesus.

A. WHAT DID JESUS COME TO DO?

¨ Although Jesus was the best teacher that ever walked this earth the main thing that He came to do was not to teach.

¨ Although Jesus did some incredible miracles, he didn’t center what He came to do around those miracles.

¨ Although the largest, fastest growing religion resulted from Jesus’ time on earth, he did not come to start a new religion.

Based on my experience and what the Bible reports, I see that Jesus came to

¨ change peoples’ lives

¨ to give freedom to people who felt trapped

¨ to give forgiveness to those of us who feel guilty

¨ to give a future to those of us who feel hopeless.

¨ to look at how He comes to bring light to dark places.

If you observe the events in the life of Jesus, when people would intercept with Him, you see what would happen. Most of the time we see people actually pursued Jesus. They would work their way through a crowd just to touch Him. Some buddies took a friend and lowered him through a roof just so he would be in the presence of Jesus.