What If God Were One Of Us?

-Do you remember the song by Joan Osborne that came out in 1995 entitled “One of Us”?

-It was actually something of a hit for her

-The lyrics are really interesting

-They go:

If God had a name, what would it be

And would you call it to his face

If you were faced with him in all his glory

What would you ask if you had just one question

And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

What if God was one of us

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on the bus

Trying to make his way home

-The song was written by Eric Brazilian.

-When asked about what idea generated the song, he said, “For me, the song was more about what happens to you when you look at something that has completely changed your world view, which could be meeting God, it could be meeting an alien, it could be a near-death experience, it could be anything like that. Just how everything you know is wrong, or everything you know is right, and you didn’t know it."

-The song dovetails so nicely with our text today

-You know, people have wished in the recent past, that Jesus lived in our era

-I think part of that is good, people excited to see what He was really like

-But part of that is not so good at all

-It was difficult for the religious leaders of Jesus’ day to recognize Him

-He was not, at all, what they expected out of the Promised One

-In verses 10 and 11, our text says, “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”

-I think it is really audacious to think that we might do better at seeing Jesus than the people who were trained to recognize Him

-We kind of put the Pharisees and other religious leaders down for not recognizing the Messiah when He came but it wasn’t because they weren’t trying

-Next week, we’ll look at the text in Matthew when the Magi come to find the King of the Jews

-Herod goes to the chief priests and teachers of the law and they rightly point out that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem

-They knew all the right answers because they knew the Scriptures

-It was their job to know the Scriptures {PAUSE}

-Would you be able to recognize the Real Messiah when He comes?

-Do you know the Scriptures concerning Him?

-How are you going to be able to know who He is when He comes again?

-I know that it is not really your “job” to know the Scriptures like it was for the teachers of the law

-However, it is the “job” of every Christian to know and understand what the Bible says and to be able to defend their faith

-Peter writes in his first epistle, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.”

-Oh, and by the way, did you know that the Apostle Paul, even though he was a trained theologian, he acted more like a layperson when he went on his missionary journeys.

-He actually was a tent maker. That is what he did when he stayed in one place long enough to get it going.

-In Acts 18, Luke records, “After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.” And in verse 11, it says that he stayed a year and a half in Corinth, teaching the word of God.

-Why is it our “job” to know the Scriptures? Because even the devil knows the Scriptures and he will use them to his advantage to deceive us.

-Peter encourages us again in his first epistle, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

-However, the devil is not easy to spot sometimes. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians that, “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”

-A lot of really smart people missed Jesus in His first coming and continue to miss Him today

-How much more difficult will it be to miss Him in the present and the future?