Which Jesus?

Sometimes I run across something that is too long to use in a sermon but it just fits things to a 'T."  Such is the case this week.  I ran across this pastor's blog and I want to share it with you.  I wish I had the creativity to say it this way.  It is worth the read.

"The Real Jesus Christ"

"The greatness of God is most clearly displayed in his Son. And the glory of the gospel is only made evident in his Son. That's why Jesus' question to his disciples [in Matthew 16] is so important: "Who do you say that I am?"
The question is doubly crucial in our day, because [no one is as popular in the U.S. as Jesus]—and not every Jesus is the real Jesus. …

There's the Republican Jesus—who is against tax increases and activist judges, for family values and owning firearms.

There's Democrat Jesus—who is against Wall Street and Wal-Mart, for reducing our carbon footprint and printing money.

There's Therapist Jesus—who helps us cope with life's problems, heals our past, tells us how valuable we are and not to be so hard on ourselves.

There's Starbucks Jesus—who drinks fair trade coffee, loves spiritual conversations, drives a hybrid, and goes to film festivals.

There's Open-minded Jesus—who loves everyone all the time no matter what (except for people who are not as open-minded as you).

There's Touchdown Jesus—who helps athletes fun faster and jump higher than non-Christians and determines the outcomes of Super Bowls.

There's Martyr Jesus—a good man who died a cruel death so we can feel sorry for him.

There's Gentle Jesus—who was meek and mild, with high cheek bones, flowing hair, and walks around barefoot, wearing a sash (while looking very German).

There's Hippie Jesus—who teaches everyone to give peace a chance, imagines a world without religion, and helps us remember that "all you need is love."

There's Yuppie Jesus—who encourages us to reach our full potential, reach for the stars, and buy a boat.

There's Spirituality Jesus—who hates religion, churches, pastors, priests, and doctrine, and would rather have people out in nature, finding "the god within" while listening to ambiguously spiritual music.

There's Platitude Jesus—good for Christmas specials, greeting cards, and bad sermons, inspiring people to believe in themselves.

There's Revolutionary Jesus—who teaches us to rebel against the status quo, stick it to the man, and blame things on "the system."

There's Guru Jesus—a wise, inspirational teacher who believes in you and helps you find your center.

There's Boyfriend Jesus—who wraps his arms around us as we sing about his intoxicating love in our secret place.

There's Good Example Jesus—who shows you how to help people, change the planet, and become a better you.

And then there's Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God. Not just another prophet. Not just another Rabbi. Not just another wonder-worker. He was the one they had been waiting for: the Son of David and Abraham's chosen seed; the one to deliver us from captivity; the goal of the Mosaic law; Yahweh in the flesh; the one to establish God's reign and rule; the one to heal the sick, give sight to the blind, freedom to the prisoners and proclaim Good News to the poor; the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world.

This Jesus was the Creator come to earth and the beginning of a New Creation. He embodied the covenant, fulfilled the commandments, and reversed the curse. This Jesus is the Christ that God spoke of to the Serpent; the Christ prefigured to Noah in the flood; the Christ promised to Abraham; the Christ prophesied through Balaam before the Moabites; the Christ guaranteed to Moses before he died; the Christ promised to David when he was king; the Christ revealed to Isaiah as a Suffering Servant; the Christ predicted through the Prophets and prepared for through John the Baptist.

This Christ is not a reflection of the current mood or the projection of our own desires. He is our Lord and God. He is the Father's Son, Savior of the world, and substitute for our sins—more loving, more holy, and more wonderfully terrifying than we ever thought possible."

Kevin DeYoung, "Who Do You Say That I Am?" from his DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed blog (posted 6-10-09)

Now my question for all of this week is, "Do I see Jesus for who I want him to be or for who he really is?  We will start with that question on Sunday.

For the journey...

Tim

Moving to Follow

At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them.  But he said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.”   Luke 4:42-43

I appreciate in a new way what Jesus is going through here.  He begins his public ministry with forty days of fasting, praying and temptation in the wilderness.  He then heals and teaches many but when he comes to his home town of Nazareth he is rejected to the point that people who have known him all his life want to throw him off a cliff (Luke 4:28-30).

Jesus then goes to the people who are responding and that is where we see the scripture above.  After a time of prayer, Jesus senses God's direction to move on, even though people want him to stay there, he needed to move on in the mission of the kingdom of God.

That is why a group of us are in the valley on a mission trip.  Jesus would later tell his disciples (Acts 1:8) that they would be his witnesses in the town they were in, in the state they were in but also in the neighboring region where people were of a different culture and also to the ends of the earth.  To follow Jesus is to be on the move and to know it is not about being accepted or staying just where you see a response.  Following Jesus means starting where you are but also going where he leads and he is always on the go.  It means leaving a place of acceptance to risk the unknown.

This scripture was very important to me several years ago when I moved my family 60 miles east to come to Victoria.  I was in a place I knew and in a place where I was known.  I had seen God move.  But that statement of Jesus about taking the good news to "other towns also, because that is why I was sent" weighed heavily upon me.  God spoke to me through it.  I moved.  Is he speaking to you?  How are you willing to move to follow?

For the journey...

Tim

Caleb in the News

If feel bad that my pastor nephew got this out on his blog before I got it out on mine but at least I made it on the same day.  My nephew, Jeff Berger, is a pastor in Houston and his church has been praying for Caleb Jentsch after his injury.  I did not want you to be left out so here is a special post to my blog just for us to watch and rejoice at what God has done and is doing in Caleb's life.  It also reminds us to keep on praying for him as he continues to make progress.

Click on the link below to see the video of the news story on Caleb.

http://youtu.be/SnN3AoOvPKE

For the journey...

Tim

Naked

A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus.  When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.  Mark 14:51-52

These are an odd couple of verses.  No other gospel has anything like this, which has led many scholars to speculate that Mark was writing about himself.  If this had happened to you, would you write it down in the most important document you wrote in your entire life?  Perhaps Mark did, it really does sound like an eye witness account, something that you would not make up.

I remember years ago hearing someone say how the incident in this garden that night is much like the incident in the first garden with Adam and Eve.  When sin gets a hold on us we often run away from the presence of God scared and naked ending up ashamed and defeated.

There is a laying bare of our human weaknesses in the first garden and in the garden of Gethsemane.
 After both those incidents, the mercy of God comes looking for us to clothe us and give us a new way to live. What Jesus did in his garden undid what we (humans) did in the first garden.  Where we failed and brought sin and death, he overcame and brought victory and eternal life. 

When I am following Jesus and fear grips me and I run, I now have a place and a person to come back to, in fact, he comes looking for me.  Is he looking for you too?

For the journey...

Tim

Stock Show Time

I have many memories of this time of year - stock show time.  For most of my growing up years, ages nine through eighteen, I was a member of the Hope 4-H Club.  Most of those years I was raising a steer to show in the annual stock show.  Well, there was that one year that I had a failed attempt to raise a hog but we won't go into that.

Not all my memories are pleasant, I still blame one particularly unruly steer for some of the back problems I experience today.  He knocked me to the ground with such a hard blow I really think it did some damage.  I have a suspicion that he felt I was responsible for him going from a bull to a steer.  In the end, I really had no regrets about selling him in the stock show auction to a man who ran a grocery with a fine meat market in it.

Most of the other animals and I got along well.  Through much of the school year, I would spend time every day feeding, walking, grooming or somehow tending to my show steer.  I learned after my first stock show that all my time and all my preparations were leading up to one moment before a judge - months would lead up to a few minutes.  Before him, every thing would be evaluated, graded, rated and judged.  What he said determined how much or how little, I would make in the auction.  One year, I won Grand Champion.  It was the biggest accomplishment of my life to that point.

God has now called me to a position where it is my job to tell people that one day they will stand before a judge.  There may have been some hardships, some knock downs, some injuries and much hard work before that day but we will come to it nonetheless. But unlike a stock show, God will not be looking for one to award as Grand Champion nor will He be determining how much we are worth in an auction, He will be looking for that which is His own. 

Too many people face that day before God like they would face a stock show judge.  They think, 'If I have worked hard enough, suffered enough, gotten my life in good enough condition maybe the judge will look favorably upon me and give me some sort of award.'  The Bible says it will not be like that at all.  It will not be about the condition of my work.  It will be about the condition of my relationship with the judge.  That moment before God is either your greatest anticipation or your greatest anxiety.  Which is it for you?  Let's talk about it Sunday.

For the journey...

Tim

You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.  Romans 14:10

Baptist Lent?

I was in high school before I was ever aware of the idea or the practice of Lent.  Going to high school in a town with a large Catholic population, I was really puzzled by those black marks on people's fore heads on the Ash Wednesday of my freshman year, but I did not ask what that meant until I got home and asked my parents.  Some how in my mind what stuck with me about Lent was that it was just about suffering.  'Jesus suffered so we are to suffer and we make ourselves miserable during Lent.'  That is not a correct view but that was my freshman in high school understanding.  It made be glad I was a Baptist, I was miserable enough in high school without taking on any additional home work. 

That view stayed with me until I got to seminary.  There I learned more about Lent but not too much, it was a Baptist seminary.  Now I understand a little more about Lent, about many people's desire and practice of trying to connect with Christ in the 40 days leading up to Easter.  It sounds like it is not about being miserable but understanding Christ and His sacrifice.  I am not ready to be a full fledged Lent practitioner but I can appreciate a desire to connect with Christ.  Why can't this time of year be a time for us non-Catholics to connect with Christ too?

Let me give you a challenge in this special early (Ash Wednesday) post to my weekly blog.  Take some time over the next few days to read Northside's own devotional, "Alive."  I think you will be blessed, as I already have been, in seeing how other members of my church connect with Christ.  You will find something as you do this - you do have to give up something for this "Baptist Lent" - time.  All our days are full.  No day presents itself with a carved out time to connect with Jesus.  We have to give it up.  But when we give him our time, we find more and more of what he has to give for us.

You can read the devotional by going to www.nbcvictoria.org/alive

For the journey....

Tim

Carrying a Load

In my recent travels of going to and from Houston to help my in-laws after their house fire and then a recent trip to Garland to move my oldest daughter, I have been hauling a lot of things in my pickup.  I made a realization, my truck rides better when I am carrying a load.  Pickups were made that way and designed to haul something.

In the last week, listening to Andrew Heard's testimony and seeing how he is bearing up under the load of advanced stage cancer I made another realization.  It was confirmed on another day last week when I had back to back meetings with two different members with two very different hardships in their lives, yet each were taking their trial and turning into a ministry.  My realization is this - Christians are made to carry a load.  God has designed us to "run" better when we are trusting Him to help us in the trials of life.

When we depend on God to turn our hardships into opportunities to minister to others, it is amazing how strong we become.  Of course, it is not our strength but His "power made perfect in [our] weakness" as Paul said in speaking of his "thorn in the flesh" in 2 Corinthians 12:9.

I have a lot to learn from these people about following God through hardships and how to  know His strength in my weakness, but I am glad I have seen what God can do in them.  Where is someone around you bearing up under a load and making it into a ministry opportunity?  I think there probably is someone in your life you can learn from - even if you don't drive a pickup.

For the journey...

Tim