Luke #17: Powerful Proof (7:1-35)
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Luke 7:1-35
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Good morning again, and thanks for being here today, whether you’re in the room of online, to worship the Lord Jesus together, and to spend time in fellowship and in the study of His Word with the family of Eastern Hills.
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Thanks to those of you who lead Bible Studies. If you’re not in a Bible Study, please consider checking some out.
Opening
Opening
In the Sermon on the Plain in chapter 6 of the Gospel of Luke, we saw that Jesus changed the rules of life: He reverses the idea of blessing, He redefines the people we should be willing to love, He revises the concept of human judgment, and he relocates the foundation of our lives. This is what we looked at last week together as we continued our journey through the Gospel of Luke. The arrival of King Jesus brought the realization of the kingdom of God on earth—His righteous rule and reign. Jesus’s ministry was a ministry that was filled to overflowing with the presence and power of God, a strong proof of who He is.
This morning, we continue looking at the Story of the King and the powerful proof He gave of His identity as we consider the first 35 verses of Luke chapter 7. So as you are able and willing, please turn in your Bibles or Bible apps to that chapter, and stand in honor of the declaration of God’s holy Word. Like last week, this passage is a little long, so if you are not able to stand that long, please feel free to remain seated, or to sit down when you need to during the reading:
1 When he had concluded saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. 2 A centurion’s servant, who was highly valued by him, was sick and about to die. 3 When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, requesting him to come and save the life of his servant. 4 When they reached Jesus, they pleaded with him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy for you to grant this, 5 because he loves our nation and has built us a synagogue.” 6 Jesus went with them, and when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to tell him, “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, since I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. 7 That is why I didn’t even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8 For I too am a man placed under authority, having soldiers under my command. I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” 9 Jesus heard this and was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, “I tell you, I have not found so great a faith even in Israel.” 10 When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant in good health. 11 Afterward he was on his way to a town called Nain. His disciples and a large crowd were traveling with him. 12 Just as he neared the gate of the town, a dead man was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the town was also with her. 13 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said, “Don’t weep.” 14 Then he came up and touched the open coffin, and the pallbearers stopped. And he said, “Young man, I tell you, get up!” 15 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Then fear came over everyone, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us,” and “God has visited his people.” 17 This report about him went throughout Judea and all the vicinity. 18 Then John’s disciples told him about all these things. So John summoned two of his disciples 19 and sent them to the Lord, asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” 20 When the men reached him, they said, “John the Baptist sent us to ask you, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’ ” 21 At that time Jesus healed many people of diseases, afflictions, and evil spirits, and he granted sight to many blind people. 22 He replied to them, “Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor are told the good news, 23 and blessed is the one who isn’t offended by me.” 24 After John’s messengers left, he began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swaying in the wind? 25 What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothes? See, those who are splendidly dressed and live in luxury are in royal palaces. 26 What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 27 This is the one about whom it is written: See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way before you. 28 I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John, but the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” 29 (And when all the people, including the tax collectors, heard this, they acknowledged God’s way of righteousness, because they had been baptized with John’s baptism. 30 But since the Pharisees and experts in the law had not been baptized by him, they rejected the plan of God for themselves.) 31 “To what then should I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to each other: We played the flute for you, but you didn’t dance; we sang a lament, but you didn’t weep! 33 For John the Baptist did not come eating bread or drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon!’ 34 The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ 35 Yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”
PRAYER
There are moments in our lives when we ask some really important questions: “Who am I?” “Why do I exist?” “What is the meaning of life?”
These questions are massively important. They are existential questions—they speak directly to our existence and understanding of reality. And as important as these questions are, one thing that is fascinating about such questions is that they are all secondary questions.
What do I mean by that? I mean that these questions have questions that have to come before them. We have a problem when we make these questions primary, or of first importance, because none of them have truly objective answers. If it is primary, the question “Who am I?” has very little tangible data to inform the answer other than our concept of our inner self: and I don’t know about you, but there have been plenty of times that I have been wrong about who I thought I was. If we make the question, “Why do I exist?” a primary question, then its answer is really just based on what we want, not on any data outside of ourselves: we essentially get to define our own “why,” and we are really fickle in what we want, even moment by moment. We might define some reason that we exist, and then once we achieve that reason, we find that we need even more reason for existing. Similar to this is the concept of what the meaning of life might be. If there is no meaning giver external to us, then we become the meaning giver for ourselves, and we neither understand ourselves well enough nor have the ability to see far enough into the future (or at all) to adequately define right now what the meaning of life is for us.
So these questions are all secondary questions. The primary questions define the answers to the secondary questions, and are of first importance: “Is God real?” “Who is Jesus?” These questions are of first importance because our answers to these questions provide an objective framework—one that we didn’t create—for answering those questions I initially shared. And eternally speaking, the most important question that we have to answer is the question, “Who is Jesus?”
Right in the middle of our focal passage this morning, we return to John the Baptist, in prison because he spoke against Herod Antipas and his relationship with his brother Philip’s wife Herodias (Mark 6). John had heard about Jesus’s ministry, but had to wrestle through a moment of doubt. This is our passage’s “fulcrum,” so to speak, because this question flowed out of what came before it, and the answer rings through the rest of it:
18b So John summoned two of his disciples 19 and sent them to the Lord, asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”
Basically, John needed to know the answer to the question, “Who are You, Jesus? Are you the Messiah, or not?” We’ll get into the reasons for John’s question in a minute, during our third point this morning. But for the moment, we can see in this passage that what Jesus had done was what prompted the question, and through what He continued to do, He answered it. Jesus proved who He is by His power, by resurrecting the dead, and by wisdom despite the fact that sometimes doubts assail those who genuinely believe.
1: Proven by power (1-10)
1: Proven by power (1-10)
First, Jesus was proven to be the Messiah by His power. We’ve already seen His power on display several times in the Gospel of Luke, so this doesn’t come as a surprise to us. But the healing that we see in the first ten verses of this chapter were different from the others, and the interchange that occurred showed that even people who weren’t Hebrew were trusting in Jesus’s power and authority.
We come into this chapter with Jesus returning to Capernaum after the Sermon on the Plain, and sometime thereafter, He received a visit from Jewish elders (community leaders) who were serving as emissaries for a centurion (a commander of 100 soldiers) in the area. This centurion had a servant who was “highly valued” (the Greek term means “precious” or “honored,” not “costly”), and who was knocking on death’s door. Matthew says that the servant was “paralyzed and in terrible agony.” (Matt 8:6) This centurion had heard about Jesus’s ministry and the power that He commanded, and so he sent word to Jesus, asking Him to save his servant’s life.
This centurion was quite possibly either a God-fearer or even a proselyte of Judaism, but at the very least, he cared for the Jewish community in his particular area of the Galilee, because he had paid (or been a major benefactor) for the building of their synagogue. The elders used this as a means of convincing Jesus that this man was “worthy” of Jesus going to help him. But it turns out that the centurion disagreed. We pick up in verse 6:
6 Jesus went with them, and when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to tell him, “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, since I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. 7 That is why I didn’t even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8 For I too am a man placed under authority, having soldiers under my command. I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” 9 Jesus heard this and was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, “I tell you, I have not found so great a faith even in Israel.”
Word must have reached the centurion that Jesus was actually coming to his house, but his unworthiness in his own eyes was why he had sent emissaries in the first place, and he certainly didn’t feel worthy of Jesus coming into his home. Remember when Joe preached on the first part of chapter 5? Peter’s response to Jesus was similar to this man’s:
8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’s knees and said, “Go away from me, because I’m a sinful man, Lord!”
This centurion had life-and-death authority over the men under his command, and used his own life as a means of explaining the faith that he had in Jesus. He could give a command to his men or his servant, and he knew that it would be done. He trusted that Jesus had that level of absolute authority in the world (as we saw in sermon 12), and so he knew that all Jesus had to do is say the word, and his servant would be healed, echoing Psalm 107:20:
20 He sent his word and healed them; he rescued them from their traps.
Both this man and his servant were held captive by this illness. He saw Jesus as his only hope. In this way, he placed himself under Jesus’s authority, even though as the centurion of the area, he likely could have forced Jesus to come to his home.
Jesus was amazed at this Gentile’s faith in His power, and said so to the crowd who followed Him, declaring that He hadn’t found that depth of faith in His very people. The servant was completely healed when the emissaries returned:
10 When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant in good health.
Jesus proved that the centurion’s faith was not misplaced through this display of His power. Jesus did have all authority.
I would like for us to notice one thing about the centurion, and then ask ourselves one question.
The centurion’s faith in Jesus’s ability to heal his servant was absolute. Now, we can’t say definitively whether this was saving faith or not. It was faith enough to rescue his servant at the very least. I like to think that it was saving faith, because it was so complete. He knew that Jesus had the power and authority to heal his servant. He knew that Jesus didn’t need to touch, to do some incantation over, or to put some form of salve on his servant in order for him to be healed. He didn’t even need to be in the same vicinity. He absolutely believed that Jesus’s authority, in this regard at least, was absolute.
The question is this: Do we have this kind of faith today? Obviously, Jesus said that He hadn’t found anything like it in Israel. The sobering thing here is that later, in chapter 18, Jesus will wonder out loud if He will find anything like it when He returns:
8b Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Do we believe that Jesus’s identity is proven by His power? When we read about the miracles of Christ, do we see them as the truth, or do we see them as cool fictional stories? Did Jesus really do what the Gospels claim He did, or not? Remember that Luke was an investigative reporter on the life and ministry of Jesus, so he collected eyewitness testimony in order to share this. Eyewitness Matthew and possible eyewitness Mark both share this in their Gospels as well.
Jesus is the King of kings, the Lord of lords (Rev 19:16), Almighty God (Rev 1:8), the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the First and the Last (Rev 22:13), the One through Whom (John 1:3) and by Whom (Col 3:16) and for Whom (1 Cor 8:6) and in Whom all things exist (Col 3:17), the blessed and only Sovereign (1 Tim 6:15). Jesus is Messiah, the omnipotent Son of God, who is “far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion, and every title given, not only in this age but also in the one to come.” (Eph 1:21) His power proves it. Do we believe it?
Jesus also proved His identity through resurrection: both others’ and His own.
2: Proven through resurrection (11-17)
2: Proven through resurrection (11-17)
One of the things that the Scriptures say prove Jesus’s identity as Messiah is His power over not just life, but death. It was one thing for Jesus to keep someone from dying, like He did with the centurion’s servant. But it was something altogether different to make someone who had been dead for some time no longer dead.
Some time after the healing of the centurion’s servant, Jesus went to a small town called Nain, about 25 miles southwest of Capernaum, and 6 miles south of Nazareth. A large crowd was traveling with Him, and as He arrived at Nain, this crowd going toward town met a large crowd coming out of town—a funeral procession. It turns out that the only son of a widow had died, and this was his burial procession. She was bereft of all means of financial support in that culture, and would have been in dire straits.
Jesus comes up and, if He were anyone else, says basically the one wrong thing to say to anyone experiencing a loss like this. But this is Jesus. He has power, and He has a plan:
13 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said, “Don’t weep.” 14 Then he came up and touched the open coffin, and the pallbearers stopped. And he said, “Young man, I tell you, get up!” 15 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.
Jesus was filled with compassion for this woman, and this was His purpose for raising her son. We don’t see anything about her faith, or the faith of anyone else there. We just see His work. While Jesus’s purpose was compassion, Luke’s purpose in recording this was proof.
Picture the scene for a moment. This was a burial procession. The CSB unfortunately chose to say that this man’s body was in an “open coffin,” but they didn’t use coffins as we know them then. His corpse would have been on a bier, basically a plank that was being carried on the shoulders of likely six men, and a crowd of mourners would have been loudly expressing their grief over his death for the entire walk. This scene would have been intense.
But Jesus walks up to the bier, stops the procession, and tells the man to “get up.” He sits up on his plank and begins talking!
Now, can you imagine being the guys holding the bier? Jesus stops you, touches the bier, and the dead man on it sits up. And then he starts talking. No wonder the passage says that:
16 Then fear came over everyone, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us,” and “God has visited his people.”
This fear is certainly the “awe-stricken” kind, but it may have included the “terrified” kind as well. How would you respond if you were carrying a dead guy and he sat up and started talking? But those who were there gave God the glory, even though they still didn’t understand who Jesus is. They said that He was a great prophet (not the great prophet in the spirit of Moses promised in Deut 18). But they didn’t know how right they actually were when they said that through Jesus, “God has visited His people.” This meant that they thought God was helping them, not that He was actually present with them… but He was!
The Bible records three specific times that Jesus raised someone from the dead: this man from Nain, the daughter of Jairus (we’ll see this in Luke 8), and Lazarus (John 11). This one was the first. The language is very reminiscent of the ministries of Elijah and Elisha in 1 and 2 Kings in the Old Testament, especially the raising of the son of the widow from Zarephath by Elijah in 1 Kings 17.
22 So the Lord listened to Elijah, and the boy’s life came into him again, and he lived. 23 Then Elijah took the boy, brought him down from the upstairs room into the house, and gave him to his mother. Elijah said, “Look, your son is alive.”
Elijah and Elisha are recorded as raising three people from the dead between the two of them. Jesus raised three in His ministry on earth. Like our first point, these are a display of Jesus’s power, and prove that He is who He says He is.
However, they aren’t the strongest resurrection evidence that we have for Jesus being the Messiah. The greatest resurrection that proves who He is was His own.
Jesus was put to death through Roman crucifixion: He was nailed through His hands and feet to a cross and then stood up vertically, where He would have died a slow and agonizing death. He did this voluntarily, because it was the only way for the wrath of God against our sin to be appeased. Being God, He was perfectly sinless. Being man, He could represent us in death. So that it what He did. And if we believe in His work on the cross, trusting in His sacrifice to cover our sins, then we are justified—made right—with God. But the story doesn’t end there.
Jesus was buried, and on the third day rose again. This rising from the grave proved that He was the Son of God, according to Scripture:
4 and was appointed (shown) to be the powerful Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead.
Paul gave evidence that a BUNCH of people saw Jesus alive after His crucifixion. 1 Corinthians 15 tells us:
5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. 6 Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time; most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, he also appeared to me.
Jesus was raised from the dead. He overcame death. And if we will surrender to Him in faith as Lord—giving up going our own way in our own strength—believing in Him as Savior because He died in our place to rescue us from our sins, then we will receive both forgiveness and eternal life, and we will live with Jesus forever in heaven. This is a promise.
And this promise is only true because Jesus proved Himself to be the Messiah through resurrection.
So Jesus proved himself by power and through resurrection. And as a result, verse 17 says that His fame continued to spread. Word of His ministry flowed throughout Judea, and reached the ears of John the Baptist.
3: Proven despite doubt (18-28)
3: Proven despite doubt (18-28)
We tend to think that doubt is the enemy of faith. I don’t think that’s accurate. Can doubt be an enemy of faith? Sure, when we think that our doubts are more valid than God’s Word is. But the truth is that doubt can simply be a reflection of the fact that we are finite and not only don’t know everything, but can’t know everything. Even the most stalwart believers among us might wrestle with times of doubt, perhaps due to circumstances that we face, or tragedies that we don’t understand, or frustrations that we can’t let go of.
John the Baptist was no different, and he had known who Jesus was when he was still in the womb, and as an adult had declared Jesus was “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29), and baptized Jesus while seeing the Spirit descending on Him in the form of a dove. The Bible tells us that John heard about Jesus’s ministry while He was in prison, likely at a place called Machaerus, a fortress that had been rebuilt by Herod the Great and used as one of his palaces.
So why do we think John doubted? There are a few possibilities, but I think that the most likely one is that there was a particular idea of what Messiah was going to be and do. The belief was that when Messiah arrived, He would overthrow the worst political enemy of the Jews. The land of Israel at the time was occupied by the Romans, and of course, the Romans were hated by the Jews not just because they were oppressive to them, but because they were Gentiles. The Jews thought that Messiah would show up as a political and military figure who would overthrow the foreign government, take David’s place on the throne of the nation, and then lead Israel to a new golden age of independence and prosperity as the most powerful nation on the planet.
But this wasn’t what was happening. Jesus had a following, but it wasn’t a political or military following. In fact, He wasn’t doing anything even remotely similar to that. When was He going to start climbing the political ladder? When was He going to raise an army? When was He going to start acting “kingly,” instead of running around with a bunch of rabble in the hills up north around Galilee? John was removed from everything because he was in prison, so he began to doubt that he had been right. This would have thrown his entire ministry into question in his mind, I’m sure.
So John called for two of his disciples to go to see Jesus to go and ask Him the question that we saw during the opening: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”, likely as witnesses in accordance with Deuteronomy 19:15, which says, “A fact must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.”
When the two witnesses arrived, they asked Jesus the question exactly as it had been given to them. It was apparently important enough that Luke decided to record it twice. Instead of simply answering the question verbally, Jesus showed them what His ministry consisted of, which was basically a list of things the Messiah was prophesied to do.
22 He replied to them, “Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive their sight (Isa 35:5), the lame walk (Isa 35:6), those with leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear (Isa 35:5), the dead are raised (Isa 26:19), and the poor are told the good news (Isa 61:1), 23 and blessed is the one who isn’t offended by me.”
In verse 23, Jesus was basically saying, “blessed is the one who doesn’t stop believing in me because I’m not what they think I should be.” John would be told the fruit of Jesus’s ministry, things that could only be done in the power of God. This should assuage his doubt to some extent, if not entirely. This is because John’s doubts didn’t determine whether Jesus is Messiah or not. The facts did. It had nothing to do with what John was “feeling” about Jesus being Messiah.
But what I want us to think about for a moment is this: Does Jesus get mad at John for having doubts? Does He go, “Well, I guess John never really did believe in Me if he has any doubts at all?” No. In fact, He answers the question with proof, and then addresses the crowd and speaks about John.
Jesus uses two illustrations that are very cool in my opinion. He asks a question a few times of the crowd: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” (24, 25, 26) The first two assume a negative response: “A reed swaying in the wind?” (like a reed on the bank of the Jordan, where John was baptizing), as if John just went whichever way the winds blew? “A man dressed in soft clothes?...who are...in royal palaces.” (like the palace John was in, but without the soft clothes), as if John did his ministry to amass money and power… like Herod.
Then Jesus says the third option: the YES option. John was a prophet, but not just any prophet—the prophet the goes before the Messiah, given in Malachi 3:1:
1a “See, I am going to send my messenger, and he will clear the way before me.
And finally, Jesus says something that is kind of shocking to us about John:
28 I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John, but the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”
John was the forerunner of the kingdom of God, and as such (except for Jesus Himself), He was the greatest man in the world, because he heralded the kingdom and prepared the way for Messiah. But even the least IN the kingdom of God is greater than John, because rather than just announcing the coming of Messiah, we are filled with the Spirit of Christ ourselves! We have spiritual resources that John didn’t have, available to us at all times because we have received the Spirit as a down payment of our inheritance in the kingdom! (Eph 1:14).
It’s okay to wrestle with doubts. But don’t decide that just because you struggle with doubts sometimes that you don’t believe. Sometimes Christianity should rub a little. Sometimes there will be aspects of faith that are hard, because they push against our sin, our selfishness, our pride. This is because we’re broken. Our bodies, our thinkers, our feelers, even our believers, are all broken in some way. Doubt is just evidence of our frailty. That’s why we have the Bible, and it’s why we have the Spirit, and it’s why we have the church. We can sit down with the Scriptures in the power of the Spirit and seek answers to our doubts. We can come together in the church family with other believers, and share our struggles and what we’re learning with each other as we seek to follow Jesus together. This is where transformational growth, one of our values as church, will take place. We thrive as we learn to become more like Jesus together.
Jesus is big enough to handle our doubts. He handled John’s, and was proven to be Messiah despite the doubts. He’s big enough to handle ours, and will still be Messiah, even if we struggle sometimes.
Finally, Jesus is proven to be Messiah by wisdom.
4: Proven by wisdom (29-35)
4: Proven by wisdom (29-35)
This last point is still connected to John the Baptist, because whether or not people believed him was kind of the stepping stone to them believing Jesus (whether or not this is a SAVING faith, we cannot be sure). The sinners who had come to John and been a part of his baptism of repentance heard what Jesus said about John, they agreed that John was the prophet, and that God’s way of righteousness is correct: repentance and faith. However, the religious leaders—the Pharisees and scribes—had refused to be baptized, believing that they were good enough on their own merits to warrant salvation and blessing from God. They thought they could earn it.
So Jesus asks what He can compare them to:
32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to each other: We played the flute for you, but you didn’t dance; we sang a lament, but you didn’t weep!
The picture here is one of children playing. In the first sense, they are playing “wedding,” with joyful flute music. In the second, they are playing “funeral,” with a mournful lament. In neither case does one group of children want to play.
The “children” who are playing the music and defining the game are those who believe in both the ministries of Christ, and John the Baptist. The wedding celebration is about Christ as the bridegroom, the source of unending joy, and those who believe in Him have should be full of rejoicing and celebration. The Pharisees and scribes didn’t want that.
In the second sense, the funeral is about John the Baptist’s ministry: a call to repentance and mourning over our sin. The Pharisees and scribes didn’t want that either.
And so Jesus reflects on how they looked at both John and Himself. John was an ascetic: He lived in the wilderness wearing uncomfortable clothes and eating weird food as a part of his spiritual discipline. And they said he had a demon (or was just nuts) because he wasn’t like them, eating and drinking like “normal” people. So Jesus came eating and drinking “normally,” but with people they didn’t like, so they said he was a drunk and a glutton and a friend of the sinful. Neither way was good enough for them.
But ultimately, what Jesus said is this:
35 Yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”
What He meant here is that wisdom will be proven by the choices of those who are wise. Consider what Peter said in his first epistle:
11 Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. 12 Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits. 13 Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the emperor as the supreme authority 14 or to governors as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good. 15 For it is God’s will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good.
What do our choices say about how wise we are? Do our choices reveal that our identity comes from Christ alone—not from ourselves, our accomplishments, or what others might think?
Jesus proved that He is who He says He is because His way leads to wisdom. Walking with Jesus is the best way to live, because it’s the only way that give life eternal.
Closing
Closing
The answer to this one question: “Who is Jesus?” determines how we answer those secondary questions of life that I brought up in my opening. He is either Lord and Savior, or He is not. There is no middle ground. Who we believe that Jesus is determines how we answer the question, “Who am I?” because it is in belief in Jesus that we find our true identity as we are adopted into the family of God as His beloved children, or through our rejection of His identity we will ultimately find that we are lost in sin and bound for hell regardless of how else we might try to define ourselves.
Answering the question, “Who is Jesus?” gives us the framework to answer the question, “Why do I exist?” because it is in Christ that we “live and move and have our being,” according to Acts 17:28. If we believe in Jesus, we can live out the “why” of our life with a goal: to bring glory to the One who made us, sustains us, and saves us. Otherwise, we make up our own reason for existing, and it turns out that all of those roads lead to destruction.
When we answer the question, “What is the meaning of life?” apart from faith that Jesus is both Savior and Lord, we discover that “meaning” is a constantly moving target—one that even if we were to hit it, we would find ourselves still unsatisfied, in need of a new meaning. But if we answer the question, “Who is Jesus?” with a faithful affirmation of His position, power, and authority, we find that the meaning of life is to "proclaim the praises of the One who called [us] out of darkness into His marvelous light,” as part of “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His possession.” (1 Peter 2:9)
How will you answer these questions today? Will you surrender to Jesus, who proved Himself to be Messiah by power, by resurrection, and by wisdom despite the fact that sometimes doubt comes calling?
Invitation
Baptism
Church membership
Prayer
Giving EHBCGIVE to 888-364-GIVE
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Mission: People helping people live out the unexpected love of Jesus every day.
Bible reading (Micah 1-3, Ps 110)
Pastor’s Study Tonight
Prayer Meeting Wednesday: Nehemiah #4
Heather Ashbacher has a brief thing to say
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. 24 Yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God,
