You have heard me harping on this before and you will no doubt hear me harping on it again, but I get a bit upset by the media, the people who are interviewed on the news, and especially by talk show hosts who continually talk about the fact that, “My god is not like that.” And then they go on to talk about their god who loves everybody, not matter what they do, who is tolerant of all kinds of deviance, and who thinks that we can do whatever we want to do as long as it feels right and is not hurting anyone else. It appears that not only have the clothes style from the 60's come back to haunt us, so have the sayings, “If it feels good, do it!” The people of today sound a lot like the people of our text who suggested that they know the Savior and He is not this Jesus because about Jesus they said, “Is not this Jesus, the Son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” And this Jesus was not doing the things that they thought their savior should do. Remember, at this time the people were under Roman rule and they had so twisted God’s Word that instead of looking for a spiritual Savior, a Savior from sin, they were looking for a social-political savior, an earthly savior, a savior from the Romans. And this Jesus did not fit their picture.
I would suggest that before we come down too hard on these people that we need to take a step back and look at ourselves and our own picture of who we think Jesus is. We think we know Jesus, but do we really? We know about Jesus from the stories we hear as little children. And those are good stories, but sometimes, especially as little children, we do not completely understand these stories and we do not necessarily understand all the implications of these stories. Sometimes, then, we fill in what we do not understand with our own imagination of who Jesus is and what He should do.
We think we know Old Testament Bible characters and Jesus from art. There are actually people who believe that Jesus had blonde hair and blue eyes, like the picture they too often see, the picture of what some call the “American Jesus.” Jesus was probably dark skinned, dark haired and probably had dark eyes. He was after all, a Jew. Also, too often we think of Old Testament, even New Testament characters, and Jesus Himself as having long hair. Certainly that would go against what Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, “Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him,” (1 Cor. 11:14). Now Paul is speaking about the customs of his day, but would it not be logical to think that Jesus followed the customs of His day?
We think we know Jesus from our reading of extra Biblical material. There are many story books and novels on the market which are fictional accounts of Biblical characters. These are stories which often romanticize characters from the Bible. There are many novels on the market which quote the Bible or I should say, misquote the Bible, by taking certain verses out of context and making them look like they mean what the fictional writer says they mean. The “Left Behind” series is one such prominent set of fictional books. And unfortunately we do not always take the time to be as the Bereans and double check the verses that are quoted in these books and look at them in their proper context in the Bible and we end up believing the fictional story.
We think we know Jesus from our watching TV movies and shows. We might believe that God looks like George Burns or in more recent times like Morgan Freeman or that Moses looks like Charlton Heston. The older movies, because of their reverence for God, leaned more toward showing the divinity of Jesus, that is that Jesus is true God. In these old movies we would never see Jesus do anything that would make Him appear to be too human. The other side of this is that some of the newer movies have moved to the other extreme of showing the humanity of Jesus and neglecting to show that He was also God. In other words, the newer movies try to show only the fact that Jesus was a man and unfortunately some have gone too far in this, showing Jesus as a man. I say that because in some movies Jesus is depicted as committing sins, just like the rest of humanity.
We think we know Jesus from our pondering Him from our imagining of who He is and what He may have been like. We have moved from a society which once prided ourselves on empirical data as proof of what we say to being a society which is now driven by our feelings being what validates what we believe. Listen to the way people talk and you will know what I mean. No longer do we hear people talk about what they know, now we hear people talking about what they feel. And we know that feelings cannot be contradicted, so whatever someone feels must be true for them. When we bring this into the realm of Jesus it takes on new life in that Jesus is no longer the person He has revealed Himself to be, but now He is the person we feel Him to be. Unfortunately, if we believe all of what we are told about Jesus from art, from the media, from fictional stories, from televison and from movies, then we will be lead to believe in a false god which ultimately leads to eternal death. We must be discerning in what we read and hear and in what we believe. We must take care in what we think we know about Jesus.
Which brings us to the fact that Jesus has revealed Himself to us so that we do not need to speculate on who He is or what is His will. We can know Him, but only as He reveals Himself to us. He does reveal Himself to us. He reveals Himself to us through the Bible and not through these other ways. But here again we see our difficultly, because we do not always like the Jesus of the Bible. He is not tolerant at least not tolerant of sin as we would like. He is just with true justice, which we may not always like, especially if we are on the side of deserving something other than what we want. Yet, it was and is first through the Bible that Jesus reveals Himself to us. He tells us that He is true God. He tells us that because of His great love for us He took on human flesh and blood, that is that He was born as a human, like us, except without sin.
Jesus reveals Himself to us through His Word, the Bible and through Holy Baptism. At our Baptism God put His name on us, His name as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God chose us and claimed us as His children. He put faith in our hearts. He gave us forgiveness of sins. He showed us His great love for us in Holy Baptism as the old sinful nature is drowned and the new saint comes forth. And He daily reminds us of His claim on us as we daily remember our baptism.
Jesus reveals Himself to us through the Lord’s Supper. At the Lord’s Supper we come to His table where He is the host and where He is the meal. We come to His table to eat His body and drink His blood. As we eat and drink the bread and wine and the body and blood of Jesus we participate in His life, death and resurrection. His perfect life becomes our perfect life. His death becomes our death. His resurrection becomes our resurrection. His eternal life becomes our eternal life. The very reason Jesus came was in order to live the perfect life demanded of us, for us, in our place and to give His life into death for us, to pay the price, the wage, the cost for sin, human death for human sin, for us, in our place. He is the very Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. To take away your sins and mine. And in much the same way as the family ate the lamb which was sacrificed in the Old Testament, so, as New Testament people, we eat of the Lamb who died for our sins.
Jesus reveals Himself through confession and absolution. As we come to the Lord and open ourselves up to Him, as we confess our sins, that is that we are by nature sinful and unclean, that we have sinned against Him in thought, word, and deed, that we sin sins of commission, doing the things we should not be doing and sins of omission, failing to do the things we should be doing, and that we deserve nothing but His eternal judgement, as we confess, so He is faithful and just and He gives us forgiveness of sins. Every Sunday morning we have the opportunity to come here, to confess our sins and hear from the pastor as from Jesus Himself that our sins are forgiven and we know that when we hear those words, that is what has happened, our sins are forgiven. Jesus Himself tells us who He is as He reveals Himself to us through His means of grace, His Word and Sacraments.
As we read in our text for this morning, Jesus gives Himself to us. He gives Himself to us through His living for us in our place. He lived perfectly for us. What we could not do, He did for us. He obeyed all of God’s laws perfectly for us. He loved and still loves perfectly for us. He held up under temptation and did not sin, for us, and now He helps us in time of our own temptation. He reached out to and helped others in need because of our neglect to do so and now He helps us to reach out and help others. He never sinned, sins of commission, not doing the things that He should not be doing, nor did He sin sins of omission, not doing the things that He should have been doing. He lived perfectly.
Ultimately He showed His great love for us through His dying on the cross for us in our place. Not because He had to, not by coercion, but because of His great love for us, Jesus took all our sins upon Himself, our sins of commission and our sins of omission. He took all our sins, all your sins, all my sins, all the sins of all people, of all places, of all times, and He suffered and died the eternal death penalty for us, in our place. He paid the price for sin, the wages of sins is death, He suffered the eternal death penalty of hell for us in our place.
He also continues to come to us through His providing for all our spiritual blessings. He provides for our spiritual blessings through His means of grace, His Word and His Sacraments. Through these means He comes to us to give us all His good gifts and blessings, His gifts of faith, strengthening of faith, forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
And finally we are reminded that He also comes to us and provides for all our physical needs. Notice I said needs, not wants. I would suggest that He does also provide for many of our wants as well, but we do know that all our needs are provided.
Jesus describes Himself as the living bread and that is exactly what He is. He is living. We worship a living God. He is bread, He is food for our spirits. And He is a God who continues to reveal Himself, show Himself to us so that we can know Him. Yes, there may be times when we disagree with Him or who He is, but the fact of the matter is, our disagreeing with Him does not change who He is. He is our God and we are His people. He loves us and shows His love to us. His ultimate showing of love for us is the person of Jesus Himself. My prayer for each one of you is that as you come to the Lord through the means that He gives, that you will be strengthened in your faith life so that you may be encouraged to go out and share Him with others. And that ultimately we may live our lives in such a way that our very lives say, to God be the glory, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
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