Well, church, I'm going to ask you to turn in your Bibles to
Luke Chapter 9. You're going to be in just three
verses in Luke today, verses 7 to 9.
As you turn over there, I want to just give a little reminder
that we have the big surf coming up.
If you were here last week, you would have seen Tammy and Laura
up on stage talking about the fact that we're looking for
point people for each of the projects that we're going to.
I think we've got, Tammy will correct me on this when I get
the number wrong, but like 32 or 33 projects that we need point
people for. We've already got a number of
point people signed up. But if you'd be willing to just
say you don't listen, people get really nervous about leadership.
We just need you to say I will be there and I'll be the person
that people can connect with when they come in.
And again, if I get this wrong, Tammy is in, correct me.
So if you were here last week, there was a QR code that was
briefly on the screen. And if you were really quick at
getting to that QR code, you may have been a little confused
because that QR code would have taken you to Creekside's website
and you might have thought, I don't think I was at Creekside.
It's very confusing. We should have, I believe we're
going to have a QR code that, OK, what's no QR code by me?
So if you go on to the Church Center app or you go and
register, you will see a registration event there.
You can sign up to be a point person.
We would love you to do that. And I was reminded last week, we
live in a confusing world. I don't know if you noticed that
or not. It can be really just even
difficult these days to figure out, is that real?
First of all, some of the things that happened in the real world
don't seem like they should be happening in the real world.
And other things get made-up by AI and then they show up and we
can't tell whether they're real or not.
I got into an argument this week with the new and improved Alexa.
I was arguing with a robot because Alexa told me that the
temperature outside. When I asked what the
temperature was, it was -3 I happen to know it was at least
in double digits at the time. And so I told Alexa she was a
liar. And she got very offended.
And we got into a whole discussion.
Amanda was sitting there. She started breaking out
laughing and also very confused. We live in a confusing world.
I mean, even if you're a native English speaker, you can forget
just how confusing the English language is.
It is very confusing. We talk about noses running and
feet smelling. You ever think about that?
Why do noses run and and and feet smell?
That doesn't make any sense. Why do you call them apartments
when they're stacked so close together?
Doesn't make sense. Here we go.
Because my son is my son is putting a thumbs down on me
right now. This, this should not be a
surprise to him that I am up here doing this.
You know that when it's in your shirt, it's a tear, but it when
it's in your eye, it's a tear. Try figuring that one out.
How about this? If you're thirsty, you need
somebody to lead you to water. But when you get to the water,
you don't want to have lead in your water, right?
It's same word, same spelling, pronounced differently.
Use like if you're a non-english speaker.
The English language is really confusing.
I'll give you 1. If a vegetarian eats vegetables,
what does a humanitarian eat? Here we go.
I saved the best for last. We live in.
It's such a confusing world that there was a time like five years
ago where people were actually paying more to buy pants with
holes in them than pants with. I'm so glad that's done.
I'm so glad we're done buying distressed clothes for extra
money. And, you know, we can even get
confused about things that we don't know we're confused about.
So here's here's what I mean. Amanda gave me permission to
share this for 40 years. My wife did not know what best
wishes only meant for 40 years. My wife, because of the the
context in which she grew up in some of the realities of family
dynamics in her extended family, thought best wishes only meant
don't show up if you're going to get into a fight.
It wasn't until we got an invitation that said best wishes
only. And she's like, well, why
wouldn't we have best wishes to these people?
You don't want to fight anybody. And I said, no, it just means
don't bring a gift. That's what it means.
And she's like, really, you, you, you.
It was her mind was blown in that moment.
There's we can even we can even have confusion about things that
we're not even sure we don't even know that we're confused
about, right? And I say all this to say, one
of the things that a lot of people are confused about, and
sometimes not even knowing that they're confused about is Jesus.
There is a whole lot of confusion out there about Jesus,
about who Jesus is. And, and if there's one thing
that you can't afford to be like the things I've talked about,
they're harmless, right? It's OK to be confused about
that stuff in the long term. It doesn't have any there's no
damage that's really going to come out of that.
I mean, unless you really do misunderstand what humanitarian
eats, then that is problem. But when there's confusion about
Jesus, it is serious. And so today, in the time we
have remaining, we're going to meet somebody who was confused
about Jesus and, and we're going to look at at where some of that
confusion and, and, and where some of those misconceptions
come from. And we're going to see how some
of those misconceptions, along with some others, carry over to
how people think about Jesus today.
And then I want to talk to those of us who are followers of Jesus
and say, OK, so in a world that's filled with confusion
about Jesus, how do we go out and begin to bring some clarity
about who Jesus is? And so our big idea for this
morning is this confusion about Jesus is common, but clarity
about Jesus changes everything. Confusion about Jesus, it's
common out there. But when we can come and we can
bring clarity about Jesus, that has the chance to change
everything for people. So let's pray and then we'll
open up into this passage that we're in this morning.
Father God, I'm just praying today for all of us that you
would help us to see Jesus more clearly today.
God, if in any way my words of the things that I have prepared
would be a hindrance to bringing clarity about Jesus, would you
just push those away and just Holy Spirit be present in this
place. We need to see Jesus.
It's so crucial. God, I know there's people in
this place watching online, maybe listening at some point in
the future, who have a lot of confusion about Jews.
They might not even be aware that they're confused about
Jesus. I pray today that you would
clear up any misconceptions or confusion that's there.
And for those of us who already know Jesus, have come to see
him, would we bring the clarity that we have been given to the
world that desperately needs it in Jesus name, The one who has
saved us, the one who died for us, the one who has arisen
again, we pray. Amen.
All right, let's read this passage together.
Luke 9, verses 7 through 9. Herod the tetrarch heard about
everything that was going on. He was perplexed because some
said that John had been raised from the dead, some that Elijah
had appeared, and others that one of the ancient prophets had
risen. I beheaded John, Herod said.
But who is this I hear such things about?
And he wanted to see him. So here's the scene.
We have a guy identified here by Luke, name of Herod, Herod the
Tetrarch. We've actually met Herod once
already. We met Herod back in Luke 3.
Herod is the one who imprisons John and as he confesses to
here, ultimately ends up beheading John.
And sometimes we get confused because there's a couple
different Herod's in the Gospel. So this Herod, Herod the
tetrarch is a son of Herod the Great who was the king of Judea
at the time of Jesus birth. He's the Herod that was king
over the whole of Judea. He's the one who had the
innocent children under the age of 2 slaughtered in order to try
and kill Jesus, kill the coming king and Messiah.
So Herod the tetrarch is called a tetrarch because after Herod
the Great's passing, his Kingdom is split into four, and so he is
a ruler of 1/4. That's what the tetrarch part of
that means. And he is a ruler alongside two
brothers and one aunt. One of those brothers who also
very confusingly, is named Herod.
He is deposed and a Roman appointee is put in place.
A guy we're going to spend some time with as we continue moving
forward into Luke, a guy by the name of Pontius Pilate.
And so Pontius Pilate overseas part of Judea, and Herod the
Tetrarch, overseas part of Judea.
And what we see here is that it says that Herod had heard
everything that was going on. What's he talking about?
He's referring, we're referring back to where we just were last
week, right? Verse 6, you go back one verse
when when the disciples, the 12 were sent out and traveled from
village to village proclaiming the good news and healing
everywhere. So he's probably also heard
about Jesus, but he's heard about Jesus as the, as the
message goes out, as it expands, it's going out everywhere and,
and, and the buzz about Jesus is increasing as the word goes out.
And that's important for us to see that as disciples go out and
display and declare Jesus, it has an effect.
People hear about it, Herod hears about it and we see that
Herod gets curious about Jesus. It what does it say right at the
very end in verse 9, it says he wanted to see him.
He's hearing all this stuff. There's, there's confusion, but
he's curious and, and that's the first thing I'd like for us to
see this morning because this is still true today.
People are curious about Jesus. I, I think one of the, the lies
that we are tempted to believe if we're followers of Jesus is
that nobody really wants to hear about Jesus.
You know, nobody likes it when people talk about faith.
Nobody really wants me to talk about Jesus.
There's a recent Lifeway survey. Now This Is Us data, but I think
it carries over pretty well. 79% of people said, if a friend of
mine really values their faith, I don't mind talking about it.
There's four out of five people said, hey, if that's important
to my friend, I, I don't, I, I'd be interested to hear about it.
Now, some of you would say, of course they say that.
That's what friends say. I've got a friend who's really
into coins and I wish they would shut up.
Or you've got the friend who always wants to talk to you
about your protein intake and you're like, just be quiet.
But you have to pretend to listen, right?
That's what friends do. But also, that same survey came
back with 51% of people who don't currently attend church
saying if a friend invited them to attend church, they would
happily go with them. That's a 5050 shot.
Now again, you may push back and say, well, that's one survey.
You know, it's in the US, They're weird down there.
But I'll just share personally from my experience, when people
find out I'm a pastor, there's usually two things that happen.
The first thing is they apologize for all the swearing
they did before they found out I was a pastor in the
conversation. The second thing is most of them
lean in. Most of them are like, really?
I've never met a pastor before. What does that look like?
What do you, how did you become a pastor?
What is and and and they want to hear more.
Now there's some people who are just like conversation shuts
down. They walk like that's kind of
the end of it. But I would say the vast
majority people, they're interested, they lean in.
Now, if you were Satan, just just imagine you were Satan.
Wouldn't one of the best lies that you could convince
Christians of B, nobody wants to hear about Jesus.
I mean, if you want to keep the word about Jesus getting out,
one of the best things you could do is to convince the people
who've heard about Jesus that nobody else wants to hear about
Jesus. But what if we actually called
that lie out? What if when we're tempted to
believe that because we're we're in a conversation with somebody
and we're tempted, well, I don't want to talk about faith.
They don't want to hear that. We just said no, that's not true
and if they don't want to hear about faith, they can just say
it after I bring it up. They can let me know I'm not
really interested. OK, What if we actually believed
that the person of Jesus creates curiosity in people?
Herod was curious about Jesus. Herod was also very confused
about Jesus. It says that he was perplexed.
And what I've found is that in our day and age people are
confused about Jesus. Most people in Canada have heard
the name Jesus, even if it's as a swear word like people have
heard Jesus name. But that does not mean that
there is any clarity in the minds of the people around us
about who Jesus is. Most people that I've talked to
are incredibly confused about Jesus.
They've got all sorts of misconceptions about Jesus.
Herod had some misconception about Jesus.
As we're going to see, some of the misconceptions Herod had
continue on to this day. So what?
What does Herod say? He's perplexed.
He says, hey, some. Some people say that this person
is John who's been raised from the dead.
Some say that it's Elijah that's appeared.
Others say it's another prophet that's risen and right in.
There is a misconception that billions of people around the
globe believe to this day that Jesus is only a prophet.
See, that's what Islam claims about Jesus.
Islamic people have a great reverence for the prophet Jesus.
That's why this week, if you were paying attention to the
news and a week's worth of news today, like just feels like a
year's worth of news. But you may have seen that in
Iran, the government responded to Trump's blasphemous post of
making himself as Jesus by saying that that's a desecration
of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood.
What type of world are we in? Jesus though can't just be a
prophet, not if you take him at his own words.
In John 858 Jesus says before Abraham was I am.
What Jesus is doing there is He is claiming the title that God
gives of himself to Moses at the burning Bush.
And by the way, everybody knew what he was claiming because at
that point the religious teachers, the Pharisees, they
want to stone him and kill him for blasphemy.
In Luke 5 we saw this a while back and then in in Luke 7,
right with Luke 5 with the paralytic in Luke 7 with the
sinful woman. Jesus claims the power and
ability not just to heal but to forgive sin, something that only
God can do. Islam makes the claim that Jesus
didn't really die on the cross in in the Quran it says it
merely appeared as so. But that would mean that Jesus
was a false prophet because Jesus multiple times, as we're
going to see in this section of Luke, even he prophesized his
death and resurrection. So if Jesus doesn't actually die
and rise, then the only type of prophet that Jesus is, is a
false prophet. The Quran affirms Jesus as being
born of a virgin and, and this is right in the Quran as a soul
created at a command from God. That makes Jesus incredibly
unique that he has a supernatural non human origin.
Muhammad doesn't have that. He's distinct from any other
prophet in history. He's distinct from any other
person in history outside of Adam and Eve.
And that's why Pastor Kirk talked about Jesus being the new
and better Adam. Jesus, if we just take Jesus at
his word, if we take it at the word of the Quran, Jesus can't
just be a prophet. Misconception #2 just ties into
this. It's that Jesus is only a good
teacher. And some would say, well, he's
not a prophet. But I like some of the things
Jesus says. He has some really nice ethical
teachings. But if Jesus was only a teacher.
He wasn't a good one because good teachers don't go around
making claims about being God and forgiving sin.
That is not something that a good, sane, moral teacher does.
If someone told you I am the resurrection and the life, the
one who believes in me, even if he dies, he will live.
What would you say to that person?
Imagine somebody walking up to you and making that claim about
themselves and and Jesus does that to his friend Martha while
she's mourning the death of her brother.
That is not something that a good teacher or even a good
person does if it isn't true. Lots of people out there want to
believe in good teacher Jesus because they love the parts that
Jesus says that kind of confirm the things that they like.
They they like the Jesus full of kindness and forgiveness parts.
They don't really wrestle with and reconcile the Jesus full of
judgement parts. They don't really talk about the
Jesus who says you need to eat my flesh and drink my blood
parts. By the way, when Jesus said that
at the time, all the crowds that we kind of see right now, they
all got out of there real quick and Jesus looked around and it
was just his twelve around him again.
Because people are like, I liked the parts where you were giving
us bread. I like the parts where you were
saying lots about God's love and forgiveness, but I'm not keen on
this part. Yes, Jesus offers moral and
ethical teachings, and we see those in the Gospels.
But I hope you see this as we're walking through the book of
Luke. And if you walk through the
other Gospels, the focus of the Gospels is not actually on his
teaching. The focus of the Gospels is on
his crucifixion and resurrection.
The focus on the gospels is about Jesus himself.
What type of a good teacher doesn't make it about the
teachings, but instead makes it about them?
And he himself is the one who makes claims to not just merely
be a sage, but to be a savior. Now some people believe that
part. They believe that Jesus is AH
Savior, but they put an emphasis on the ah part.
And that leads us to our third misconception about Jesus.
There's a lot of confusion out there that thinks that Jesus is
just one of many ways to God. But I want, I want to let you
know Jesus himself does not allow for us to hold this to be
true. The words of Jesus himself are I
am the way, the truth and the life.
And no one comes to the Father except through me in John 1418
like I148. I don't know how you get more
clear than that. He does not say I am a way, a
truth, a life. And if you would like to, you
can come my way. He says I'm the only way to the
Father. I read this week a post from
Pastor JD Greer down at the Summit Church.
He said this and I really got me thinking, Can you think of a
greater insult to Jesus than to say that there are many and
multiple ways to God? And I was, what does he mean by
this? So I delved into what he was
reading. He said, you know, here's Jesus.
He's in the Garden of Gethsemane.
He's facing the cross. He cries out to the Father.
He says, my father, if it is possible, let this cup, let the
suffering that I'm about to experience on the cross, let it
pass from me. Imagine in that moment there
were multiple ways it would be the Father saying back to him,
actually, you know, there are a bunch of ways it could be
possible, but I just wanted you to go through this incredibly
brutal 1. There was no other way for you
and I to be rescued and redeemed than for Jesus as the perfect
God man to go to the cross to pay the penalty for our sins.
If there was any other way then what Jesus suffered on the cross
was just the brutality of the Father.
You know, I think, I think some people, they think it sounds
humble to say, well, all religions are basically the
same. All paths lead to God.
I just want to tell you it's not humble.
It's incredibly arrogant. It's incredibly arrogant.
What you have said is that I know every other faith and
religion makes exclusive truth claims.
But me and my enlightened position, I understand better
than all of those people, and I have come to understand a
greater exclusive truth claim that all of them are basically
the same. I remember sharing this once
back when I was in Kitchener and a woman got incredibly offended,
contacted me during the week, didn't tell me on Sunday she was
incredibly offended, had a couple days to wrestle with it,
said I want to meet with you and we finished talking.
She said that was the moment I recognized I need Jesus.
In my own pride I thought I didn't need him.
I had determined what was true, but listen, listen, Jesus does
not leave room for the option that he is one of many ways.
You can't follow Jesus and believe that he doesn't leave
room for that. You can follow somebody else, I
guess, but you can't follow him. Now some people will push back
in this moment and, and, and a whole bunch of people will say,
well, why are you even talking about Jesus doing Jesus maybe
didn't exist. Maybe he's just a composite, you
know, just Greek gods, Egyptian gods, just some resurrection
stuff in there. A bunch of guys who have read
things on the Internet, done zero study and become experts.
They come up with this idea that Jesus is a myth.
And it wasn't the first time because did you see what Herod
said? Some said that John had been
raised from the dead. Then here it said I beheaded
John. So, like, I know that can't be
true. This myth that there is somebody
out there and it's just a resurrected John.
He doesn't have a head anymore. The misconception that Jesus is
a myth, I understand. I understand the attraction.
And again, if we're honest, it's born out of hubris, born out of
pride to write off Jesus, to say, well, his death, his
resurrection, his miracles, they are just the product of a less
enlightened age. CS Lewis calls this tendency
that we all have in every age to look back at previous ages and
think, Can you believe what those people thought?
Is chronological snobbery. He also reminds us that 40 years
from now, somebody's going to look back at the things that you
believe and thought. Can you believe what that person
thought? No serious credible historian.
None. No serious credible historian
doubts the existence of a historical Jesus.
You know, lots of debate, lots of people who have doubts about
whether Jesus did what he said he would.
But nobody doubts that there was a man named Jesus who lived in
Judea at the time that Jesus was living in.
The Gospels account for it first.
Non Christian histories outside of non Christian historians
outside of the Bible refer to Jesus.
Josephus and Tacitus both confirm Jesus was a person who
existed who was executed by Pontius Pilate.
And then there's the internal evidence within Scripture.
The Gospel accounts this section from First Corinthians 15, which
is one of the earliest pieces of scripture.
It was written while within a lifetime within a generation of
Jesus death within just a couple decades.
Paul writes and says, I pass on to you as most important what I
also received that Christ died for our sins according to the
scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third
day according to the scriptures. And then this is where it gets
interesting that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12, then he
appeared to over 500 brothers and sisters at one time and most
of them are still alive. So if you would like their
contact info you can go pay them a visit and talk to them about
it. Then he appeared to James.
And I've said this many times, that's the half brother of Jesus
who didn't believe in Jesus while Jesus was alive, but
somehow started to believe that his, his brother was God after
he died. Then to all the apostles, last
of all to one born at the wrong time, he also appeared to me.
Paul says, hey, there's all sorts of people you can go talk
to that can confirm that Jesus was dead and then wasn't so
dead. So you make sense of that.
The story of the gospels, if you were going to make up a story,
it's not the story you make up. That is not the story that you
make up. Death by crucifixion is not the
death that you give to the conquering Messiah and hero.
That's death by the electric chair.
Imagine people walking around with a little electric chairs
around their neck. If Jesus had died within an
electric chair, that's what people would be doing.
It is a symbol of shame that is turned into a symbol of victory.
The disciples he chose, they were dumb.
They they did dumb things all the time and it gets recorded.
You don't. We all know this.
When we when we are telling the story of us, we like to tell the
best story of us. These guys do not come off well.
They come off repeatedly as being thick in the head.
And I understand what Jesus said, doubting him, squabbling
with each other about who's going to be the best and who's
going to be the greatest. And then you look at the people
that they record them keeping company with.
They're not the people that you put in the story.
If you're making up a story, you don't have an empty tomb
discovered by women, not because there's anything wrong with
them, but in that time in that place, women did not count as
witnesses in court. You would pick the most
reliable, the the best references, and those are the
names that you would put in. And then there's this reality
that this man, this life that was lived transforms all of
Western history to the point where you and I and world
history to the point where you and I take for granted most
things that are only here today because of the existence of
Jesus. Tom Holland in his book
Dominion, and Tom is a secular skeptical scholar who actually
started into this just to try and figure out what on earth is
going on with Christianity. He writes in almost every way
what makes us distinctive today reflects the influence of over
2000 years of the story of Christ.
And it's not just the transformation in history, the
fact that we have schools and education centers and hospitals
and charity and human rights. Those are all things that don't
make sense apart from Christian teaching.
You want to have a discussion about that?
We'll, we'll grab a coffee. I'd love to talk to you about
that. But the result of the the, the,
the transformative change that takes place in the life of those
disciples themselves, these guys who were dummies and cowards,
and then their leader and their savior is crucified.
And that's what gives them courage to go out and transform
the world again. Tom Holland said something
happened after the death of Jesus that turns a group of
crushed and despairing followers into the movement that captured
the Roman Empire. And he would say, I don't know
what that is, but something happened and you have to be able
to explain it somehow. Christianity is not based on a
myth. It's based on a historical
Christ, his real death, his real resurrection.
There's so many more misconceptions about Jesus that
I could go into today, right? Jesus who is only love and never
Lord. The Jesus who baptizes my
political leanings. Jesus is my personal assistant.
I like him. He's the one who exists just to
make my life better and make my plans come to fruition.
But this is the one I think we all get guilty of falling into
at times. The Jesus who looks just like
me. It's amazing how much Jesus and
I look alike. That Jesus always agrees with my
values. He's always for my preferences.
The Jesus who never challenges me, never calls me out, never
brings conviction into my life. He's only there to comfort.
He's never there to contradict so many myths and confusions
that we believe about Jesus and the world believes about Jesus
and, and, and church, we've got a job because we can't allow
people to be confused about Jesus.
We have to bring clarity about Jesus.
The world may be confused and the world may be a confusing
place. And it's one thing to not
understand what best wishes only means.
Doesn't matter. It's a whole nother thing to be
confused about who Jesus is. So how can we help bring clarity
to the world about who Jesus is? Let me offer you four ways that
if you're a follower of Jesus, you can help bring clarity to a
confused world. First, bring clarity by asking
before you answer. Jesus was a master of asking
questions. I wish I would ask more
questions. We're really quick to jumping
into the talking at people about Jesus.
Why don't we just ask questions of people about Jesus?
See, to bring clarity about who Jesus is to somebody, you have
to understand who they believe Jesus is.
You have to understand the confusion that they have about
Jesus. This even works, by the way, for
people who say, well, I don't believe in Jesus.
If someone tells you I don't believe in Jesus, the very best
question that you can ask somebody doesn't believe about
Jesus is would you mind telling me about the Jesus that you
don't believe in? Because there's a good chance
that the Jesus you don't believe in.
I don't believe in either. Ask people questions about just
figure out where the confusion lies before we just start
talking at them about Jesus. The second bring clarity by
taking them to Jesus. It's one of the best steps that
we can take as followers of Jesus.
In John 140 to 42, Andrew, one of Jesus 12.
He meets Jesus and he starts following him and then he
invites his brother by the name of Simon or re later renamed
Peter. It says he brought Simon to
Jesus. Andrew starts following Jesus
and he says, hey, Simon, Simon, Simon, come and meet Jesus come
over. I want to I want to introduce
so. So how do we do that?
How would we do that today when Jesus isn't here?
How could we introduce people to Jesus?
Well, let me just suggest to you that you could say to somebody,
would you be willing to read one of the gospels with me?
You're, you seem curious about just you want to learn more
about Jesus. Why don't we just read maybe
Luke's account of Jesus move people from hearing about other
people's thoughts about Jesus to actually spending time with
Jesus himself. There's AU version Bible plan.
It's been done in conjunction with A5 days.
You can say, hey, would you give one week?
I know you got questions about who Jesus is.
There's a there's a plan, it's called who is Jesus?
So this feels like it would be a good one for you.
And we'll just walk through it together and you do that with
somebody. Now I will say it's really hard
to bring clarity to others about Jesus when you're not spending
any time with Jesus. If you want to help other people
meet with Jesus, you should probably spend some time meeting
with Jesus. And good news for you, we have a
Bible reading plan as Forward Church that we would love for
you to be a part of. All you have to do is text Bible
to 226-212-7117, get yourself signed up, and you can join a
whole whack load of other people who are a part of our church who
are just reading along, meeting and understanding better who
Jesus is. Bring people to Jesus.
That's how it helps to bring clarity.
Third, bring clarity by sharing who Jesus is to you.
I think so many people get so freaked out about talking about
Jesus because they're like, somebody's going to ask me
questions and I'm not going to know the answers.
You're right, people ask me questions.
I don't know the answers. I've been doing this for a while
and I've been in church my whole life.
There's still times where I'm like, that's a good question.
Sometimes it goes, what happens when I'm down in the preteen
room and we're all worried that we're not going to know enough
answers. But there's so many times we, we
just saw this recently with Jesus and the demon possessed
man, right? There's so many times where
Jesus does something in somebody's life and then
immediately just sends them out and says, hey, go tell
everybody. Just just tell people about what
I did. You don't need all the right
answers to point people to the right person.
You just need to know Jesus and say, hey, this is what I know
about Jesus and I'd love to share it with you and maybe we
can learn more about him together as we go along.
You just need to be able to say, you know, here's what I once
thought about Jesus. Here's what I've discovered
about Jesus, and here's how that discovery has changed in my
life. It's all you need to start
pointing people towards Jesus. And the 4th 1 is this.
Bring clarity by keeping the focus on Jesus.
This is going to be for some of you who have liked this so far.
You're not going to like this part.
What someone believes about the origins of creation is not what
saves them. What someone believes about the
end times is not what saves. What someone believes about
gender and sexuality is not what saves.
Jesus is what saves and I find so often I have got myself
bogged down in all sorts of other things that at the end of
the day are secondary to who is Jesus?
First Corinthians 1534. Remember I shared these verses
with you, Paul says, I passed on to you.
What is the first importance? Not that the earth was created
in seven days. Not that here's my timeline of
how Jesus is going to return. No, I pass on you.
What is of most importance, greatest importance, That Jesus
Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture.
That he was buried, that he rose again.
Romans 1089 says this is the message of faith that we
proclaim. If you confess with your mouth
that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised
him from the dead, you will be safe.
Now, does all that other stuff that matter?
No, but it only matters in so much as it falls under the
Lordship of Jesus. Let's let's let people wrestle
with who Jesus is and then let Jesus sort the other stuff out
in their life. Let's not allow those questions
to keep people from being able to see Jesus and wrestle with
the essential question. Because if Jesus is Lord, that
confession changes everything else.
Because here's the last thing I need to know.
Salvation requires more than curiosity.
It requires confession. Some of you are here today.
Some of you are watching online. Some of you are listening.
Because somebody sent this to you along the way.
Because you're curious about Jesus.
And that's a good start, but it can't be the end.
Don't stop at curiosity. Investigate Jesus, consider his
claims, put him to the test because ultimately, salvation
requires moving from curiosity about Jesus to a confession of
who Jesus is. Now I just want to invite you,
if you've been exploring Jesus, to make a decision about who he
is. Because salvation comes when you
recognize that Jesus and Jesus alone is the only way to
salvation. When you recognize that Jesus is
the one who lived the perfect life you couldn't live, who died
for your imperfections and sins on the cross, and who on the
third day was raised again and is now ascended into heaven and
his ruling and reigning and one day will return.
And he's the one who invites you to follow him, to flee from your
sin, and to trust in him and him alone for your salvation.
And when you confess that, when you confess with your mouth that
Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him
from the dead, then the words that Paul said are true.
You will be saved forward. There is a world of people out
there. I'm convinced of it.
The data says that. My experience says that there's
a world of people out there who are curious about Jesus, and
there's a whole lot of people who are confused about Jesus.
Let's go out and be a people who bring clarity about Jesus to
them. Let's go out and have
conversations about Jesus. Let's go out and bring people to
Jesus. Let's go out and share and
confess how Jesus changed our life.
If we love people, we won't just leave them in their curiosity.
We won't just leave them in their confusion.
We'll try and bring them to clarity so that they can decide
whether they will confess what is true about Jesus.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for the
opportunity and the invitation that you have given us, first of
all, to declare and to confess you as Lord and Savior.
And pray if there's any here, any watching online, any
listening at another point in time who have not yet confessed
who Jesus is, not confess Jesus as Lord and Savior in their
life, that today would be the day and they would be saved.
Father, for those of us who have come to a point where we have
come to that point and decision of faith that we would not
believe the lie that no one wants to hear about Jesus, but
instead that we would listen. We would ask questions, we would
share our stories, we would invite and bring people to Jesus
because we know that clarity about Jesus can change
everything. We know that it is our deepest
need and and, and we love people.
God give us a deep heart and desire to see people come to
know you because it comes out of a deep love and concern for
people. Would you use us even this week
to enter into conversations about Jesus, to bring clarity to
confusion? And it's in His name we pray.
Amen.