Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
Series: Baptisms
I Believe in Jesus Christ
Sunday, 04 September 2005
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A few minutes ago we said the Apostles’ Creed. This creed or statement of faith dates from about 160AD when it was used as a baptism formula. People who became Christians from a pagan background, before they were baptized as a sign of the becoming Christians would declare their Christian faith in the words of this creed. Later on, about 1000AD, it was incorporated into regular Sunday worship and has become the best known of the three great Christian creeds.
A bit later in this baptism service Justin and Sarah and their children’s godparents are going to declare that they believe the things that the Apostles’ creed states and ask that Lauren, Luke and Joshua be baptized in that faith. Now I don’t intend taking the several hours it would take to explain everything in the Apostles’ creed but I would like us to have a look at what we mean when we declare in the creed, “I believe in Jesus Christ”
When we declare in the creeds that God is the maker of heaven and earth we part company with Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, eastern religions in general as well as atheistic evolutionism and New Ageism and you can probably think of a few others you can throw in. When we move on to the next phrase in the Apostles’ Creed and we call Jesus Christ God’s only Son then we also leave behind not only the other eastern religions but Islam and Judaism as well and of course the odd ideas presented to us in Daniel Brown’s best selling novel “The Da Vinci Code” which are called Gnosticism.
Our belief in Jesus as God's only Son and as our Lord is the most critical, the most important aspect of Christian belief and is the ingredient that makes Christianity unique. Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This claim excludes all other possible avenues to relationship with God. You can’t find God by sitting on a mountain top contemplating your navel; you can’t find God by pursuing post-doctoral studies in philosophy; you can’t find God by serving your fellow man in the slums of Calcutta; or by the multiple repetition of the syllable “OM” or by the exploration of outer space or the inner workings of the atom. You can’t find God by calling on the spirits of the dead or even by going to church.
You can only find God through personal encounter with Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord. This is a claim that to many people is as offensive as it is exclusive. Because, you see, if you can only find God through Jesus Christ, then what about all the others; All those millions who belong to other religions, all those “good” people who don’t believe in Jesus, all those people who are close to you and are loved by you but you know they’re not Christians. But Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Well let’s look at some of the things the creeds say about Jesus.
Firstly his name. Jesus is the Latinised form of the Greek IhsouV which comes from the Hebrew YSHUAH which we know as
JOSHUA and means “God saves” or “God is my Saviour”. More precisely Jesus is Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph the Carpenter’s son, a real historic personage who had a brief ministry as a religious teacher before he was executed by the Roman authorities in Jerusalem about AD33. Jesus is not some mystical, mythical figure but a real, historical person. Our faith is based on objective fact.
Paul Barnett, former Bp of North Sydney and noted Christian historian , writes in his book “The Truth About Jesus”:
“It is fundamental that we understand Christianity to be based on historical reality. Jesus was a true figure in history, who ministered as a rabbi and prophet in Judea during the prefecture of Pontius Pilate under whom he was executed by crucifixion on the Friday before Passover. No less historical is his physical resurrection, which occurred sometime on Saturday night so that his burial tomb was found to be empty on Sunday morning. The Christian religion is founded upon these historical facts.”
Secondly his title. Christ is not Jesus’ surname but is a title. Christ comes from the Greek cristoV which means exactly the same as the Hebrew Messiah, which means “the anointed one”. It identifies Jesus as the long awaited saviour king of Israel, the God-appointed redeemer of Israel and indeed of all mankind. The king , descended from David, who would win back for the Jews their former glory among the nations. Problem was however that when Jesus the Messiah came he was concerned not with physical supremacy of the Jews but with the spiritual kingdom of God. For example we read in Mark’s Gospel of Jesus preaching at the beginning of his ministry "The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" Except for the few who became his disciples, the Jews didn’t believe him and even today many Jews still eagerly await the kingly Messiah who will restore the nation of Israel.
Thirdly his Sonship. The relationship between God the Father Almighty and Jesus is a unique relationship and the nature of the sonship of Jesus is right at the centre of the debate between mainstream evangelical Christians (that’s us) and many of the so called heretical sects. God has revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons, one God. Jesus the Son is no less God than God the Father. He is not just some sort of superman, endowed with divine gifts or in some way specially filled with God's Spirit. He is God become man, for us.
Listen to what the Apostle Paul said about him in his letter to the Philippians, Phil 2:6-11
“Jesus. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
How Jesus can be both God and man is hard stuff for us to understand. It was even harder for Jesus’ disciples. They’d been brought up on stuff like Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Which is known as the Sh’ma and was recited daily by every Jewish male as part of his morning prayers. And yet they were forced by the reality of the events they experienced to acknowledge that Jesus, the man, was also God.
The other great creeds of the Christian Church, the Nicene and the Athanasian, tackle this problem at greater depth, trying to spell out the nature of the Trinity but really only succeeding in trying to define the indefinable.
Fourthly his Lordship. To state that Jesus is our Lord is to again state that Jesus is God because the Greek word translated Lord was used to translate the Hebrew Adonai which means “My Lord” which the Jews always said instead of Yahweh, the name of God.
Whether you or I or anyone else accepts Jesus’ Lordship has nothing to do with the fact of his lordship. Jesus is Lord. In his speech on the day of Pentecost the Apostle Peter said:
“God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, "'The Lord said to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet."' Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ."
Many people are happy to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ in the out there, Lord of the universe sense, but are reluctant to accept his Lordship in the personal sense of Jesus being Lord of their lives. In that passage I quoted from Philippians 2 we’re reminded that the time will come when “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” Whether people like it or not when Jesus returns in all his power and his glory there will be no way that they can deny Jesus obvious Lordship.
I’m always reminded of that scene from the Robert Taylor movie Ivanhoe. Near the end of the movie there’s the final battle between the goodies, Ivanhoe with Robin Hood and his men against the baddies, Prince John, the Sheriff of Nottingham and his men. As they fight there are cutbacks to King Richard the Lionheart and his knights riding to the rescue having been released from captivity in Austria by the ransom collected by Ivanhoe. In the battle the baddies were getting the upper hand and Ivanhoe and Co were almost defeated when King Richard and his knights stride into Nottingham Castle. Everybody, goodies and baddies alike, fell to their knees in the presence of the king. The difference was that the baddies had looks of abject fear on their faces while the goodies had great big cheesy grins.
When Jesus returns and his Lordship is obvious to everyone what is your face going to be like. Abject fear as you realize that everything the Bible says about Jesus as the Lord and judge of all is true or a great big cheesy grin because your Lord and saviour has returned?
The climax of John’s gospel was that incident when Thomas, finally seeing for himself the risen Christ, fell down at Jesus’ feet and said, “My Lord and my God” he wasn’t just stating his subservient relationship to Jesus but that he also accepted that Jesus is God. Immediately following his record of this incident John wrote:
“Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Whether or not you go to heaven is dependant on only one thing: Do you believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, as your Lord?
Let us pray.
