“The Beginning”
1. 10 years ago I interviewed Mary Mannin Morrisey of the Living Enrichment Center in Wilsonville, now bankrupt & dissolved. She claimed to be Christ-centered in her faith. But the Christ she centered on was one of her own making. She conveniently ignored the parts of Jesus that rubbed her the wrong way.
2. 2 weeks ago I attended a reading by David James Duncan (The Brothers K – The River Why books) at Wordstock in Portland. I bought his latest book – God Laughs & Plays: Churchless Sermons. Duncan does the same exact thing as Morrisey. He builds his version of Jesus according to what’s politically correct today. He uses a fraction of the gospels in the process.
3. let’s not be too quick to criticize Mary Manin Morrisy or David James Duncan – we do the same more than we probably realize.
4. and we pay a price for it…because the Jesus that you mold to fit your desires or wishes or projections will fail to truly disrupt your life. A self-manufactured Jesus can’t challenge or change you because he’s a Jesus stripped of his unique person, power & message.
5. what we all need is the real Jesus. And that’s what the Gospel of Mark gives us – the naked, unadulterated, undistilled, straight-up Jesus.
6. today we’re going to begin our exposure to the straight-up Jesus by looking at him from 2 different angles in Mark 1:1-3: who Jesus is & what Jesus brings.
who Jesus is
1. the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2. Mark tells the beginning of the story, not the ending. As we heard last week the story of our world is written in 6 chapters – creation-fall-Israel-Jesus-Church-Eternity. The story about Jesus that Mark begins to tell in his gospel is still moving forward through his church, the chapter we are living.
3. Jesus is a proper name. Like Bill or Bob or John or Frank or Peter. Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua – which means “the Lord saves.” There was nothing unique about this name in Mark’s time – a lot of Jesus’ running around.
4. but that’s not true about Christ. Christ is a title from Israel’s rich history. Literally it means “anointed King” & refers to the Messiah. Jesus is no ordinary Joe. He is Jesus the Christ, the long-awaited & much prophesied about Messiah.
5. more than that, and that’s enough in itself, he is the Son of God. This is a divine title. This unmistakably tags the human Jesus to be Divine, God in the flesh.
6. to sum up, the name Jesus pointed to the human being Jesus – he was fully man. The title Christ acknowledged Jesus as the “anointed King” of God, Messiah. And Son of God identified him as God – fully Divine.
7. that’s quite a beginning but it doesn’t stop there – there’s more. Prepare the way for the Lord (1:3/Isaiah 40:3). This is a quotation from Isaiah. The word Lord in Isaiah is Yahweh. This is the personal covenant name that God gave to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3. This name was so holy that the Jews wouldn’t even say it. Yahweh is God’s personal name.
8. and now Mark tells us that the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ the Son of God is really about the Yahweh who revealed himself to Israel through Moses at the burning bush. The Eternal God – the Creator God of the universe – the Rightful Ruler & Judge of the earth! This Jesus is the Lord, Yahweh!
9. and this is nothing short of a bombshell. It explodes all of our categories of thinking. Take philosophy for example. Remember your college freshman class? The questions that amuse philosophers concern:
* real vs. ideal
* particulars vs. universals
* many vs. one
* rational vs. experiential
10. here’s the bombshell – the ‘ideal’ has become ‘real’ in Jesus. God has become man:
* metaphysical has become physical
* immortal – mortal
* unapproachable – can be hugged
* totally invulnerable – radically vulnerable
* impossible – possible
11. Mark’s gospel is going to tell us about this Jesus.
what Jesus brings
1. lets go to this word gospel. At its most basic meaning gospel refers to good news. In Greek & Roman history the gospel was the report of a military victory – once the battle was won, a runner would take the news back to the Emperor – their enemy had been defeated!
2. the gospel writers took this secular-military-political word & converted it to the cause of Christ. Gospel now meant the good news about Jesus.
3. such as – the long-awaited announcement that the Messiah has come. In Jesus God is bringing salvation to a broken world. Sin, death, disease, & Satan have been defeated in the life, death & resurrection of Jesus. Jesus brings new life & hope for a needy world.
4. we are transformed by this good news. This good news can transform our world. That’s why it’s to be taught, preached & shared. The gospel has the potential & power to change everything.
5. Mark tells us that Jesus is the center of the gospel. He is our contact point with God our Creator & Father.
6. the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is the title for Mark’s book, all 16 chapters:
* what begins in Jesus is still alive & moving forward
* the gospel is Jesus himself & his loving response to a broken world
* Jesus is the man, the Jew, the son of Mary & Joseph
* Christ is his title, the anointed King of Israel, Messiah
* Son of God is his eternal Divinity, God in the flesh
* Lord – Yahweh identifies Jesus as the Creator, Sovereign God revealed in the Old Testament
Implications
1. Mark’s title communicates a bombshell truth – God became human. We need to take this truth into the center of our being & let it catch fire. When we do, 3 things can happen.
1st Jesus will change the motivational drive of our heart from fear to grateful joy
1. man’s basic motivational drive is fear:
* of missing out
* not proving ourselves
* not living up to someone’s expectations
2. religions of world aggravate that fear – God is up there & out there & we have to reach him:
* Buddhism – 8-fold path
* Islam – 5 pillars
* Judaism – 10 commandments
This increases our fear of missing the Divine if you don’t measure up
3. God become flesh means that we don’t have to reach God – God has reached us. And it’s possible to have a heart that knows God & lives a life of grateful joy for having been touched by God!
2nd Jesus is a tremendous resource for suffering
1. what if you’re hurting, you share your heart with someone & they respond with a bunch of facts, an attack plan – do this, take this, go here, see her. How are you going to feel? Not heard or understood.
2. what if you go to someone else & share your heart. They say, guess what, I’ve been through the same thing. And what if this person tells that they’ve not only been through the very same thing you are facing, but something far worse. And they tell you they’re going to be with you in your darkness.
3. I’ll never forget Mike Higgs & Tim Gilmer talking to me in the middle of my depression several years ago – they shared as depression survivors. They told me it was going to eventually lift. They told me I would make it. They gave me hope. This is what Jesus does for us.
4. the only religion that tells us that God has been through more suffering than we have is the Christian faith. Our God, Jesus, has wounds. He knows rejection, pain, suffering, being misunderstood & denial.
5. poem of Edward Shillataux –
the other gods did ride
Thou didst stumble to the throne
to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak
and no God has wounds but Thou alone
3rd Jesus is our motivation for peace & justice
1. God becoming flesh in Jesus Christ means that God got a material body. Jesus was raised from the dead with a physical body. Incarnation & resurrection mean that God invented both soul & body & is going to redeem both soul & body.
2. the purpose of salvation is not escape from the material world but the redemption, renewal, healing of the material world. A new heavens & a new earth is where we’re headed.
3. therefore, the gospel of Jesus is for salvation of the soul & forgiveness of sins AND fighting disease, poverty, injustice – they are on the agenda of the salvation of God.
4. grateful joy – companionship in suffering – ‘thee’ reason for peace & justice: this is our Jesus!
No comments:
Post a Comment