Who is this Jesus I worship?

Who is Jesus?  

His full title is The Lord Jesus Christ.

He is Lord

He is the Almighty Creator.   "In the beginnning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made."  Jn. 1:1-3.  "For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him.   He is before all things and in Him all things hold together."  Col. 1:16-17

Lord is defined as Authority or Master.  So, in His person, He is Lord.   That is, He has authority over all creation including created beings.   Even though not all creation acknowledges Him as Lord or gives Him Lordship, the fact remains that He is Lord over all.   Phil. 2:10-11 makes it clear that everyone will acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord, "Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Do you acknowledge His Lordship to the exclusion of all else?

He is God in the flesh, Jesus

"You shall give Him the name Jesus because he shall save his people from their sins."  Mt. 1:21

"He is the image of the invisible God", Col. 1:15.   Wow!  God made Himself visible to man and walked amongst us.   He was born as a baby, experienced all the trials and temptations, had feelings and compassion, yet was entirely God at the same time, "In Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form" Col. 2:9.

When He commenced His ministry, people were wondering who He was.  The account of Jesus healing the paralytic man can be seen in the parallel passages of Matt. 9, Mark 2 and Luke 5.   Jesus healed the paralytic man, but this was a 2-stage miracle:

In the first instance, Jesus healed the man's spiritual needs.   Clearly his spiritual needs were more important than his physical needs.  Jesus said, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

Mark and Luke report that the teachers of the law thought to themselves, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?", and accused Jesus of blasphemy, that is, claiming to be God.

Even though Jesus had already forgiven the paralytic man for his sin, and the forgiveness was complete, there was no physical and tangible evidence for the people who were present.   It is easy for people to use words, but the words can be empty and meaningless.   Jesus decided to demonstrate with physical evidence that He was indeed God Himself and had the power to forgive sin.  

Jesus then performed the second miracle, healing the man's physical problem, "Get up, take your mat and walk."   The physical healing demonstrated His authority and power over creation, an attribute belonging to God alone, thus defeating the allegation of blasphemy arising from the first miracle.

The paralytic man was saved from his sins and healed from his physical disability by God in the flesh, Jesus.

He is the Christ

Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do people say I am?"  (Mark 8:27)    Peter, the unskilled, unschooled fisherman, knew who He was, "You are the Christ."  But even with this special revelation, Peter was not able to grasp the full implications of Christ the Messiah's role in saving His people (Mt. 16:17, 22).  Peter was looking for a mighty warrior, not a servant-Messiah who would die for the sins of the people.  Yet at times, even His family did not recognise who he was and doubted his sanity when He started His teaching ministry:  "He is out of His mind."  (Mark 3:21)

For many hundreds of years, people were looking forward to the Messiah appearing and had many clues to His origin, (for example, Micah 5:2).   Everyone including the Samaritan woman knew that the Messiah was coming, "I know that the Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming", she said in John 4:25.   Then Jesus declared "I who speak to you am He".   What an exciting day for that woman and her village!  The long-awaited Messiah was amongst them in bodily form, healing their spiritual disease and teaching them.

Jesus will come to claim His bride, the church.   He will then return in great glory as the triumphant Messiah-King (Micah 2:12-13, Rev. 19:11-16 and others).   Many will mourn, so be ready and don't be amongst the mourners!  (Matt 24:30)

"Behold, I am coming soon!"  Rev. 22:7

"He who is coming will come and will not delay" Heb. 10:37


Credit:  The beautiful photograph is from https://www.lds.org/bible-videos/videos/jesus-forgives-sins-and-heals-a-man-stricken-with-palsy?lang=eng#gallery=img-3

What I'm Reading: Breakout Churches

Breakout Churches by Thom Rainer, published 2005, ePub Edition in January 2009

Thom Rainer as President of the Rainer Group is a church growth consultant who was inspired to write this book based on Jim Collins' book, Good to Great.

The book Breakout Churches tells the story of 13 local churches that did not accept the status quo.  These are not just 13 randomly selected churches - they had to meet a very strict set of criteria, and were measured against a control group.   The 13 churches were shortlisted from 50,000 churches researched.

The Rainer Group believes that any healthy church should be reaching one person with the gospel every 2 weeks.   They were looking for churches that had an annual conversion rate of 26 people; that is, it takes 20 members one year to reach one person.   There were other strict criteria too, including the requirement that the decline or slump, then the breakout, occured under the same Pastor.

Each of the 13 churches had a "Chrysalis factor" which was the trigger for growth.   The Chrysalis factor had some commonalities in the 13 churches that the control group did not have.

A common factor of breakout churches is that they have "Servant Leaders", which is a great study in itself and may feature as a blogspot in the future!

I am forever struck by Rainer's claim that

"It is a sin to be good if God has called us to be great".

Rainer quotes Bill Orr,

 "Churches do not remain plateaued.  They either begin to grow again or they begin to die."   

(That quote was a trigger for me to read the book "Autopsy of a Deceased Church", also by Rainer!)

Rainer provides some fascinating graphs of breakout church growth, and spends some time discussing leadership.  The key to Rainer's discussion of leadership focuses on the Acts 6/7 leader as a "Legacy Leader" (less than 1% of senior pastors according to his research).   He discloses that many of these legacy leaders (or Breakout Church Pastors) are reluctant leaders, and further, that there were no autocratic leaders in Breakout Churches.

Reinforcing the value of small groups, one of the Breakout Churches reported that most of their ministry occurs in small groups that meet in homes, and they have a strategy to plant a new church every time they reach 500 members.   This comes with a warning:

"Members who are involved in worship services alone tend to drift toward inactivity."   

Small groups provide opportunities to grow in spiritual health.

Growth will not occur unless local church leaders are willing to confront reality.  When you confront reality as a church leader, you will have what Rainer refers to as the "ABC moment" (Awareness, Belief and Crisis).   Rainer points out the risk of a church being inward looking, and the "deadly path" that follows as slow erosion.   The common factor in the ABC moment was that many of the leadership shared the experience, not just the senior pastor.

In his "how-to" or "where-to-from-here" chapter entitled "The Who/What Simultrack", Rainer quotes Collins emphasising:

'(the importance of getting) "the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus and the right people in the right seats" and then figuring out where to drive the bus'

Rainer describes the fascinating concept of the Freedom/Expectation Paradox and demonstrates why all Breakout Churches are alone in the High Expectation/High Freedom quadrant.

He describes how in some churches, the (program) becomes the tail wagging the dog, and some churches that don't have a vision even have the wagging tail, but no dog.   In speaking about innovation, he points out that innovation follows the growth of the church, unlike many churches where a new facility is constructed with the hope that it will engender growth itself.

Resilience is a key factor throughout the book.   Rainer says,

"The cost of becoming a breakout church, ironically, is most often the result of problems and conflicts with other believers.  Many of the comparison church leaders grew weary of the struggle with fellow Christians.  The breakout church leaders had no fewer conflicts, but they decided to persevere despite the pain and struggles."

Breakout Churches is a sound read and in my opinion is a good companion book for Becoming a Level 5 Multiplying Church by Todd Wilson and Dave Ferguson.   Breakout Churches is another quality book that can't be summed up adequately in a short article!

Breakout Churches is published by Zondervan.   I read the ePub version which I downloaded from iBooks.   At the time of publishing this article, it was on Amazon.com.au for $11.99.

Beware the Slow Fade

Are you a Master of Sin, or a Slave to Sin?   To ask another way, do you have mastery over sin or is sin your dictator?

Who (or what) is at the door of your heart?    Jesus says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me" (Rev. 3:20 NASB).   There's also a predator at the door:  "... if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door; it desires to have you but you must master it." (Gen. 4:7b NIV)

Notice the order of words in Gen. 4:7:  first is the attitude, then the attack.   The sin is not crouching waiting for you to open the door and make a decision, but in fact the decision of the heart is first, then the sin attack.   What is your heart attitude toward sin?   Cain's was already decided:  he had a bad attitude.  He knew the Lord and His commands, but due to his heart attitude, his offering was not accepted.   We see later in the OT that grain offerings were acceptable if made in the right attitude of heart, and that obedience is better than sacrifice:  "Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifice as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord?   To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams."  (1 Sam. 15:22 NIV).

"Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts" (CS Lewis, Screwtape Letters). 

Yes, the sin slide is a gradual one.   Jude gives a warning about this when he speaks of "The way of Cain" (Jude 11) and warns against ungodly men and their methods.   "These men speak abusively against whatever they do not understand; and what things they do understand by instinct, like unreasoning animals - these are the very things that destroy them" (v.10) "... they follow their own evil desires" (v.16)

Isn't it typical of God to give Cain another chance after his sacrifice was rejected?   We see this incredible grace of God as a scarlet thread throughout the entire scriptures, reinforced in the letter to the Church at Laodicea (Rev. 3:20).

Rom. 5:20, "The law was added so that the trespass might increase.  But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.

We are given the solution to the sin slavery problem:  Sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace (Rom. 6:14).  We are no longer powerless over sin because God sent His own Son ... to be a sin offering (Rom. 8:3).

There is certainly a conflict of the two natures, the old man and the new:  "The good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want." (Rom. 7:19)

CS Lewis has a lot to say about the conflict between the two natures in his brilliant book "Screwtape Letters":

"There is a subtle play of looks and tones and laughs by which a mortal can imply that he is of the same party as those to whom he is speaking.   That is the kind of betrayal you should specially encourage, because the man does not fully realise it himself; and by the time he does you will have made withdrawal difficult"

and then Screwtape offers a solution to man's sin-slide,

"The man who truly ... enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring twopence about what other people say about it, is by that very fact fore-armed against some of our subtlest modes of attack."   

Do you single-mindedly desire to serve God and focus on Him to the exclusion of all else?

A rendering of Acts 1:8 shows us that as believers we have received power through the Holy Spirit to be God's witnesses, thus overcoming sin as we witness to the world.   What then is the application of this discussion?  Commit to live in the power of the Holy Spirit, desiring God and none other, being aware of the attitude of your heart and inclining your heart toward God more every day and resisting sin.   "Submit yourselves, then, to God.   Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:7)

Slow Fade by Casting Crowns

Be careful little eyes what you see
It's the second glance that ties your hands
As darkness pulls the strings
Be careful little feet where you go
For it's the little feet behind you that are sure to follow

It's a slow fade when you give yourself away
It's a slow fade when black and white are turned to gray
And thoughts invade, choices are made, a price will be paid
When you give yourself away
People never crumble in a day
It's a slow fade, it's a slow fade

Be careful little ears what you hear
When flattering leads to compromises, the end is always near
Be careful little lips what you say
For empty words and promises leave broken hearts astray

The journey from your mind to your hands
Is shorter than you're thinking
Be careful if you think you stand
You just might be sinking

People never crumble in a day

Daddies never crumble in a day
Families never crumble in a day

Oh, be careful little eyes what you see
For the Father up above is looking down in love
Oh, be careful little eyes what you see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QASREBVDsLk

Songwriters: John Mark Hall

Slow Fade lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Drawing credit:  https://screwtapelettersjlams.wordpress.com/

Is Christianity Religion?

Do you live under strict religiosity or Christian freedom?

Do you strive to keep "the rules", or do you revel in the grace of God?  Not in the sense, "Shall I go on sinning so that grace may increase?" (Rom. 6:1), but in the knowledge that in His grace, God has provided a remedy for our sin problem in the person, death and resurrection of Jesus.   See Rom. 6:23.

The Pharisees were "experts in the law" who placed sets of rules around the law to strive for righteousness, but in their great knowledge, learnings and zeal, they were blinded to the truth of the One who was sent to make them righteous (Rom. 5:19)

We see that the Pharisees with their co-accused, the Sadduccees, even planned to murder Jesus, the One who came to save them:  "So from that day on they plotted to take His life" (Jn. 11:53).   Their sin was increasing, not decreasing whilst their righteousness was diminishing:  first, they allowed the death of John the Baptist, then they asked for the murder of Jesus, then they murdered Stephen themselves.

In his book "Pharisectomy", Peter Haas claims that "we all have a hidden Pharisee lurking inside us." He doesn't mean something wierd like there's another person inside us, but simply that we have a tendency to be legalistic and attempt to earn our salvation.   He says, "... the Pharisees were so obsessed with maintaining their ceremonial purity that they'd rarely even eat with a normal person (aka a non-Pharisee)." (p.4)   The Pharisees lived under a heavy yoke, but Jesus says, "I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."  Matt. 11:29-30

I am often asked if I'm religious.   Here's my answer:   Religion is man trying to reach God.   Christianity is God coming to man.

Image credit:  https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/ac/ac/41/acac41de1288876076f639b6e9741f1d.jpg