Image of God

Hello, and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast.

Thank you so much for listening.

We're startup church.

We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together.

And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect, be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more.

You can visit kalamazoo.church in order to do that.

We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today.

Alrighty.

Good morning, church.

Saucy's in the building.

You guys don't know that is the nickname that the church has dubbed me.

Whether I like it or not, it is now who I am.

Super, super excited, you know, get together day for this amazing Sunday.

You know, this last week has provided us some really good weather, right?

I feel like there's a little bit of an energy in here today, right?

Like it's, it's nice and blue.

There's some sun out.

We're like, you still exist.

I'm so happy.

Right.

And, and I'm from Denver and it gets cold, but like three days later, it's like 70 degrees.

So you kind of have to like in the Midwest, I'm like, all right, it's hunker down time, right?

Like it's going to be cold.

Right.

But I'm so glad that the sun has shown itself in this last week than it has in the last two months combined.

And let's be honest, like that's purely God moving.

That's God's goodness.

Because I think about this last week, right?

Think about, you know, about three weeks ago, there was snowing single digit temperatures.

I think it would have broken a lot of the Michiganders here, especially after that devastating loss the Lions took last Sunday.

Think, think about, think about the snow.

And then the loss of me, a few of us went to this, this diner spot and it was a great spot to watch it.

And that second half happened.

My heart sunk for everyone there.

I was like, oh no, this is, this is going downhill and it's going downhill quick.

And I feel so bad, but, right, you know, I'm glad that we had some good weather after that right?

It's like God being like, hey guys, I know this was rough, but like, I got you.

The weather is good, right?

So the Broncos were really bad this year, so, you know, amen.

Right?

No matter, no matter how many tears Lions fans, maybe Paul was one of those Lions fans, that we, that they may have been shed this week, right?

We get to refocus on God and his beautiful word this beautiful Sunday.

Amen?

All right.

So today is the last week for maybe the foreseeable future that we have a lesson that's not directly tied to this new venture that we are taking as a church.

You know, Jaron and I and our church in general, you know, we are super excited to be starting a program called Thread next week.

Thread is something that we've been super pumped for, right?

It's going to have this chance to have weekly devotionals, podcasts, and all types of biblical material that's going to help inspire us for then our Sunday lessons.

And this first kind of like segment of teachings and lessons that we're going to be having is focused on Jesus.

Right?

Digging it deeper into his life, his power, his authority, and most importantly growing our love and conviction for the one that we call our savior.

So today Jaron asked me to share a few characteristics about Jesus that stick out to me, some things that, you know, really convict me on why I'm, you know, fired up about living my life for Jesus.

Right?

So getting our minds right to, you know, getting our minds right to embark on this great journey that we're going to take on as we go into Thread.

So today I want to look at a lesson that's simply about Jesus.

Let's talk about him.

All right.

So let's get into Jesus.

So about three years ago now, which I'm starting to get old, right, this feels like yesterday, I partook in this ministry training program called MIT.

They have it out here in the Midwest, but I did it in Denver, Colorado.

And one thing that we had to do as a part of our training in this program was we had to interview a hundred strangers and the goal was to create like these good in-depth dialogue about God and Christianity with people that, you know, you'd meet on the street.

And our group, because it was sectioned into groups, one of our questions to start off the survey was a simple question of who do you think Jesus is, right, right, asking anybody who would, you know, not look at us really weird that we stopped them in the middle of a shopping mall, right.

But the majority of those responses circled around a few answers, right.

So who do you think Jesus is?

And these are some of the answers that we got.

I think these are most of the answers we got out of the hundred people that we interviewed, right.

So some of the questions are like, or some of the answers were like, Jesus was this awesome loving guy, right.

He just had a lot of love.

I was kind of surprised how many people were like, hey, he's like this like hippie guy, right, that like kind of like spread like peace and love.

And I was like, that's a way to see it, right, right.

And another one, this guy who told people what was right and what wasn't for their religion, right.

I think that's a very common thing that people would say like, oh, yeah, like Jesus is the one who told us what sin is and what isn't and how to live a good and right life.

A lot of people, maybe that were like more spiritually inclined, called him a prophet, right.

Like, yeah, like he knew things about God.

He was, you know, like tied to God really closely and he talked a lot about God.

And the last one, I'd say there's less than these than I thought, but right, a guy who claimed to be God and died for our sins.

So most of these statements, as we look at them, talk about Jesus' love, right, his connection with people.

He gets us, right.

He's a great spiritual leader.

And at first, I'm like, yeah, these are great answers.

Like this is, this is like there's, there's parts of God that like are known here about Jesus.

Like this is who he is in some ways.

And as we were kind of typing up this, you know, review of these surveys, I reflected on these responses more and more.

Some really just started to sit unwell with the world's viewpoint of who Jesus is.

All these characteristics that people shared about Jesus had some sliver of truth, maybe the hippie ones are the farthest off, right, to who he is.

But not one person talked about who Jesus truly is.

And what's, and that's what I want to talk about today, right.

So in my, when I look at Jesus, like the one thing he is above all the amazing characteristics, above all the love, above all the things, right.

It's the thing that makes him all those things.

He's our rightful divine Lord.

Amen.

Right.

He is our rightful divine Lord, right.

Our King of Kings, our Lord of Lord, right.

Jesus is our Lord, right.

The creator of our universe.

And I think it can be so easy to forget the gravity of that statement, right.

We kind of start with like, Jesus is amazing.

He's love.

It's like, that's right.

He is that because he's your creator, right.

He loves you because he created you.

He's rightfully the creator of our universe and he's rightfully divine in everything he is, right.

And that statement, it's the most important statement in human history.

Because of his ability to be fully Lord and fully human is the only reason we have a fighting chance to be with God someday.

I think when we talk about Jesus, we don't talk about him with this intentionality, right.

We talk about him with this passion, with this zeal.

You know, Jesus lived and talked with such a great passion about his own life, about who he was.

He wasn't afraid about who he was.

Right.

He talked with this boldness and it's the reason he was eventually killed, was because of that boldness.

But when he got killed, it also showed his obedience.

And right.

The overlying characteristic I want to, you know, I want to talk about is right, his divine right as a Lord.

But we're going to dig into the two characteristics that I think make him such an amazing divine God.

And that is his boldness and his obedience.

All right.

So we're going to dig into boldness here for a second.

I'm going to tie into this first one.

So tying back into this MIT training that I did a few years back in Denver, one of the men who came and spoke to us, his name is Chris Reed.

I don't know if anybody knows that name in here.

And for about 20 years and a part of our church group, he led the churches out in Stockholm, Sweden.

And if you know anything about the northern European countries, they are very atheists.

Right.

They have they've experienced a lot of religion.

Right.

They've experienced a lot of church.

And through the pain and the muck that us humans and our sin have created, it's hard to see Jesus in years and generations of faithlessness.

And so Chris Reed, who's talking to us, who's sharing just kind of his viewpoint and seeing how to impact these people with God.

And he came up with this amazing study within the Bible about all the claims that Jesus said about himself.

Right.

Kind of coming like, hey, like, it doesn't matter if you believe God or not.

Like this is what Jesus says about himself.

What does that make him?

It's kind of an interesting type of a deal.

So I want to put them on the screen at this moment.

I want to walk through what Jesus said about himself and how it kind of explains and just shows his boldness as a man and a God.

All right.

So we're going to start here.

You guys can take pictures of this.

Read it out.

Write it down.

We're going to go through some of the controversial claims of Jesus.

It's right starting here in John 5, verses 39 through 40.

John 5:39–40

Right.

And I'm going to not read them all straight out.

It's going to be a little bit more paraphrasing of what it says straight in there.

Right.

Jesus says in John 5, 39 through 40, the scriptures are written about me.

Right.

Think about that.

Right.

And then think about all this.

Like what it would be like for anybody to say this out loud in a group.

Think about me.

I'm sharing right now.

Think if I was like, my name is Josh.

In the Bible you guys love, it's about me to be like, Jaron, how did you hire this guy?

How did he get through the interview process?

Right.

Quick way to get fired.

Right.

Quick way to get fired.

Right.

Jesus was like, no, the scriptures, they're about me.

Everything you've read, it's about me.

Right.

John 8, 12, Jesus states, he is the light of the world.

Right.

Question to that.

Right.

Think about this.

How would that statement change in the meaning of who Jesus is and how he said it if he said, I am a light of the world.

That means there's other lights, right?

He's one of the lights.

He's like, you know, kind of the way like, oh, I'm, I'm a good guy.

I'm a light.

Right.

Like I, I, I preach God's word.

I'm good.

No, he's the light.

There is no other light in the world.

Right.

He's the only one.

John 8, 46 says, right.

Jesus said that he never sinned.

Take five seconds.

Look at your life.

You can find sin in those five seconds.

Right.

We are flawed.

We have a lot of mess ups.

That's kind of the beauty in, in our, our mess.

Right.

And so all these people, they, you know, especially in the religious world of Israel, it's like, yeah, we understand our sin.

That's why we, you know, we go to the priest.

We sanctify our sin.

That's why we have, you know, animal sacrifices.

And he's like, I've not sinned.

They're like, you're crazy.

Right.

Like, that's not possible.

Like our whole culture is built on our sin.

And he's like, well, I haven't sinned.

Right.

John 17, 5.

Right.

So this one, I didn't write over here, but Jesus says, I have existed as long as my father has.

Right.

So he's claiming in this verse that he's existed forever.

There isn't a beginning of Jesus.

He has always been.

Right.

And it's crazy for someone who is in human form to say, right.

Then John 8, 58.

Maybe my favorite one here, because it's a wild story.

Right.

Jesus calls himself, I am.

Right.

So Jesus meant something very, very intense when he said, I am.

Right.

And maybe some of you know this.

It's something that's really cool from a theological standpoint.

Right.

You know, this was the most sacred name that the Jews had for God.

Because this is the name God called himself when he talked to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3, 13-14, if you guys want to look it up.

Right.

It was so sacred in the Israelite culture, right, in Judaism, in the relationship with God that you couldn't say it out loud.

You couldn't write it.

Right.

So Yahweh is the name for God.

Right.

And we would like, if we just write God out, it would be like G blank D because we couldn't write it out.

It's so sacred to call God by his own name.

Right.

Because this is the name he called himself when he was busy Moses.

And Jesus is here, he goes, that's me.

Right.

And what I don't have here, which is in verse 59, kind of the serious of this, guess what the Israelites did as soon as he said that?

They picked up stones, were like, we're going to kill you.

Like, you deserve death.

Right.

That is the seriousness of him stating that.

And he fled from the scene so, you know, right, so he could continue his mission.

Right.

John 10, 30.

Right.

Kind of going back to him with the father.

The father and I are one.

Going back to the I am.

Like, I am God.

He is me.

Like, the father and I are together.

Right.

Remember that.

Like, it's so sacred.

You know, seeing God.

Right.

You know, people.

Right.

You look at throughout the Bible.

Anyone who thinks they've experienced God fall to the ground thinking they're about to die.

That's how sacred it is.

And he's like, that you were, you were, you were falling to the ground for me.

That is who you were falling to ground being sacred for.

Right.

And then John 11, 25 to 26.

If you believe in me, you will never die.

In our whole world and the way that we see like, right, death is a very natural part of everything that we do.

Right.

Like, we all have someone that has passed in our lives.

Right.

And it's something that, you know, we we have a hard time because we really don't know what happens after death.

Like, right.

That's, you know, something that, you know, unless you die, you don't know.

So right.

And he's like, you get it.

We all die.

But if you believe in me, if you have your trust in me.

If you are one of my disciples, you will never die.

It's like, OK, now you just have to be great.

Like, you have to be a lunatic.

Right.

And this last one I have for you guys.

John 14, 6.

Jesus says that he is the only way to God.

Wow.

The only way to God.

Right.

This is bold.

It's not accepting of other religions.

Right.

It's not accepting of any other other idea.

And we live in a world where it's like, believe what you believe.

Right.

Like, have your own thoughts.

You know, we're here to spread love.

That's true.

But there's only one way through it.

Right.

There's only one road.

What's cool about this is this isn't what I said.

This isn't what Jaron said.

It's not what our church, you know, it's only it's not what our church believes.

Right.

This is Jesus himself saying that this is what he is.

Right.

And it's great.

When I look at Christ through this lens, I am inspired.

I'm blown away.

Because the Jesus I was taught.

Wouldn't say such strong, controversial things.

I'm like, oh, I thought Jesus was just here to, you know, like, play hopscotch with me.

And like, you know, you know, seeing Kumbaya around the fire and like, let's have a fun day.

Right.

No, like this Jesus is the reason he got crucified.

Right.

This is the Jesus who went toe to toe for your guys's lives because he knew if he didn't stand up for who he rightfully was.

There was no way to get his point across.

Right.

Jesus' boldness to sit in the hot seat and stand for his divine right is exactly the kind of characteristic that isn't talked enough about when we talk about Jesus.

Yeah, for sure.

If he was just some guy, right, if he was the hippie, the prophet, the fun loving guy, none of us would have a chance to be saved.

You would rightfully think if I would kind of like going back to if I was saying all these things, you would rightfully call me probably a lunatic and a liar.

Right.

One of those two.

Right.

Jesus is controversial.

He should be.

He should be controversial.

Right.

We should have very strong feelings about Jesus, whether they're one way or the other.

Right.

He says it to John 8, 31 and 32.

Right.

He told us, if you really want to believe in me, who I am, you must be all in.

You must hold to my teachings.

And I think about this.

I read these verses.

I think back to those surveys.

I think back to the way our world views Jesus.

I'm not saying this is everyone.

I think this is like a general stance of maybe the world and how we are.

I don't think it's any different than it probably was 2,000 years ago.

But I think our world has been taught a very weak and different Jesus than the ones in the scriptures.

The cool part is we can change that.

And I know that all the people in this room, we're not going to hopefully change all the world.

Social media has some power.

But I think the biggest thing for us in our lives is we can change it by living out this boldness.

Living the belief.

When we talk to people and we teach Jesus, we teach this version of Jesus as well.

I think so many times we want people to like Jesus.

We want them to like Christianity.

That's true.

There's goodness in that.

And we should.

We should preach His love by the way we live.

But we live it because He's our rightfully divine creator.

Jesus deserves a response of all in or all out.

Jesus does not do lukewarm.

He is not timid.

He embodied boldness.

So should we.

I mentioned a little earlier when referring to myself, if I had made these claims, I would have said these things, if I would have said these things that Jesus said, I've been rightfully called a liar and a lunatic.

So why was Jesus not a liar and a lunatic?

Why do we refer to Him as Lord and not somebody on a stage who might have these claims?

And there's a whole second part of this study that Chris Reed goes into in great depth.

And I urge you to come talk to me if you have more wants to dig into this.

I have a great little study that he sent out to back up this boldness.

But looking at that study, the second characteristic that the main characteristic to back up is boldness, it wasn't these amazing miracles that like, oh, He's bold.

He can do miracles.

That's why He's my Lord.

It isn't His eloquent speeches.

It isn't even the love.

It was His obedience.

His obedience was the bridge between the boldness of His divinity and His love and compassion for us, which creates the bridge for Him being fully man and fully human.

So we're going to talk about His obedience next.

So we're just going to focus on one verse here.

And it's going to be in Philippians 2 that explicitly shows Jesus' obedience and the awareness of His divinity.

Philippians 2, 5 through 11, it says, And your relationships with one another have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man.

He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name 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 acknowledges that Christ Jesus is Lord through the glory of God the Father.

Once again, wow.

Right?

I'm admired.

I'm jazzed up.

Jesus is awesome, guys.

I admire this mindset from Jesus.

As Christians, we know what differentiates Jesus is this kind of heart.

This is something that separates Him from everything that we've ever been taught or that the world teaches on religion.

Think about the claims Jesus made about himself in the Bible.

Once again, if bonehead Josh said those things, one could easily assume that I would be doing anything to benefit myself.

Talking about myself in this way is a way to try to get power, try to have people adore me, fear me, whatever I'm trying to look for.

It benefits myself, make myself great among the nations.

Josh would be a fool.

Jesus was the opposite.

He knew that by claiming His divinity, what He said and did had more gravity than any other human in the world.

So instead of benefiting himself, He chose obedience.

To die on a cross, to take on our sin so that we may have a chance at salvation.

Not a guarantee even.

A lot of us in this world don't live this life.

We don't follow God.

There's a lot of people that He died for that will not take up His cross.

He did it for a chance.

Those are not the actions of a lunatic.

Lunatics love chaos.

I think of the Joker.

The Joker was a lunatic.

He just wanted to see the world burn.

He did anything to create chaos.

And if Jesus was a liar, He had every chance known to man to save His own skin.

Satan tempted Him in the desert.

If you eat this bread, I'll give you the kingdom of the earth.

I'll give you everything you ever wanted.

You're rightfully divine.

You said it yourself, Jesus.

You are worthy to rule this world.

Jesus chose obedience.

Jesus knew His divinity was worthless if there was no one to love and cherish in heaven.

His obedience made that happen.

Let us never forget that in our own walk with God.

And this is why Jesus inspires me.

I think this is the reason that Jesus spurs my heart.

Because if we just lived our lives thinking that Jesus is love and He's a good guy, that's not worth changing our whole lives over.

We want to change our lives.

We want to be obedient.

Because Jesus did everything in His right to give us that chance.

He humbled Himself.

He was in every right.

The king of kings could have ruled over this earth for millennia.

But He chose to die so that we may have a chance to live a better life than the one we live in our own sin.

So as we embark on this new series of Jesus, which I'm just so excited about.

I'm excited about what God is going to do in this next year.

What He's going to teach us about His Son.

What we're going to learn more and more.

The deeper appreciation that we have for Him.

I think about our own personal lives.

Think about what kind of reverence we have for Jesus.

So as we go on today, are you inspired by His boldness?

When someone references Jesus, what's your response?

How do you talk about it?

Are you captivated by His obedience?

Are you willing to look at the things that are stubborn in your life, that you see as mountain hills?

I can't take that.

I can't get over this sin.

I can't get along with this person.

I can't change this in my life.

Are you going to look back at how Jesus was obedient?

Are you going to be captivated by it?

Are you going to change your life because of it?

Jesus should inspire our walk with God if we view Him in this light.

Then as we share our faith and talk about Jesus with others, what kind of Jesus are you showing people?

What kind of Jesus are you showing people?

Jesus is our Savior.

The light and the darkness.

Do not undersell that to someone who doesn't know the truth.

You know, I have this thought, and I think this prayer, for as we do this series, for this thread, I really want us to pray, to think about, as we get into this year.

Right?

And it's this.

The Kalamazoo Church of Christ is a beacon for who Jesus really is.

Then when we talk about Jesus, we do it with the number one conviction in our heart that Jesus is first and foremost Yahweh, the light and the darkness, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, our Lord and Savior.

Let us pray for our community.

Dear God, I'm grateful.

I'm grateful that we have a divine and powerful creator who loves us.

The world and religions share so much about how we need to, you know, fear deities, and they have the power over us to kill us at any moment and not have any relationship with us and pray to altars and statues from far away.

But you know Jesus was so much different than that.

Obviously he had every right to be rightfully divine, to live a life that he ruled.

He could have ruled over all of this, God, and he would have been rightfully, he would have been right to do so, God.

But we know with his boldness, he was also obedient.

He was obedient to you, he was obedient to your plan, to your will to love us, God.

Let us remember this week, this month, this year, for as many years as we have on this earth, God, that your son came down on this earth and he shed his blood for our lives.

Let us never take that for granted.

Let us never talk about Jesus as if he's just some good guy.

He is our maker.

He's our creator.

He's our savior.

Let us be humble, reverent, respectful, and obedient to that because he did all that and more so that we had a chance to be with you in heaven.

So as we take this communion, let us reflect on that, reflect on the gratefulness that we have.

And if we're here and we don't know where we're going, we don't know where we stand with Jesus, let us take that jump.

Let us grow.

Let us be more willing to love, be more willing to sacrifice so that we may know a bigger depth of who Jesus is in our lives.

I pray this in your name.