Impossible To Ignore • Part 1 with Joey Weller

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Well, Southside, uh, excited to jump into this series with you.

Impossible to ignore.

And uh to kick this off, I wanted to just bring up something that I found really interesting is that there are very few people in history that almost everyone has to deal with.

I mean, think that for a second.

Think about the names of people that have existed in this world that almost everyone has to deal with.

Because most historical figures, who do they belong to?

Most of them belong to a nation or a movement.

They might belong to a subject in school, but when you think about this idea of impossible to ignore, there's really one person that you think of.

And that's that Jesus is different.

It's that Jesus, he comes up in so many different things, right?

He comes up in music, comes up in art, comes up in philosophy, comes up at universities, comes up in debates.

He he might show up in history or politics, recovery programs, and you've probably found this to be true.

Is that Jesus, he even shows up in what?

In casual conversations.

He shows up just when you're having a conversation with a friend.

And so people who don't even worship Jesus, if they still quote him, it raises an incredible question.

Is it why is Jesus so difficult to ignore?

Yeah, I think this is one of the reasons why we get so excited when we're scrolling through TikTok or Instagram and we see one of our influencers, the podcast, that they start talking about whatever their relationship with Jesus looks like.

Like we didn't know that they even knew of Jesus, right?

But if we're honest with ourselves, we know that everybody has some type of idea of Jesus because he is impossible to ignore.

You see, and the the thing is that you don't have to believe in Jesus to recognize, to recognize that history has never been able to move on from him.

You know, when we look at this, it's with where Jesus, when he's something for sure, this is where things get complicated, right?

This is where things get complicated, is that most people, they're willing to admire Jesus, but far fewer are willing to submit.

You know, we like a Jesus who inspires us, but we struggle with a Jesus who commands us.

Even when we know him, we struggle when he commands us to do things.

We like a Jesus who comforts us, but we struggle with a Jesus who corrects us.

We like a Jesus who forgives sinners.

We love that Jesus.

But we struggle with a Jesus who confronts our own sin.

And we like a Jesus who blesses us, but we struggle with a Jesus who claims authority over our lives.

See, here's what I've learned is that our culture, our culture is very comfortable customizing Jesus.

Any Starbucks drinkers in here if you're watching online, you got your Starbucks with you?

I love Starbucks.

You know what's great about Starbucks?

You can customize your order to however you want.

You look at the menu, it's like, I want that, I want that, I want that, that pumpkin season, I want that, you know?

Like I'm all about it.

And sometimes we want to treat Jesus in our life like our Starbucks order.

Well, we keep the parts of Jesus that we like and we quietly ignore the parts of Jesus that we don't.

And one of the things that we often say is that Jesus is either Lord of your life or Jesus is a life coach, just giving you ideas, but he can't be both.

See, the problem is not that people think too little of Jesus, the problem is that people admire Jesus while still reducing.

And that is where this series is going.

Because what if Jesus, what if Jesus in our life is more than someone to admire?

What if Jesus is someone that you and I that we must answer to?

And how do we know if he really is worthy of the term Lord?

Well, John has a fantastic start to his gospel.

But if you look at all of the gospels, you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, they all start out with Jesus as coming into the world, right?

We celebrate at Christmas time, he comes into a manger, you've got, you know, Mary and Joseph and that whole story, but but then you get to John's gospel.

And John starts it out with something really interesting in John 1.1.

He says, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

See, this is John's way of taking its Jewish readers of the time back to the very beginning of the scriptures, because if you look back at Genesis 1, what do we find?

It begins in the same way, in the beginning.

And so, unlike Matthew, and unlike Mark, unlike Luke, John is like, no, no, no.

We're gonna go back to the beginning.

We're gonna go back before Joseph, we're gonna go back before Mary, we're even gonna go back before creation.

John wants us to know that if you are gonna understand Jesus, we cannot begin with Jesus as merely a man.

We have to begin with Jesus as God.

That's where we have to begin with him.

And so when we think of Jesus and this idea of impossible to ignore, it doesn't necessarily prove anything if I just bring up John, you're probably walking in here expecting for me to talk about the Bible a little bit, right?

But the question is not, is Jesus really God?

See, the question that we have to ask in this context is, can you and I, can we trust John?

Can we trust God?

John.

Because Christian tradition has long identified this witness as John, who is one of Jesus' closest disciples.

And so what does that mean?

That means that Jesus, when he was walking here on earth, he's walking through life, how you and I walk.

It means that these guys that were close with him, we talk about community groups.

Jesus had a community group, which is why I think it's so funny, just sidebar that when we don't think we need one, well, Jesus needed one.

If it's good enough for him, we need it, right?

But Jesus' disciples, John, it was one of his closest disciples.

He saw Jesus, he witnessed him, he was there in the trenches with him.

And so we have to ask ourselves, can we truly trust John?

But we also have evidence outside of the Bible that Jesus existed.

See, John, he saw Jesus forgive sins.

He saw Jesus heal the sick, he saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead.

Pretty amazing.

He saw Jesus receive worship, he saw Jesus speak with divine authority.

And then John, what did he do?

He saw Jesus crucified, but it didn't end there.

He also saw Jesus raised back from the dead and alive.

John, is he truly trustworthy?

You know, there's a very important phrase towards the beginning of John's document, and he says that we have seen, we have seen his glory, which is the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Now, why is that important?

Because this phrase, this we have seen, is crucial.

It's crucial.

Because the earliest Christians, what did they do?

They worshiped Jesus, they prayed in his name, they they baptized, they proclaimed him as risen Lord.

And each one of them, they were willing to suffer for that confession.

Not because they heard something or believed a myth that was passed down over generations.

No, no, no.

But because they had seen.

They had seen Jesus do things that only a God could do.

Don't you know that when Jesus does something in your life that is so good, you got to tell somebody about it?

We do this.

This isn't just something in the scripture.

We do this today.

And let me tell you what I saw at this camp that I volunteered.

Let me tell you what I saw God do in my kids' life.

I've seen.

And that's all that John is doing.

He goes, We have seen.

John's gospel.

It gives us one of the clearest theological explanations of what the early church came to believe.

And that is this is that Jesus is not merely sent by God, but Jesus is God.

Jesus is God.

That's what John's theological explanation leaves us with.

And we're going to read a lot of John's first chapter here in just a minute.

But before we do, we must come to the conclusion about Jesus.

Because why should you and I, why should we trust John?

Well, I think there's an enormous amount of evidence that John was there, that he shared what he witnessed, right?

And maybe when you hear this, you think, well, Joey, it's John, it's in the Bible, but if you look at it, it's not that John was just passing off a rumor.

You see, John, what is he doing?

He writes as a witness.

That's what John does.

He writes as a witness.

Similar to how, if you're looking at a case and lawyers in the room, you know this, what do you do?

You call up a witness.

And you're like, give me your perspective.

It's up to the jury to determine if the witness is helping out the case or not, whichever way.

And so when John says that we saw his glory, he's just sharing with you and I.

He's going, I was just a witness to what I saw.

I'm not making anything up.

This is just what happened.

He says that we watched him.

We heard him.

We walked with him.

We saw what he did.

We saw how he loved.

We saw how he suffered, and we saw how he died.

And we saw enough to conclude that this man, Jesus, is not merely a man.

He is God.

And he is God with us.

And so as we read John's statements about what he saw and concluded, I want us to each evaluate if we agree with John or not.

I want you to sit there and have a conversation in your mind.

Because as I said earlier, we cannot ignore Jesus.

We all have an opinion about the guy.

The world has an opinion about him.

We cannot ignore him.

And if he's not really God, then he's a life coach or an inspirational leader, or he's worth following to some extent.

But if he really is God, what does that do?

It changes everything.

So going back to John 1.1, it says, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

He, talking about Jesus, was God, was with God in the beginning.

So what does that mean?

Is that John, he calls Jesus the Word.

He intentionally echoes what happens in Genesis 1.1.

We talked about that in the beginning, right?

He wants to take us back.

He wants to take the readers back.

He's going in the beginning, Jesus was already there.

And according to John, Jesus didn't just begin as a baby in Bethlehem.

Jesus entered human history in that Bethlehem major, but he did not begin there.

Not only was Jesus with God before creation, but that Jesus is God.

And John doesn't just introduce him as a religious teacher or leader.

No, no, no.

He doesn't just introduce him as a spiritual coach, a miracle worker, or a moral example.

That's not what he does.

John introduces Jesus as eternal.

Think about that.

John introduces him as divine.

He's like, I spent time with him.

He's creative.

Jesus, he's life-giving.

And he is a light-bringing God.

That is who he is.

In verse 3 of John's document, it says, Through him all things were made.

And without him, nothing was made that has been made.

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

This means that Jesus is not part of creation, but that Jesus is the agent of creation.

This means that he is the one who is the creator.

That's who Jesus is.

He's not just a man.

He is God.

He is not just one important figure inside the history of the world.

No, no, no.

He is the one through whom the world exists from.

It's a beautiful thing.

That's why Christianity cannot be reduced to Jesus just being a good teacher or a life coach for us.

But that he is our God.

You know, in verses 6 through 13, John begins to unpack some theology for his readers, comparing Jesus to light and telling us that all who believe in this light will discover the light and that they will become children of God.

And that then Jesus, he concludes his introduction on Jesus with this.

In verse 14, he says that the word, it became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

We have seen what?

We have seen his glory.

There it is.

We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

And this is massively important.

This is massively important because the eternal God became touchable.

Think about that for a second.

That Jesus, who we all came in with some idea about.

The eternal God, he became touchable.

He is the God who spoke creation into existence.

He stepped into that creation.

The God who made lungs breathed out air.

The God who made time, he entered into time.

And the God who made humanity, what did he do?

He became human.

This is why Jesus is the point of Christianity.

Not because Christians randomly picked him as our mascot, not because we thought, man, you know what, Jesus is great.

Let's put him up on this pedestal.

Not because he had memorable quotes that change our lives.

Not because he was kind to children or that he was harsh with hypocrites.

No, no, no.

Jesus is the point.

Because Jesus is God.

That is why.

That's why it's important.

That's why we worship.

That's what we believe in.

That's why salvation exists for both you and me, because Jesus is who John says he is.

He's not merely a man.

But he's God and he's impossible to ignore.

I love C.S.

Lewis.

I don't know about you, but he's got an incredible quote on this.

He says, you must make your choice.

Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman, or something worse.

But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us, and he did not intend to.

C.S.

Lewis is going, you know what?

Let me go ahead and tell you.

Jesus is not just some great teacher for you and me to learn from and apply little things to our lives.

No, no, no.

Jesus is our God and he is the Lord of our life.

He has to be sitting on the throne, and there's no other way.

And he gets this from John.

We see that Jesus brings up a burning question that we've talked about.

And it's that, can we trust John?

And personally, if you've been wrestling with this, you're going through the gospels, I think you have to.

I believe that you do.

Because we trust John's perspective, because John is, he's not just writing as a detached philosopher inventing a theory about Jesus or this idea of who Jesus could be.

No, no, no.

John has nothing to gain from this conclusion.

Actually, you look at John, he actually lost his life because of it.

And John presents his gospel as an eyewitness testimony designed to help people believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.

What's interesting about John and these other disciples is that you got to think, if this was all made up and all somewhat of a theory, and then your life gets put on the line, it's kind of like, whoa, I was just joking.

Don't stone me to death, don't send me off to purgatory.

I was just joking.

But none of them did that.

They all were willing to die sharing about what they had seen.

John, he has an agenda in these writings, and he doesn't hide it very well.

We see in John 20, verse 31, he says, but these are written that you may what?

John 20:31

That you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, he's the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

That matters.

What he shares there.

That matters.

Is that John, he's not hiding his agenda.

In fact, he's being completely honest about it.

He's saying, I'm writing so that you will believe, but I'm not asking you to believe without a testimony.

I'm giving you what I saw, what I heard, and what I came to understand, and that is that Jesus is not just a man, but that Jesus is God, and when you put your faith into him and your trust and you put your life, it will basically change you.

John's answer to who is Jesus is not subtle.

He says that Jesus is God who came near, and John does not ask us to admire Jesus from a distance.

He asks us to deal with the testimony of someone who saw it up close.

Christianity.

It's not built on some vague inspiration.

It's built on witness.

See, John's claims about Jesus did not come from speculation.

What did it do?

It came from proximity.

That when something happens in our lives, somebody's sharing a story, you know, it starts to lose steam the more people that it goes down.

John was there with them.

John's like, I'm just telling you what happened.

I was there.

And the entire Christian faith is predicated on the reality of Jesus as God in the flesh and what John witnessed.

And so the question for you and I is do we believe that?

Do we believe that Jesus is more than a good teacher or just a moral example?

Do we believe that in our lives?

And if you're still processing that, I I cannot encourage you enough to work through your questions.

If you're trying to work through of who Jesus is.

Because there's four things that really, if Jesus is God, then we we can't treat him like a life coach.

We have to treat him like he's our Lord and that he's in charge, which means that we have to stop doing these four things.

The first one is this is that we have to stop reducing Jesus to a teacher that you can selectively quote.

I don't know if you've ever done this.

If you go to the Bible and you're reading, whether it's your time in the mornings or maybe you get a lunch break or at night, and you're sitting there and maybe you're reading some of the words of Jesus, and you've got your Bible there.

Jesus said something, and you read it, and it kind of affects your situation that you're going through, and you don't feel great about it.

What's our natural inclination?

I don't think he really meant that for me.

So I'm just gonna move on to the next thing, right?

No, you can't selectively quote Jesus.

See, a teacher, a teacher gives great advice.

We have teachers in the room.

You give great advice.

But God, Jesus, he gives truth.

A teacher can be so admired.

But God, what is he?

We have to obey God.

We have to obey the Lord of our life.

Here's the second thing that we have to stop doing.

We have to stop reducing Jesus to a therapist who only affirms us.

Jesus, he he comforts.

But he also confronts.

Jesus, he heals.

But Jesus, he also leads.

We love this about Jesus.

He received sinners.

But what does he say after his encounter with them?

Go and sin no more.

We have to stop reducing him in this way.

The third one is this.

We have to stop reducing Jesus to a mascot for your opinions.

I love mascots.

I'm so excited that college football's back.

It's amazing.

They're so fun.

I was at a game last night.

The yellow jacket goes running on the field, everybody goes crazy.

It was awesome.

Jesus is not a mascot.

Jesus does not exist to endorse everything that you already think, that you already believe.

No, no, no.

Jesus came to reveal what is true in our life from his word.

We have to stop reducing him to a mascot.

And the fourth one is this.

We have to stop reducing Jesus to what?

To just a Sunday category.

To just a Sunday category.

What does this mean?

Is that if Jesus is God in human form, then he does not just belong in one hour of our week?

Jesus belongs in charge of our entire life.

He is in control of our whole life.

Are we walking into the office on Monday morning believing that Jesus is ultimately in control of our life?

Leaders in the room, CEOs.

Let me tell you, when you walk through the doors of your office and you're leading your teams and you have the mentality that Jesus is in control, it makes those hard conversations a little bit less difficult.

That anxiety that starts to fill up throughout the week, that starts to dissipate.

Where are we putting our faith and trust in?

Who is Jesus to us?

He's not just somebody to read about.

He's not just somebody with great quotes.

He's not just a Sunday category where we put him in our hour box and we're good to go.

No, no, no.

He is the Lord of our life.

It is all too easy to reduce Jesus to something that's manageable for us.

It's an earthly mindset.

See, but God, he cannot, and you know this, he will not be managed.

So I've got a question for us, and this is a heavy question.

This is a heavy question that we have to wrestle with.

Where have you reduced Jesus?

As I was going through this and preparing to be able to speak to, I had to wrestle with that myself.

Where have I been reducing Jesus in my life?

Have I truly been living like Jesus is in control of every area, charge of my kids, charge of my marriage?

Have I truly been living like he's in charge of everything that I do at work?

Have I truly been living that way?

I had to wrestle with some things, change some things with my mindset.

Where have you reduced Jesus?

Because you know this.

A reduced Jesus.

He might be easier to manage, but only the real Jesus is worthy of your life.

If you're sitting at home and you're watching online, we're so glad you're here.

A reduced Jesus.

It's so much easier to open up another tab and watch something else, but where and who have you been putting in control of your life?

Jesus, he cannot be ignored.

And I came to this conclusion.

It's not just because Christians say so.

It's not because churches built buildings in his name, it's not because history cannot escape his influence.

Jesus is impossible to ignore because of who he is.

He is God.

He is the word who is with God.

He is the word who was God.

He is the one whom all things were made.

Jesus is the life.

He's the light.

Jesus is the word that became flesh.

And he is God with us.

And aren't we grateful for it?

And so the most important question for you and me is not, do I respect Jesus?

It's not, even do I like Jesus?

It's not here to debate on do I agree with some of Jesus' teachings or not?

See, the question that is so important for us, will I recognize Jesus for who he is?

If we trust John's testimony, will I recognize Jesus for who he is?

And that he is God.

He is going to sit on the throne of my life, that every single day I'm going to worship him.

I'm going to make sure that I pray for my kids, but I know that they don't belong to me.

They belong to the Lord.

And when I walk through the doors of the school that I work at or the office that I work at, I'm going to know that in the difficult conversations, I'm going to recognize that Jesus is in control.

God, that in the transitions of my life, having marriage troubles, I feel alone.

I feel hopeless.

I'm going to know that Jesus is not just a man or somebody to go and turn to to get a good quote, but He is the Lord of my life.

He loves me.

He created me.

He knows me by name.

Jesus is God.

So how I wanted to end today, I wanted to give you 30 to 45 seconds to sit wherever you're sitting, whether it's online or in the room.

I want you to think about this question.

Will I recognize Jesus for who he is?

Take a moment, reflect, pause, then I'll pray for us.

Then today.

You know us.

By name.

God, I pray for that person that's watching online or in the room that.

God, they're struggling.

And maybe today they were giving you one last chance.

I pray that it would be a good reminder for them that you are the Lord of their life, that you are in control.

That you know them, you love them, you care about them.

And God, they have a bright future.

Jesus, I pray that we would take today's teachings, take John's gospel.

We would apply it in our life that you cannot be fit into a Sunday category, one hour box.

That like we talk about a lot around here, it's more than Sunday.

Jesus, you are influencing our life every single hour of every single day.

That's how we want to lead our families.

That's how we want to live out our marriages.

Is that you are on the throne.

We are here to worship and follow your lead.

Jesus, we love you.

We're so grateful for you.

We ask all in your name.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.