Wednesday - Change It - The Night That Changed The Religious
We saw yesterday how the religious experts who read prophecy day in day out, still got it wrong when it came to Jesus. They missed that one of the ancient prophecies about the Messiah was happening before their eyes.
So what did they miss? They missed grace and hope.
Religion at its worst can be about building a ladder to heaven, trying to make ourselves acceptable to God under our own power.
But what Christmas means is that God has come to us. No ladder required.
Two weeks ago, we contrasted grace and law as part of our Becoming Like Family series.
Grace means we have hope. It’s not primarily about what we do for God, it’s about what God has done for us, and everything we do is a way to say thanks.
The problem is if you’ve invested a great deal in self-help, you may not recognize or accept true help when it comes. You can be so sure of your hard work that you brush off help saying “I’ve got this!” when you really don’t.
Who would have expected God to come as a baby, much less a homeless baby born in questionable circumstances, with the most common name at that time, Jesus?
But people didn’t just call him Jesus, he called himself God, and others came to do this as well.
Yes, Jesus claimed to be god. That is a claim that no other leader of a major world religion has made.
Jesus didn’t go around standing on street corners shouting “I am God” in language that plain and simple, but when you look at what he taught and claimed, he was conscious of, and claiming to be God in some more subtle ways.
And he was subtle for good reasons. In the culture of his day, saying he was God would have been considered blasphemy – a crime punishable by death.
So he showed it in all sorts of interesting ways:
He spoke of himself using “I AM” sayings – a deliberate hint to the Jewish name of God – Yahweh, which means “I am”. He also said,
he was one with the Father
he was the Son of God.
he had the power to forgive sins
he was greater than the temple – the most important place of worship for the Jews and God’s presence on earth
In the gospel of Mark, Jesus is asked directly by some religious leaders “Are you the Christ (anointed one), the Son of the Blessed One ?” Jesus said “I am …”
Jesus was making an incredible and dangerous claim to be God incarnate—which means God in the flesh
One of the central truths of Jesus’ religious context was that there is only one God. When Jesus started to talk in this way, it was dangerous, but it was also life changing. He wasn’t claiming to be a new God, a second God, even a demigod. He was claiming to be the God, their God – the God who created, and then stayed with the Israelites through their history, there with them in an entirely new way.
Question: Do you know people who change when their boss, or parents, or another authority figure enters the room? How would the world change when God entered the room?
Reminder: We have a great Christmas event coming December 14th, 2013: The Original Christmas Party. Hope you’re coming!
Read the Bible in Sync Today
Loading Content...
Share a Link to this Message
The link has been copied to your clipboard; paste it anywhere you would like to share it.
Public prayer is a hot button issue.
Louie Giglio, a US pastor, was asked to pray at Obama’s second inauguration, then found himself in a firestorm of accusations based on things he’d said years ago, until he eventually declined the president’s offer. Clearly praying in public has power in the eyes of religious and non-religious people alike!
Earlier this year, it was reported in the news that The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission will investigate a complaint from a man who says he was offended when a Christian prayer was read during a volunteer appreciation banquet in Saskatoon. He felt prayer had no place in public, civic meetings.
You might say it’s just a sign of the times, and fondly remember when the Lord’s Prayer was said in schools, civic events and more, without anyone complaining, at least not complaining out loud.
I knew some people much older than I, who got so angry when the topic of the Lord’s Prayer in schools came up. They saw it as a sign that they had once lived in a Christian society, and its loss felt like they had lost a sense of power and influence over society.
If you grew up in that kind of society, you might think concerns about public prayer are unfounded, and some new innovation.
You might not give public prayer, and the reasons for it, much thought at all.
But this week we’re going to explore when Jesus questioned the way people prayed in public.
Question: What experiences of public prayer have you experienced? Were they good or bad experiences? Why?
