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

Ryan Sim - January 27, 2014

Monday - A New Idea - Reset Time

We’re recently started a new series called “reset”. In the first week, we talked about how Jesus makes it possible to reset all of life, giving us a fresh start in life that impacts every key area. We’re going to look at many of these in depth, and this week we see how Jesus resets our use of time. There was a time in my life when I prided myself on never needing a day planner. I remembered everything I signed up for, and never double booked. That was high school. Ever since, I’ve found my time needed to be managed. Through university, I started to rely on a day planner, an old fashioned spiral bound book. I got progressively busier, but could still say yes to pretty much anything I wanted. I would stay up all night getting things done if I needed to. I was young. By the time I started working, I had to start making choices. I can only be in one meeting, one event, or one place at a time. When I first pastored a church, I was still working as a paramedic on the side, until I finally realized I simply didn’t have the time to do both things well. And still today, I find myself constantly choosing between demands on my time. It’s only escalated since having children. I can go on. You probably can, too. Bottom line, unless we’re still kids, time is all about choices. It’s a limited resource – we can’t create it, we can only choose how to use it. The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. ~C.S. Lewis But what if you could reset your clock? That used to be easy – whenever I’ve started a new job, I feel like it’s a chance to structure my time differently, within the constraints of set tasks, family and personal responsibilities. But even then, it’s never clear what’s best. Read one thing that says “say yes to every invitation, you never know who you’ll meet” but then I’ll read something else that says I should learn to say “no” to more invitations to protect my sanity and family. Which is it? With an extra hour, I don’t know whether I should work more, play with my kids, read the Bible, exercise, fix things around the house, or what. Someone will advocate that each one is most important. Time marches on. Closely connected with goals, last week’s topic. Question: What would you do with an extra hour in the day? Why? What would be your goal?

From Series: "Reset"

When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again? The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate. What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives: Reset: Goals Reset: Time Reset: Money Reset: Work Reset: Body & Food Reset: Sex & Marriage Reset: Family Reset: Compassion Reset: Nature Reset: Society Reset: Death Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.

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