Word of Salvation – Vol. 18 No.33 – August 1972

 

Superstar…???

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf, B.D. on Matt.16:15-17

Scripture Reading:  O.T. Isa.7:10 14; .9:2-7
                                              N.T. Matt.16:1-20; 26:59-66

Psalter Hymnal: 234:1,2,3; 234 7,8 (after creed); 336; 373 (1,2,3); 373:4

 

To many people the Name JESUS CHRIST is only known as a swearword.  They say it when they have trouble getting a wheel off their car, or when the horse they bet on at the races is letting them down badly.  Handy to have a Name like that floating around for letting off steam!  Mind you, there is a worse way to abuse the Name of Jesus Christ.  And that is a much more respectable thing.  More profitable, too.  Then don’t use it for a swearword, but use it to make money.  Oops!  Isn’t that what most of the churches are doing?  Isn’t that how MINISTERS THEMSELVES, like the one now speaking to you, “make a living”?

Well, I am afraid that THAT has happened too.

That churches stopped believing in Jesus as HE really is, but still carried on BUSINESS AS USUAL, because somehow it was a good business.  Then ministers – instead of representing Jesus as HE REALLY IS – wrote learned books with OTHER ideas, THEIR own.  Learned – or not so learned – thoughts at $7.99 a volume.  Yes, THAT has happened, too, but it seems as if this profitable racket is fizzing out a bit.

No, if you NOW want to make good cash with the name of Jesus Christ it has to be BOX OFFICE, and the medium is Rock Opera: JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR.  But the Jesus Christ of that Opera is NOT the Jesus Christ of history; NOT the Jesus Christ of scripture!  One of the choruses sung in this opera is a question: Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ WHO ARE YOU?  Well, if you read through the Script of the Opera it seems as if He does not know the answer.  A poor, bewildered human, frustrated in his well-meant attempts, tragic in his failure to repair the human mess, “a flop at 33.”

Unable to bring relief in suffering, even though sharing in it.  Just another ill-fated idealist, broken to bits on the rock-hard reality of a senseless and aimless world!  A Man of sorrows. . . yes, but nothing more!  But if He had been that, and that alone, there would be no Good News, no Gospel today.  If he had been that, and that alone, the Jesus revolution, as well as the age-old ministry of joy of the Christian Church, bringing freedom and renewal to millions, would have been an impossible thing.

No, Von Daniken in his book “Chariots of the Gods” may be wrong in many historical and archaeological points, but one thing he sees quite clearly is this: The human race could not have got on without an injection from “outside!”  The evolutionary dream of a world and a mankind climbing upwards to perfection steadily if at times slowly, simply does NOT fill the bill of the facts.  Man can NOT simply help himself, and if Jesus Christ would have been NO MORE than just ANOTHER peak of human goodness or human heroism, just A MAN trying to rescue his fellows, we might as well wonder if we’re not now wasting our time here.  BUT THE QUESTION OF THE ROCK OPERA HAS BEEN ANSWERED AGES AGO!

“Jesus Christ, WHO ARE YOU?”  That question was answered by Jesus when His very life depended on it!  When He stood before Caiaphas the Jewish high priest, “I put you under oath by the living God!  You are now to tell me: ARE YOU… THE SON OF GOD?”  And the question was as direct as you could wish: “I AM”.  He who was the SON OF MAN also was – as the Bible makes crystal clear – THE SON OF GOD, GOD COMING TO VISIT A WAYWARD RACE, to not only SHOW them the way back, but to BE the very Way Back!  At his birth from the virgin Mary where the Lord of all creating Himself caused conception, the New Testament quotes the old: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and His Name shall be called ‘IMMANUEL’, GOD WITH US!”

Now if you tell me this is a thing that defeats our experience and defies test-tube repetition, I say: Of course it is!  When God comes to show His power and His love, and stoops down to share our bankrupt lives down here, what do you think that is?  What else than UNUSUAL could that be?  “Jesus Christ… WHO ARE YOU?”  Oh – that is A RELEVANT QUESTION! – and the answer is clear even though it defies scientific analysis!

As a 12-year old boy he already said to his mother Mary – “I must be in the business of My Father” and that Father was clearly God.  He commanded and controlled the powers of nature as he made water into wine at a wedding – so much for Him being a killjoy! – and multiplied food for a 5000-man crowd.  His friends were awestruck when He commanded winds and waves to be silent when a storm threatened their little boat.  He cured the sick and He raised the dead!  Others did similar things IN THE NAME OF JESUS but He did them HIMSELF on his OWN authority.  Though it was never to show off in the glamour of cheap tricks, but always to underscore the point that GOD DOES care about His world and that the Kingdom HAD finally come!  At one stage He said to a stricken patient brought to him for healing: “My friend, cheer up!  YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN!  and rightly the conclusion was drawn by those present: “Can He do that?  WHO CAN FORGIVE SINS EXCEPT THE ONE AGAINST WHOM THEY WERE COMMITTED, GOD HIMSELF?”

One of the most telling statements about this “more-than human” dimension of His being was what He said when his opponents boasted about their pedigree from Jewish Forefather Abraham.  They were pulled up short by Jesus’ astounding statement: “BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM!”  Now in the ears of Jews trained in their Old Testament this needed no further explanation, because this to them was the most sacred Name of the Deity Himself: Yahweh, I AM THAT I AM.  This was the Name God gave Himself when speaking to fearful Moses at the burning bush, bolstering up the 80-year-old candidate for revolt against the mightiest King and power of his day: “Go and tell him that YAHWEH sent you, The God Who does not change, I AM has sent you – that should be enough!”  Before Abraham was, I AM – says Jesus – and is it any wonder that the listeners pick up stones to execute him on the spot… for blasphemy?  “To see Me is to see the Father”, He says on another occasion.  Much, much later the Apostle Paul was to say it after his conversion from Jewish hatred of this supreme heresy into faith in this mysterious person Jesus: “He Who was in the very form of God did not cling to His divine glory but laid it down to become a man – yes even become a servant obediently going even to death, the very death of the cross!”

What happened when Jesus came to live His simple, human life as Man of Sorrows on earth, is the most stupendous and momentous event in all history.  To quote Paul again: GOD WAS IN CHRIST reconciling the world in Himself!  When people nailed Jesus to a cross, they committed the unthinkable crime.

 “Murder is horrible, genocide is terrifying, but Deicide is unthinkable”, said Joel Nederhool.  But that is what we did.  And after we did that, Jesus proved His Divine power – says the Bible – by rising from the dead!

That fact is the central fact of all the Bible, and without it the gospel would be a lifeless phantom.  That fact, proven by the empty tomb and attested to by independent, trustworthy witnesses, is above all clear in that it changed a bunch of fearful and stricken men, once His followers, into glad messengers of the Good News of God’s ACTIVE LOVE FOR US.  These men – far from lying about some made-up myth, laid their life on the line for it.  Men might – as Paul E. Little says – be willing to die for what they BELIEVE to be true even though it might in fact be false – but surely they would NOT become martyrs for what they KNOW to be a lie.  And the records of their message and life and death is in history, and we have it right from a FEW YEARS after it happened.  THEY did not sing: “Jesus Christ Who Are You?”  They knew!  Even though they did NOT understand with the kind of understanding that you might have about a car engine that you have pulled to bits.

“JESUS CHRIST… WHO ARE YOU?” asks the Rock Opera.  You know what?  Jesus Christ reverses the question and asks PEOPLE: “Now, tell Me, WHO AM I?” That happened when He was with His followers before His cross, after they had discussed the various opinions floating around about Him.  The one said this and the other said that.  Yes, the usual thing.  As many people, as many opinions…!  But then He asks them point-blank: “Now what about you?  Who do YOU say that I am, I the Son of Man?”  Yes, Son of Man, too, everyone can see that!  Human enough –capable of laughing and crying, of eating and drinking, of tiredness and grief and thought and emotion.  But have you discovered more?  What do you think?”  And then Peter says: “YOU are the Christ THE VERY SON OF THE LIVING GOD!”

And then – just as on that memorable evening a week after He rose from the grave when Thomas another follower of His said: “MY LORD… AND MY GOD” – He did not protest against such honour as unworthy of it but accepted it!  And who, having heard Jesus speak on humility, would have doubted that this was true?  He said “THIS is not something man could have thought up My Father in heaven showed you this, Peter!”  And later to Thomas he said, “You say this because you have SEEN Me, but blessed are they who believe that I am: THEIR LORD AND THEIR GOD while they have NOT seen!”

Well, there you are.  There is the evidence – a part of it – a SMALL PART OF IT as you have it in the Bible.  Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, WHO ARE YOU?  Well, He claims clearly to be more than Superstar.  He claims to be – the Son of Man and yes – GOD HIMSELF.

THIS IS HOW GOD GOT INVOLVED IN OUR LIFE, OUR PLANET, OUR FALLEN MANKIND.  Not by standing on the shore throwing a life-belt to the poor drowning wretches down there but by pitching in Himself – IDENTIFYING HIMSELF WITH THE CREATURE.  This, says Paul in 1Cor.3:16, is the very mystery of our religion: the Incarnation.  GOD Who shows Himself in OUR FLESH!

Long before, in the Old Testament, the prophets predicted this staggering and amazing involvement of God: They pointed at Bethlehem as the historic place where it was to take place.  They clearly wrote about the suffering and death He was to undergo for us.  They had no doubt as to his great and strange Identity: “A child is born to us, and …His Name shall be called –

            “The Wonderful One,
            The Counsellor,
            The Mighty God!
            The Everlasting Father,
            The Prince of Peace!”

Don’t think you’re a dud if you find your thinking sag under the weight of this information!  The Christian Church has tried throughout the centuries to figure out WHO JESUS IS, how this “works”; BOTH GOD AND MAN!”  But we may know Him, even though we will never understand!  He is the living God not leaving the showing of love to unworthy men to messenger boys or mechanical letter-writing, but COMING HIMSELF!

Mind you – this then is also very crushing to our pride.  We like to manage our own affairs and fix up our own problems.  But we could not – we were DEAD says the Bible – saying ages ago what modern existentialists now do as if they invented it just recently.  BUT when WE could not restore a fallen humanity, GOD CAME HIMSELF and got involved!  As Isaiah says it somewhere: Then God looked around if there was any helper and when there was none, He bared His Holy arm and pitched in headlong.  That is the message of the Gospel and what GOOD NEWS it is still today!  That GOD CARES so much!

We have our queries about the care of God.  We have OUR ideas about how GOD must come and clean up our mess.  We at times treat God as a messenger boy whom we order around and tell off if He doesn’t do as WE tell Him He must.  And eventually we even dismiss Him as irrelevant when WE conclude that HE has fallen short of OUR expectations.

Yes, and THEN we compose rock operas: “Jesus Christ Who are you?”  Jesus is God caring so much that He became a man.  Jesus Christ is the very love of God taking on a body and allowing Himself to be manhandled by hostile men.  Jesus Christ is the One who also today asks US, asks YOU and ME: “Now what do YOU think of Christ?”  He wants to know from YOU and ME: who WE think He is.  He is the same yesterday and today and forever (Heb.13:8).  But whether WE shall live or die will depend on what WE say about HIM!  And the door to never-ending life still opens for man today, when he learns to answer with Peter of old: “YOU are the CHRIST, My Saviour!  The Son of the living God!”  Or with Thomas the doubter who stopped doubting: “My Lord, and My God!”

Still today lives are changed by that discovery.  And the day shall come that every eye shall see the truth of that claim, when THIS JESUS, Son of Man AND Son of God, shall appear in glory over THIS WORLD!

Amen.