What's So Special About Jesus?
Tom Shrader presents the second session in his evangelistic series, examining what makes Jesus different from every other person in history. Through ten key questions about Jesus's birth, life, death, and resurrection, he demonstrates that Jesus is God incarnate who performed miracles, claimed to forgive sins, predicted His own death and resurrection, and ascended to heaven with the promise to return.
“All of religion is a sinful man or woman reaching up and trying to appease a holy God, but biblical Christianity is a holy God reaching down to a sinful man.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Know
Recorded: April 12, 2007
Duration: 39 min
Themes: jesus, salvation, sin, redemption, incarnation, resurrection, miracles, forgiveness, unbeliever, seeking truth, questioning faith, new to christianity, doubting salvation, exploring gospel, adult seeker, investigating claims
Scripture: Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 1:26-38, John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:16-17, Acts 2:22, John 20:30-31, Matthew 9:2-8, John 10:25-33, Matthew 16:21, 1 Corinthians 15, Acts 1:9-11, John 14:1-3, Revelation 22:20, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Ephesians 2:1-4
Theological Themes: christology, deity of christ, incarnation, atonement, substitutionary sacrifice, biblical authority, soteriology, redemptive work
Full Transcript
If you have Bibles, you can look at your outline. We're going to follow the outline. And we're going to do a lot of Bible flipping today. You can determine how much of that you want to do. Some of it's easy. Most of the time, as I look at it, is spent in the gospels. So if you're in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, we're there for all of them except two references in the book of Acts. You can move your way through the Gospels.
Here's what we're doing. Let me remind you. Session one, last time we said here's what we're going to do. We're going to take four weeks and expose the need, then present a solution to the need, then explain the solution, and then attempt to get you to respond.
Week one we talked about the need and the topic was "What is the matter with people?" We said what's the matter with people is what the Bible calls sin. We use words like miscalculations, errant judgments, those kinds of words. But the Bible says it's sin. It's when I transgress the law of God. It's when I knowingly or even unknowingly do something that's contrary to God's law.
What we saw is that if I commit a sin or break a law, I break the law and therefore all of us, everyone who's ever lived, stands guilty before God. You look at that and some say some are greater lawbreakers, maybe it's more obvious in them, but all of us have sinned. You want to go to two passages over and over again in this: Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23. All of us have sinned. Our sin has separated us from God, and that's what we spent week one on.
The Effect of Sin
The effect of this is that we are enslaved to sin. I frequently think of God as my Father. Almost always when you pray, almost intuitively you just say Father. I frequently think of God as Father, but I rarely think of myself as a child of God. I spend a lot of time going Father, Father, Father, but I rarely flip it. I rarely flip this around and go wait a minute, I'm His kid. What are the privileges and the responsibilities of that? The benefits of that?
So being adopted. And then if I'm adopted, that's huge, especially driven home in the book of Romans, Ephesians, Galatians - that we're adopted by the Spirit of God. If I'm adopted, then what was I before? What the Bible says in Ephesians 2:1-4 is that we were by nature children of wrath and we were children of disobedience, sons of disobedience. That's who you are, but God changed all of that.
Where we left it off last time is what somebody said after: "So that wasn't very encouraging." Well it really isn't, except that once you understand who you are, who God is, you can begin to see the remedy for that. What's the matter with people is sin. That sin is separated from God and there's nothing you can do to fix it. That's a gigantic point.
The Difference Between Religion and Christianity
We intuitively want to do something that's called religion. We instinctively sense something is wrong and want to fix it. I love the picture: All of religion is a sinful man or woman reaching up and trying to appease a holy God. Biblical Christianity is a holy God reaching down to a sinful man.
At the end of the first week we left you with the bad news, and the bad news is you are lost, helpless, and hopeless on your own.
What's So Special About Jesus?
Now week two today on your outline: What's so special about Jesus? Clearly He's a key historic figure. I came across the top hundred people of all time, a list somebody put together, and I think they had Jesus third. My point would be even in a non-religious way you recognize there's something going on here. Of the top six, five were what you would call spiritual people. Apostle Paul shot in at number six.
What's so special about Jesus? Because He's vastly different than anyone else who's ever lived, and there's something in me that says if you can come to grips with this is who Jesus is, if you act rationally at all, you want to understand what does this mean.
What God Told Mary About Jesus
Ten questions, same thing we did week one. What did God tell Mary about Jesus before He was conceived? Luke 1:27: "About now in that ninth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, descendants of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming in he said greetings favored one, the Lord is with you."
"She's perplexed at this statement and kept pondering what kind of salutation is this? And the angel said to her do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God, and behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call Him Jesus. He will be great and He will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end."
The first thing that He gives - the angel tells Mary - is that she will have this son and she is told of the virgin birth and that her son will be God. I've met people who think their kids are God, but I can't imagine... Like I love my daughters. We were last night down - Yale called, so Yale's four, this is how they're manipulative. Yale called the day before and I said "Yeah hey how you doing little man?" And he said "I'm fine," he said "is Sandy there?" And I said "No Sandy's out, she's swimming I think or working out or something." "Well could Sandy come down and play?" And I said "Well I'm trying to get Sandy to play here at home," so last night we went down to play with Yale and Braden and Lucy, the girls.
In the process, I'm watching my daughter Haley and I am so proud of her. She's done an amazing job. They just went through a real custody battle on this last adoption and they don't have a lot of money and they've spent it all and now...
We're into legal fees and it's just tough. She is so quiet, I sent her a note the other day, I said your mom would be so proud of you, you are just an awesome girl and she is, but it wouldn't occur to me to think she was God, good but not God.
The Virgin Birth
So Mary gets this news. Here's the second thing, what made Jesus' birth different than any other, and these two kind of tie together. This is from Matthew chapter 1: "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. So this is a virgin birth. Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.' Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 'Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,' which translated means, 'God with us.'"
Chapter 1 verse 24: "And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him." By the way, that's always good advice, if God tells you something. Now the angel probably won't speak to you, but if the Bible tells you to do it, it's good to wake up and do it. "And he took her as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus."
The Human Reality of the Virgin Birth
So you can put these together and talk about the uniqueness of it. It's the virgin birth in and of itself, which absolutely just stretches all sorts of understanding. There was a movie that came out about five or six years ago called The Nativity. For whatever reason, a lot of my friends did not like that movie, I don't understand, I loved it. One of the things I loved, and maybe the thing most about it, was that it so humanized this experience.
Mary is probably, I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but at this time when Mary is impregnated by the Holy Spirit, probably 12, 13, at most 14 years old. So imagine, and maybe with the daughters, this is it. It is my daughter, Sarah, coming home and saying, "Dad, I got something to tell you." "Okay, what is it?" "You know, I want to sit down." "Okay, I'm sitting down." "I'm pregnant." And I can, as a father, just kind of process what that had to be like.
I never liked that Joseph, you know, that whole process. That whole thing, I can see it. "No, it isn't Joseph. It's the Holy Spirit, okay?" Now, I don't care how spiritual you are. That's just a tough sell. And I believe that whole idea of the virgin birth just stuck with Him. I'm convinced that all the family reunions, the relatives going, "There's that little, literally, there's that little bastard Jesus. Little bastard Jesus child." So they had all that, plus the community, plus everybody.
Joseph's Struggle
Plus, what we get here now is Joseph. So if you think the virgin birth is hard, the very first person to question the virgin birth is Mary. Because when the angel said, "This is going to happen," she goes, "How can this be?" Joseph goes through the same thing. Imagine that. Here's that disgrace.
So they are engaged. And engagement, then, is more than now. I'll meet these girls all the time that say, "Oh, we're engaged." I'll say, "Well, do you have a ring?" "Well, no." "Do you have a date?" "Well, no." "You aren't engaged, okay? He's just trying to see how far he can push you here. That's all that's about." "Oh, we're gonna get married." "When?" "Oh, we don't know." Probably not gonna happen.
In that day and age, it was literally just like being married except no sex and you didn't live together. So maybe it is just like being married for some of you. I don't know. But no sex, don't live together. The groom would go away for about a year. And in many cases, he would build a room onto his father's house for them to live in. See the imagery there?
The Graciousness of Joseph
So Joseph finds out Mary's pregnant. Well, Joseph has the same reaction that Mary's dad or anybody would. "Well, who was it?" "Mort, I never liked Mort." There's always somebody to blame. "I never liked..." "No, no." And he's not buying it. And yet we see the patience and the graciousness of Joseph because now they need a declaration to sever this relationship. He wants to do it as privately as possible, but the angel appears and says, "No, Joseph, here's what you got. She's telling you the truth." And as miraculous as the conception was, the birth is gonna be amazing because what's gonna be born is God.
Do Not Be Afraid
Now, there's a couple of practical things in here, but I want to just hang on one. In Luke 1, verse 30, when the angel appears to Mary, the angel says, "Do not be afraid." In Matthew 1, verse 20, when the angel appears to Joseph, the angel says, "Do not be afraid." Those of you that have been with us know that the most frequent prohibition Jesus gives us in the New Testament is "do not be afraid." You and I should not live lives that are driven by fear and apprehension.
When I'm afraid, I've allowed the circumstances in my life to overshadow and displace God. This is a big deal. When I'm afraid because of whatever, I'm saying to God, "You know what? I can't trust you."
God as Father
Because part of being a child, so when I was gonna do that session on fathering, and all I wanted to do is present to the students that God's their father, I just went online and Googled "father" just to see what do we expect a father to do? And there's some changes that have taken place, but by and large, to be protective and supportive, to prepare a child through adolescence and into adulthood, all the things you would expect. That's what God does. I've been adopted by Him.
Now, in the Roman culture, when Paul's writing to the church at Rome and saying, "You've been adopted," adoption in that context, in that
Culture held that an adopted child could never be disowned. That child was an equal to, and at least in this instance, actually superior to the biological kids. This is an incredible concept that we have of adoption. But I just add, and again, it's not the primary sense of the message at all, but I just add to this the idea of do not be afraid.
I don't know, because life is scary. You're going to get all the things that happen. The report the other day that the average American family has lost 40% of its wealth in the last eight or nine years. That's a big deal. Now, reality, primary, most of it's housing. But you're going to be alone. You're going to be abandoned by people that you love. I'm fasting now, nothing spiritual, I have a blood test. Somewhere in my life, the blood test is going to come back and say, there's something there. I mean, that's just part of life. And there'll be those moments.
I'm not saying when you face these things, there isn't that moment of woe and maybe a little apprehension. But when the dust settles, I understand that God's in control of everything. This is a sentence we wrote years ago that a Christian should be completely fearless, continually joyful, constantly in trouble. The idea of constantly in trouble is not going out and seeking it, but living in a way within the culture that's counter to the culture.
What I Know Trumps What I Feel
So this idea of do not be afraid - what I need to know is what I know trumps what I feel. It may feel like God has abandoned me, but He hasn't. It may feel like I'm all alone, but I'm not.
Here's the thing that made Jesus' birth so different. He was born of a virgin. It was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. And in fact, He is God.
When Did Jesus' Life Begin?
Here's the third thing. When did Jesus' life begin? John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word" - that's Jesus. "The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and all things came into being through Him."
Paul writes in Colossians 1:16, "For by Him, Jesus, all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible, invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authority, all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together."
When we think of eternal life, we think all the way forward, but we think of something that is eternal. By the way, the only thing that is truly eternal is God. Everything else is a created being. Jesus has no beginning. Now, He has, interestingly enough, obviously, a physical beginning, but the point that we're trying to make here is that He's eternal.
Interestingly, I just watched a show the other night, again, on when does life begin, and more and more, they're just seeing within two weeks you can see the foundations of a brainwave and all that goes with it. I saw a past president of Planned Parenthood say that life begins at conception, and I thought, the debate's over. She said, no, this is about choice. It's not about when life begins.
It is interesting to me that we've lost the atrocity of abortion. You now have the idea of conception, viability, and then even partial. The man that's president of the United States now, who's awful in so many areas, when he was in the Illinois Senate, voted to support partial birth abortion. That is a very small group of people that'll go for that. That's killing the baby as it's being born.
A Story of Redemption
Now, that's a side note from the issue, which is to say Jesus is eternal. I did a baby dedication three or four years ago. I met this girl, she's really cool, wanted to dedicate her baby. What happened was she was dating this guy, got pregnant, the guy bailed. She goes through this and gets saved in the middle of all this. It was a wonderful story.
Well, now she has the baby, and she wants to dedicate the baby. So I said, okay, here's the deal. We'll do it, but you need to be ready, and we need to be ready for the fact that we got a whole bunch of really Christian people who aren't going to be too happy that there ain't a dad up there with you. So it's going to have to be a teaching time for us to say there's forgiveness and redemption from sin, and so we need to applaud her courage to have the baby and to be willing to come up front.
Those are all that abortion issue. It just seems weird. We just don't talk about it that much anymore. I don't know what that means.
What Did Jesus Do to Distinguish Himself?
Here's the fourth thing. What did Jesus do to distinguish Himself from everyone else? Acts 2:22, Peter's delivering a sermon and he's going to talk about Jesus. He says, "Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by miracles, wonders and signs."
That's what Jesus did. He did miracles and wonders and signs, and He did them not just to have the miracles, wonders and signs. At the end of John's gospel, John says those were part of the things that he included in the gospel but for a reason. He said, "Many other signs Jesus performed in the presence of the disciples" - John 20:30 - "which are written in the book, but these I've written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing you might have eternal life." That's the whole point of the miracles, the wonders and the signs.
We, and it's totally human, tend to worship the gift rather than the gift giver. That's how we are. So we get hung up on the miracles. The miracles were designed - and then we use that word loosely. I was watching something on PBS and they were going back to the early days of television, "the miracle of television." Well, when I was a little boy, I was explaining this to Sandy the other day, we had direct TV. I have no idea how many channels we have.
I remember visiting my sister and her family, and they had 40 movie channels—we had a million channels—yet almost every night we would say to each other, "There's nothing to watch." When I was a boy, we had two channels: channel 4 CBS, channel 12 NBC. It was big news when we got channel 8, which was ABC. The best news I ever got is when I got a younger brother, because we had a new channel changer.
We stayed in a place when we were at camp where you don't even get TVs. This one just happened to have a TV, but it didn't have a remote control. I mean, I'm roughing it at this point. It's amazing what a hassle it is to get up and go and push that channel and volume button. It didn't even have dials.
The Nature of True Miracles
A miracle is a suspension or reversal of the laws of nature. TV is not a miracle—it traffics in the laws of nature. Jesus did signs and wonders and miracles, extraordinary manifestations of divine intervention in human affairs. We had like 15 church channels, and I'm flipping through them. My wife said, "Well, maybe let's just watch. Maybe we'll learn something."
There was a guy who was just finishing, and he said, "Tomorrow we're going to have a miracle service." I said we ought to watch this because I want to see this. This is going to be good. He came out and said, "Hey, Pastor, here's a guy, and he had ringing in his ears." Well, somebody get the doorbell. "I had a bad back."
Now I don't want to minimize that, but Jesus isn't doing ringing-of-the-ears, sore-back miracles. He's doing miracles like a guy who's blind from birth and now he can see, or a guy who is dead and Jesus raises him.
Susan is buried at Hayden McCallops in a place called Green Acres. I'm too cheap to buy two plots, so we went extra deep so I'll be buried on top of her. I'll be on top of her for all eternity—this is her worst nightmare, trust me. It kills me that I'm going to spend eternity at a place called Green Acres. But if this guy would have said, "Tomorrow we're going to broadcast from Green Acres, and we're going to go down there and start raising people from the dead," that's going to get ratings. I'm going to watch that.
Jesus is doing those kinds of miracles, and He's doing those kinds of miracles so that we understand that there's something truly amazing about Him. I keep coming back to this: if Jesus really did this stuff—which there seems to be a lot of evidence that He did—if really He can calm the sea and make the deaf hear and the blind see, if He's doing these things honestly, and that's my message every Easter, I think He really rose from the dead. If He did, you may want to figure out what He said. That's a big deal. This is different than everybody else that's ever lived.
What Jesus Claimed to Be Able to Do
Number five: what did Jesus claim to be able to do? Matthew 9 tells us they brought Him a paralytic lying in a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said, "Take courage, son, your sins are forgiven." Of course the scribes are there, and they said, "This fellow blasphemes."
Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, "Why are you thinking evil in your hearts? Which is easier to say: 'Your sins are forgiven' or 'Get up and walk'?" Well, it's easier to say "Your sins are forgiven" because I can't really figure that out. I don't know if that happened. But to say to the lame guy, the paralytic, "Get up and walk"—we get data right away to see if it's true.
"Which is easier to say: 'Get up and walk' or 'Your sins are forgiven'? But so that you know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins," He said to the paralytic, "Get up, pick up your bed and go home." He got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were awestruck. The result of being awestruck? They glorified God who had given authority to this man.
The Authority to Forgive Sin
Jesus claimed to be able to forgive sin. One of the things that we learn consistently through Scripture is that when I sin against you, ultimately I've really sinned against God. Joseph's being tempted by Potiphar's wife. He pushes her away and says, "I couldn't do this to her and sin against God." The debt we owe is to God.
Imagine you and I are having coffee today, and I said, "How are things going?" "Things are okay, but money's tight. Money's just really tight." I said, "Well, do you have a lot of debt?" "Really, the only debt I have is my house." I said, "Well, here you go—don't pay. Just don't pay."
After a few months, they finally get to you and they call and say, "We haven't had a payment for a while." You say to them, "Well, Tom told me not to pay it." B of A's calling and says, "Tom told me not to pay it." "Tom? What department is he in?" "Well, he doesn't work there at the bank." "Tom who is he?" "Well, he teaches a Bible study on Thursday morning." "Well, Tom doesn't have any right to tell you not to pay because your debt's not with Tom. Your debt's with us."
When Jesus says that He's able to forgive sin, what He's saying is, "I'm God." Only God can forgive sin.
Who Did Jesus Say That He Was?
Here's the sixth thing: who did Jesus say that He was? He said He's God. John 10—and this is one of those passages that should be in your greatest hits section. This should be in your greatest hits section because there's so much that's in this.
The Jews gathered around Jesus, and they're saying, "How long will You keep us in suspense? If You're the Christ, tell us plainly. If this is who You really are, just tell us. Don't hide this." Jesus said, "I did, and you don't believe." Here's why you don't believe: "You're not My sheep."
Now here's what's going to happen to a person who's a sheep or a follower of Christ: they'll hear His voice, He'll know them, they'll follow Him, and He'll give them eternal life. They'll never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hands. "My Father who's given them to Me is greater than all, and no one's able to snatch them out of My hand."
Then He says in John 10:30, "I and the Father are one." Now we may go, "Oh, I don't know what He means by that." That's okay—the Jews did. They picked up stones to stone Him.
Jesus answered and said I've shown you many good things from the father for which of them are you stoning me and the Jews said for good works we don't stone you but for blasphemy because you being a man make yourself out to be God. When you're sitting with somebody at Starbucks and they say to you "Jesus never said he was God," you can just take him right to John 10. John 10 passage is filled with stuff here - it's filled with the idea that God will indeed speak to His sheep, but not everybody is a sheep.
The biggest question we get other than the Antichrist is "can I lose my salvation?" What Jesus says here and what the Bible teaches is no. Can I lose my salvation? No. Here's what He says: my sheep have eternal life. Well, when does eternal life end?
The Security of Salvation
If I'm sitting with somebody because you get the question a lot that goes like this: "I know a guy and he was a Christian, and now he's walked away, and he's not a Christian anymore." Well, listen, I can't look into people's souls. Here's what the Bible says: If you are a Christian, truly a Christian, you will be as sure of heaven as the saints that are already there.
Now, there may be times when you don't look like it. There may be times when you deny it. Then you get into this game: was he ever a Christian or not? All I know is, here's what He says: If you're my sheep, you have eternal life. If He began that good work, He'll continue that. It's not a steady line like this. There'll be times, maybe, of truth I don't know. But if I am His kid, I think the Bible teaches pretty clearly: If I'm His kid, you should see it. And if you don't see it, you have no biblical assurance of your salvation. You may think you're saved, and you may even be saved. I just wouldn't want to camp on that.
What Jesus Predicted
Here's the seventh question: What did Jesus predict? This is big. Jesus breaks onto the scene, wine into water, starts to teach. People are following Him. And then He starts to interject into many of His teaching and a lot of His private conversations the idea we see in Matthew 16:21: "From that time, Jesus began to show the disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed."
Now, let's stop, pause there. None of that has stopped the press's stuff. I always liked Steve Allen. I thought Steve Allen was just a funny, clever, I just like Steve Allen. The night Steve Allen died, I'm watching Larry King. And Larry King had Carl Reiner and Don Rickles on. So that night, Larry King, Carl Reiner, and Don Rickles all predicted their own death. They all said, "one day, I'm going to die." My point is, that's not really like big news. That's just not big news.
So Jesus says, "hey, they're going to take me. They're going to kill me." Not big stuff. This is big stuff: The end of verse 21, "and I'll be raised up on the third day." Whoa. Carl Reiner didn't say, "I'm going to die. And on the third day, I'll be raised." Jesus said, "here's what's going to happen."
And they had a hard time getting their arms around it, because He's talking about His suffering and the theme of the Messiah and a restoration of political and economic superiority and all that stuff. And Jesus said, "no, there'll be suffering. There'll be agony. I'll be killed. I'm going to die. But on the third day, I'm going to be raised from the dead."
The Resurrection: Foundation of Faith
Number eight, what happened after He died? He rose from the dead. They buried Him, but He rose from the dead. This is the cornerstone of the Christian faith. Paul goes so far in 1 Corinthians 15 to say that if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then this whole thing is a waste of time.
I find this extraordinarily compelling. If Jesus said He's going to rise, even if He didn't say it, but if He said He's going to be raised on the third day and He did it, I would think you would want to tune into what He's saying. Now, we'll get into why all this happened next week. All we're dealing with is the historic fact that it happened.
The Ascension
What was the concluding event of Jesus' time on earth? Well, He ascends into heaven. In Acts chapter 1, Jesus is talking to the boys and telling them some things about the future. And they say, "when's all this going to happen?" He said, "you don't need to know. You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you."
Acts 1:9: "And after He said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on." Acts chapter 1, verse 10: "And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going away." Isn't that an amazing thought? I always think of it in the context of a space launch, when the cameras on the people who are sitting and staring intently and just gradually look. Imagine that moment.
The Promise of Return
But that wasn't the end of it, because He told us what the future is going to be. John chapter 14, verse 1: "Don't let your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my house there are many dwelling places. If it weren't so, I would have told you. And I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am you may be also."
I have two ideas for great TV shows. One's a home and garden show on not the first home, but the last home. It's a downsizing show. So see families that are moving from their five bedrooms to two bedroom condos. Great idea. This is a better show: It's like the one where they do like the home makeovers, is to revisit those homes two or three years later.
I've always wanted to do that. But I've never seen the show all the way through. It is on, I don't know now, but it was on TV a long time on Sunday night. So when I'd come home from church, it would be right near the end of the show, where they'd have all the people there. And they'd say, "move the bus." And then they should have called the show, the name of that show should have been "Oh My God," because that's what they all said once the bus moved. It was an amazing place. Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you." And I've often wondered, though I don't
Spend a ton of brain cells on it—does He say, "I go to prepare just a place so you'll have a place"? Or does He say, "I'll go to customize a place for you"? Am I going to prepare a place for you so that when I walk in, there'll be an autographed Kirk Ferentz football there? There'll be a picture of my kid. Will it be a place for me?
And then I get this picture, which has to be an awesome moment, that I die, I get to heaven, and Jesus is standing there with me, and He says, "Move away the bus." And I say, "Oh my goodness." But whatever it is, He's gone to prepare a place for His people.
He went on to say, "You know the way." And Thomas said, "I don't know the way." And Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." And at the very end of this book called the Bible, in Revelation chapter 22, verse 20, He said, "I am coming soon."
The Uniqueness of Jesus Christ
What's so special about Jesus? Well, He is fathered by the Holy Spirit. He's born of a virgin. He is God come in the flesh.
He came on a mission—we'll talk about next week—to save His people from their sin. He did miracles, and wonders, and signs. He claimed that He could forgive sin, said He was God, predicted that He would be killed, but raised again on the third day. And in reality, was raised on the third day.
He ascends into heaven, but says, "I'm coming back." Week number one, what's the matter with people? Sin. We need a remedy for that. We left us helpless and hopeless. Nothing we can do about it.
God's Solution
Now God says, "I'll do something." And a key part of that is Jesus. What's so special about Jesus is all of those things that I just talked about.
But now Jesus comes to this earth and lives and dies. What's behind now the death of Jesus? That's what we're going to look at next week. See the sequence building here.
All right, let's pray. Father, thank you for this amazing and awesome truth. You're a holy God, and You save Your people from their sins. Father, thank you for that. We pray that here this morning, for all of us who know You, we would be encouraged, we would be reminded of the very basics of the faith. For a lot of people in this room, not much new there. But boy, it's never lost its awe to us. For those for whom this is new, I just pray that Your Spirit would fill them, open eyes, touch hearts, and we would see how much You love us. God, we pray that to You in Christ's name, amen.