The Stature of Christ

It actually fits with Mr. Warren's message. We want to mentor young people to serve more in the Church. Rather than wait until they're all in their 50s and baptized before anybody ever gets up and gives a sermon at our lead songs, we thought we've got some capable teenagers in that area that we want to give the experience of being in front of the congregation. It works out pretty well.

Actually, last Sabbath, we called on one of them one short term. Actually, last Sabbath, Mr. Warren was scheduled to lead songs, but turned out was traveling, and he tried to contact me to let me know that he was out of town. I joked about this. I mentioned it in services last week in Portsmouth. I told everybody, well, I got a message from Mr. Warren that said, Hello, Mr. Dunkel. This is Stephen Warren. I wanted to check with you on...

That's what the message sounded like. I said, Hmm, I wonder what he was checking with me on. I was negligent getting the voicemail off my cell phone. But actually, we had a few people that could lead songs, but we ended up calling on Jacob Call, who was 18 years old and working towards baptism even himself.

He did quite admirably. Actually, I put him on the schedule to do it here next Sabbath. He'll be coming down with his family. I see some puzzles. Did I say his name wrong? Now I lost track of where I was going with this. Maybe I should just start into my sermon. At camp this past summer... Well, I shouldn't say this past summer because one of the teen summer camps is yet to occur up in Oregon.

But we used a theme for Christian living classes. That theme was leaders, people of character. So what we did is, each morning, all the camp would have Christian living class. Each weekday, we would focus on a different person from the Bible, from whose life we would study one particular characteristic that he or she exemplified as a leader.

For example, we studied the life of Esther as an example of courage. We looked at Nehemiah's life and saw how he exemplified determination. Having read Mr. Armstrong's book on the 7 Laws of Success many times, I kept wanting to say drive. Drive, determination are very similar. Paul is a good demonstration of commitment. Or in the lesson, we referred to staying the course, in spite of all the obstacles and trials.

The person of Ruth, she's a good example of a person of integrity. Someone trying to always do what's right, despite the challenges. And Abraham, we looked at his life as an example of having vision. Having that clear idea of the ultimate goal. Now, there are lessons for us and all of these people, and not just for those in positions of leadership, but for all of us.

All of us have a goal that hopefully we have that vision of. That's being in God's kingdom. And we should want to develop all of these character traits in order to reach that goal. We need to drive unwaveringly towards it. While we're doing what's right in every circumstance, what's right is God's law shows us what's right. And of course, stay the course. Be committed, no matter what, through all the trials, all the tests. And demonstrate the moral courage that it takes to stay on that course.

When we're in God's kingdom, not only those of us who are ordained now, or who have special positions, all of us are called to be leaders at that time. I could turn to various scriptures that show that we're to be kings and priests in God's kingdom. So looking at examples of people's lives for leadership traits is something we should do. Right now, we might consider ourselves as the weak and the base things. That not many wise who are now called. But we were called by God the Father.

As Jesus Christ said, no one could come unless God the Father called Him. So we're here for a reason. And that reason is not to remain weak and base, but to become uncommon, to become above average. And of course, it's a process. There's an old saying that goes, God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called. That's stuck in my mind a lot of times because it's such a clever play on words, but it's so true.

But we'll be working on developing these traits to be leaders all through our life. It's a lifelong process. And in that process, it's worthwhile for us to look at great leaders. To study their lives and try to emulate some of their strengths and to avoid some of their weaknesses.

It brings to mind, actually, one of the things that set me on course to becoming a history teacher was sitting in an assembly at Ambassador College in Big Sandy as a young man. I think it was my second. I know it was my second year. Because Rod Meredith was actually up there giving me assembly. And he was encouraging us to do that and studying the lives of great men.

And he held up several biographies like that of Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. And of course, he had the biography of Herbert Armstrong and others. And he said, if you want to become a great person, read about the lives of great people and try to copy their strengths and not their weaknesses.

So, as I said, I think there's benefits to us doing that, looking in the Bible. And of course, we see bad examples, but we can see good examples. And as I mentioned, all of those characters that we focused on at camp, you might have been wondering, well, did you leave somebody out?

There's one person that certainly we could call the ultimate leader. I'm going to lead up to that, but actually, as soon as I put ultimate leader down on paper, it made me think of something that I found mildly amusing.

You may or may not. But during football seasons, I read an online column called Tuesday Morning Quarterback. And it's actually written by a PhD scholar who works at the Brookings Institute.

But he's really a big football fan, so he'll write this column, talking about what happened the weekend in football. And then he'll insert paragraphs analyzing social or political issues. And he's got a really good sarcastic wit. So, I find sometimes I've learned great things from him, and other times I just get a good laugh. But anyways, he noticed and brought out in his column that some years ago, the website for the Denver Broncos was referring to its coach, who was then Mike Shanahan, as the ultimate leader. And Mr. Easterbrook took a little, you know... He poked a little fun at that. He started calling him ultimate leader, which got it funnier and funnier as Mr. Shanahan went over to the Washington Redskins and proceeded to have losing season after losing season. So he used to... The column said that the ultimate leader's most potent leadership skill must have been having John Elway as his quarterback. So I'm mentioning that as a chuckle, but I want to bring it in, though, to show that no matter what someone is called, no matter what position or title they might have, that doesn't make someone a good leader. You can say you're in charge. You can name someone the best leader ever, but it's the character and substance that makes a leader. And it's all... It can include a lot of variety of things that come together. But I want to use that to circle around, of course, to the one person in the Bible that we can call the ultimate leader, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ exemplified only good traits and never bad. He's one that we don't have to say, well, don't follow as bad examples, only as good. He only set good examples. And, of course, he exemplified all those traits that we looked in in those other five people. He had a goal and purpose. He had vision going back to the creation of the universe, which he participated in. He had a commitment, a determination. He had courage. He always did what was right. So I thought about how we might learn some lessons from his life. In the Christian living classes, I thought we could have looked at how Jesus excelled even the people we looked at. Abraham, Paul, Nehemiah, Ruth, Esther. And then I thought, well, maybe look at some other things. There are certain things we tend to look at Jesus for, and they're pretty obvious. But do we know the whole man? I've mentioned before those bracelets that say WWJD. What would Jesus do?

Sometimes it's worth asking, what was Jesus like? I thought it might be worth just looking at some of his traits that we don't normally consider and see how there's still positive traits and things that we can learn from. Now, there's no way I could possibly describe all of his traits in a sermon. So I thought I might look at some of the more... some of the ones that we don't necessarily think of first or that people outside the church don't think of.

One of the first ones I focused on was the fact that Jesus was a strong man. And I don't mean that just spiritually and emotionally.

I thought I had a Bible up here somewhere.

In Mark 6, chapter... Mark 6, verse 3, the people of his country referred to him as the carpenter. I'm not going to turn there. If you're there already, though, you might note, of course, several times his father Joseph was called a carpenter, which he was.

And then in 6, verse 3, they say, isn't this the carpenter, Jesus himself? And of course, they say, he's the son of Mary, brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. And not to mention, his sisters are here with us.

It's interesting. We know the story about Jesus's birth and how Joseph, his stepfather, married a pregnant woman, you know, and believed the story that she was conceived... or that she conceived child without ever committing fornication.

And we don't learn a lot about Joseph. We do know that there's that story when Jesus was 12 years old of them going up to Jerusalem for the Passover. And then, of course, them leaving, assuming that Jesus is with the family, but finding out that he's not. And they go back and they find him in the temple, you know, asking questions and answering questions. And after that, Joseph doesn't appear.

Almost all biblical scholars presume that Joseph probably died young. And God would have allowed that. Which means, since Jesus later is called the carpenter, he must have succeeded his father in the trade. Probably a family business, with all those brothers following him. They were probably all in the process of learning to be carpenters. As we heard earlier, they had a mentor in their father. And when he was gone, Jesus filled that role and probably served as a mentor to his younger brothers.

Now, in our modern era, when we think of a carpenter, I envision a guy who uses power saws, nail guns, and maybe occasionally a claw hammer. And near where I live, recently, they put up a new house. Actually, it's interesting. They knocked down an old house, cleared the ground, and put up a brand new one. And I saw that the workers there framing it up. And, you know, working on a construction site, especially in this heat, you don't find too many out-of-shape carpenters. But, if you think about the trade when Jesus practiced it, we might get better insight into the type of man he was. The Greek word that's translated carpenter is tecton. Tecton literally means artificer. Meaning, he wasn't just somebody who operated a power saw, but someone who worked with building materials. Wood was a primary material, but there were others. There was clay, stone, tile, and stone block. And he probably did much more than just framing up a house. Jesus might well have inherited a business that I'm not sure what it would have been called, but today we might call it Joseph and Son's General Contractors. They probably built whole buildings and designed them from scratch. So it occurred to me, when we see Jesus referred to as a carpenter, we shouldn't think of someone puttering around in an air-conditioned shop with a number of power tools. Not that there's anything wrong with that. That's great. But think of a man who spent much of his life on a construction site using hand tools and carrying and placing heavy timbers and blocks. This is kind of vivid in my mind because, as I think I've mentioned, I recently rebuilt a couple of retaining walls on my property. The first one was right next to the driveway, and we had some old beams about this big around, but they were leaning out, so I took those out and dismantled them. I discovered there was a lot of good stone up on the hillside behind my house up in the woods. A lot of it is natural occurring limestone that has flat surfaces, so I started bringing those blocks down. Some of them big enough that I couldn't pick them up. I had to slide or roll them end over end. Luckily, it was downhill the whole way. But I imagine doing something like that. That's hard work. The other retaining wall I did was railroad ties. The old ties were really rotted and falling apart, so I knocked them down and had to dig out a foundation. I can't tell you how much skin I lost and how many blisters doing that. Then, of course, I went and bought new railroad ties. They're done being used by the railroad, but nobody else has used them yet. They cost me about $8 a piece at Menards. I thought about trying to bring a section in, but I did share Jesus' experience, perhaps, because I don't have a power saw. Actually, I've got a power miter saw, but that's not going to work on a railroad tie. So I got out a big bow saw and cut by hand through these ties. It was fortunate for me the very last cut I had to make broke the saw. So I didn't go out and buy a new one, but I thought, you know, a railroad tie has about these dimensions. Imagine a piece of wood like this, but eight foot long and soaked in creosote. The thing was heavy. I could barely move one of them at a time.

So what I'm relating is my experience was as a part-time job for part of a spring, I worked with these kind of materials, and it wore me out. I was sore. I got blisters. I was tired. Jesus did that from the time of his youth. He must have been a strong fellow. These Renaissance paintings of a frail, sickly-looking, effeminate creature, that's not Jesus Christ. Even the statue, I heard a reference on the radio of that statue down in Brazil at São Paulo, the Christ the Redeemer. But he still looks like the skinny, kind of, guy with the flowing robes, and you wonder if he's in there somewhere. That wouldn't have been Jesus Christ. He was a manly man. He was very fit, and I'm sure he was very, very strong. Now, from his trade, there are other things we can infer. He was probably really good at spatial thinking and mathematics. He probably had an aptitude for design. And assuming their company did finishing work in houses, he probably was a bit artistic. And no doubt, he was overseeing sometimes crews of men. So, obviously, he probably had good management techniques and leadership skills. Those traits probably don't surprise people very much. As I said, people expect Jesus maybe to be artistic and to be able to think spatially.

But thinking of him as someone of sheer brute strength. As I said, I'm not sure that's common in people's thinking. I thought of a way to demonstrate that from a particular angle. If you'll go with me to John 21.

I'm going to have to watch myself. I thought I'd give myself free reign to talk. But at the rate I'm going, I want to make sure I don't go overtime on this.

John 21, though. This isn't a story about Jesus per se. I want to look at one of his leading disciples, of course, Peter. This is after Christ's crucifixion and his resurrection, but before the Holy Spirit poured out on that Pentecost. Several of the disciples decide they're going to go fishing, not throwing in a line with a rod and reel, but they're out there with nets on a boat. They fish all night, of course, and they don't catch anything. And then Jesus appears on the shore and calls out to them.

In verse 5, Jesus said to them, Children, have you any food? And they answered him, No. Cast the net on the right side of the boat and you'll find some. So they cast, and now they couldn't draw it in because of the multitude of fish. Obviously, this is a miracle. God caused all those fish to be there and get caught. Therefore, the disciple whom Jesus loved, pretty sure this was John, said to Peter, It's the Lord. Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord. He put on his outer garment because he had removed it, and he dived into the sea.

That's impetuous Peter. I've got to get there right away. The others were thinking about all those fish that Jesus wanted them to catch. So they came in a little boat, not far from land, about 200 cubits, dragging the net with the fish.

And as soon as they came to land, they saw there was a fire of coals and fish laid on it with bread. So Jesus had already prepared breakfast for them. And he said to them, Bring some of the fish which you have just caught.

Simon Peter went up and dragged the net to the land, full of large fish, 153. Now, to me, I don't handle raw fish very often, but there must have been large fish, 153 of them. It says, Although there were so many, the net was not broken. So there were enough fish with enough weight that it was surprising that the net didn't break. But Peter himself went and just dragged that whole thing right up out of the water onto the beach.

That should tell us something about Peter's strength and size. You know, of course, being a fisherman out on boats and casting nets, he probably was a pretty muscly guy. As I said, not some skinny guy sitting on the seashore with a cooler full of beer, casting a line with a bobber out on it. You know, he was also a manly man with a lot of strength to him. Probably, I don't know, I have no idea how tall he was. I always envisioned him being a little shorter, you know, about 5'2", and just like a barrel-shaped fella. And that's just my imagination, but I'm sure the muscle was there. With that in mind, let's turn to Matthew 14. Matthew 14 and verse 25. To put these two together, and as I said, to me, it just helps me to see some things about Jesus Christ. Matthew 14 and verse 25. This is, of course, one of the cases after Jesus fed a multitude with the bread and fishes. He sent them away and went up on the mountainside to pray by himself and sent the disciples ahead. So, they took a boat across the sea. And in verse 25, it says, On the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went to them, walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It's a ghost! And they cried out for fear. Immediately, Jesus spoke to them, saying, Be of good cheer, it's I, don't be afraid. Peter, once again the impetuous one, answered and said, Well, Lord, if it's you, command me to come out to you on the water. So, he said, Come. When Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. When he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid. Beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, Lord, save me. Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand. Unless it doesn't say hands, stretched out one hand and caught him, and said to him, O you of little faith, why do you doubt? Now, we often draw a lot of lessons about faith and trust out of this. But while I was thinking of Jesus' strength, I thought, as strong and dense a build as Peter had, Jesus was able to just reach down with one hand and grab him and pull him up. Now, we know he was walking on water. This could have been a miracle from God.

But I thought, well, if you've got that kind of physical strength and you're used to moving around these blocks of stone and wood, would you bother to ask God for a miracle to do something that you could just do on your own? Now, probably not. So, as I said, this is something Jesus could do without needing to call on for a miracle. That might give us a different view of a couple episodes in Christ's life. If you'll turn to Matthew 21, verse 12.

I'm going to look at a couple incidents here, but in Matthew 21, verse 12, I think, you know, he drove them out. He overturned their tables. It occurs to me, in our lifetime, we're used to dealing with temporary things.

One of us can move one of these tables around pretty easily, but in this temple, these weren't plastic folding tables. They were probably made out of heavy wood material that might have taken two or three people to move, and Jesus came and started pitching them over. The money he's pouring out wasn't paper bills or plastic credit cards, but heavy metal coins. When Jesus cut loose in the courts of the temple, when I read this, I think of the build that he had.

It makes me think of one of these action-adventure movies that you might see. You know, he might have been like Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger suddenly going into action and people cowing in the corner, realizing this is a force of nature. They were hiding to get out of his way. And I suspect Jesus probably could have held his own. They probably loved him in Hollywood today, a perfect specimen. He could hold his own with Arnold Schwarzenegger or anyone else. And it's funny, as I started writing this, I wrote some names down. I thought, I have no idea who does those kind of movies now.

Or is it still the same old guys that were doing it when I was young? But that also makes me think about his humility. With that kind of strength and stamina, he still relied on the Father for spiritual help in almost every circumstance. And he actually... It makes me think about when he fasted before confronting Satan. Forty days and forty nights. Perhaps a person of his fitness would have needed an extended period of time to take away that physical strength so that he wouldn't fall back on that.

Perhaps on all these building sites, he was used to being the one who could pick up and move the beam or something, who could go all day and then go home and help his mom with the younger brothers and sisters. But he had to put that down in order to draw on the spiritual strength of the Father before Satan came to tempt him. Of course, perhaps he built some of that back up during his ministry. You think of the fact that the Romans, when they wanted to punish a hardened criminal, usually they would do discouraging or crucifixion.

Never both. Jesus Christ had the strength and fitness to endure both of those before it finally took his life. Now, I want to make the point, I don't want us to glory in Christ's physical strength. But I think if we keep in mind what type of man he was, it might help us to read the Bible and imagine these scenes in a more realistic way. As I said, don't envision the paintings. If you've got one of those large family Bibles where they insert reproductions of those, you see somebody that looks like a crack addict from downtown, who they're all frail and they don't have any muscle.

Jesus was not a frail sissy, but as strong as he was physically, he must have been even stronger mentally and emotionally. And as I said, that should help us to appreciate the humility and self-control that he exercised. I think when he took those little children up into his arms to bless them, and they say one of the most favorite or popular posters with women is these pictures of these big firemen holding a little baby because they have that strength, and yet they're so gentle. We should want to be like Jesus Christ.

Most of us aren't going to become artificers moving wood and stone. The slight experience I've had tells me, I don't want to do that. I want to use power tools. But we should be able to be like him in relying on God the Father for strength and on him, on Jesus himself, to give us the strength when we need it spiritually, rather than going on our own resources. And perhaps the self-control that he exercised physically can also help us to appreciate even more that Jesus was not only a man of great physical strength, but he was also a man of strong emotions. I want to turn to that next.

If the account of Jesus cleansing the temple doesn't give us a clear enough demonstration that Jesus was a man of emotions, let's look to another example of him doing about the same thing. This is in John 2. John 2 and verse 13. We believe this probably happened at the beginning of his ministry instead of near the end as the other case. Putting the pieces together from the different Gospel accounts, it seems that on two different occasions Jesus went in and drove the money changers out and cleansed the temple.

And it says that, in verse 13, Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, and money changers doing business. And he made a whip of cords, and he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen.

He brought out the changers' money and overturned the tables. And he said to those who sold doves, Take these things away! Don't make my father's house a house of merchandise. I noticed the translators put an exclamation point at the end of that. And I think calmly. I'm sure he didn't use some calm voice.

And as I said, he wasn't a little sissy. He was just going, Oh, get this out of here! Don't make my father's house merchandise. No, he was a strong man. After this happened, the apostles remembered Psalm 69, verse 9, where it says, The zeal of your house has eaten me up. Jesus was eating up with this.

He had a strong feeling. And this is the case, I think, of Jesus was upset. He was angry. Angry because people were doing something that wasn't proper, not showing proper respect to God. Now, we should recognize anger can be very destructive. Unchecked anger can ruin a person. Any of us, it can. And in our society today, that's one of the dangers we have, is we have a lot of young men with inherent anger. And they don't learn to control it. But anger itself isn't necessarily a sin if it's controlled.

I'm going to make a reference to Psalm 7, verse 11. Psalm 7, 11 says that God is angry with the wicked every day. So God experiences anger. But we want to temper that with what Paul wrote in Ephesians 4, verse 20, when he said, Be angry and sin not. Be angry, but don't sin. I think we can safely say that at times Jesus did get angry, but we know He never sinned. As I said, the times that He overturned those tables in the temple and drove out the money changers and the animals, get the feeling that He was a bit angry.

There's one incident in Christ's ministry where we don't have to wonder or guess whether He was angry because it tells us that's in Mark chapter 3. Mark 3, and we'll begin with the first verse. This is the earlier in Christ's ministry. In Mark 3, and this is typical for Him, Christ, of course, kept the Sabbath and He went to the synagogue. So He said He entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand.

So they watched Him closely whether He would heal on the Sabbath, that they might accuse Him. It doesn't say who they are right there, but over in verse 6, it says it was the Pharisees. These religious leaders who were full of hypocrisy and show were watching to see if Jesus would fulfill their idea of what the Sabbath should be. And He said to the man who withered hand, Step forward. I wonder what His voice is.

Hey, you, step forward. And He said to them, not to the man, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil? To save or to kill? They kept silent. When He looked around at them with anger, so He was upset. But interesting, not just at them personally, with anger being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, He was angry at their mindset. And so He said to the man, Stretch out your hand. And He stretched it out and it was restored as whole as the other one. Jesus was angry at the hardness of their hearts, partly because He was so compassionate.

He loved people. He didn't want to see them suffer. And He became very angry when leaders of people subjected their followers to unnecessary suffering. And if we study the Gospel accounts, we can see that Jesus takes the Pharisees to task because they didn't just teach God's law, but they attempted to build a fence around the law, and particularly the Sabbath, making a lot of rules and regulations that were unnecessary, that caused harm to people.

And Jesus, that upset Him. When the occasion came, called for it, He could show anger. If we look over in Matthew 23, that's a few pages towards the front from where we just were, this is the case where Jesus let His anger show. Matthew 23, I want to begin reading in verse 11. And as I said, of course, He was angry for good cause and never let it get out of control. Here He's speaking, He says, He who is greatest among you shall be your servant.

That's an important leadership quality we need to note. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled. He who humbles himself will be exalted. But, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. For you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You devour widows' houses. For a pretense make long prayers. Therefore, you'll receive greater condemnation. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

You travel the sea, travel land and sea to make one proselyte. When he's one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. You can't read that out loud and try to express the feeling without getting the idea. He was hot! I'm sure there was heat in his voice.

And then he goes into the rest of the chapter. He continues giving them a good tongue-lashing. I think it's interesting, though. He's not as much upset at the fact that the Pharisees sinned and the fact that they were causing harm to others.

And particularly to others that they were supposed to be helping. I'm not going to turn there because I want to read it a little bit more in Matthew 23. But in chapter 18 is where he says that whoever causes harm to one of these little ones, causes them offense, it'd be better if he had a millstone hung around his neck and he were thrown in the sea.

And in Matthew 18.7 it says, Woe to the world because of offenses, for offenses must come. But woe to him by whom the offenses come. That made me think, I hope I'm never on the wrong side of God saying woe to that person. You don't want to have God saying woe to you for what you've done.

And it's interesting, Jesus never seemed to get angry if people called him names. Even when they were beating him and crucifying him. That's when he said, Father forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. But when people, they offended or hurt his followers, people who were supposed to be served and helped, that was another story. That made Jesus angry. And of course, as we've been reading here, he was angered by hypocrisy.

That putting up of a false front, claiming to be something you're not, or requiring other people to do something that you're not willing to do yourself. And in the case of the Pharisees, that led to the one time where we can see he blatantly insulted them and called them names. Looking down at verse 29, it says, As I said, if you read them silently, it seems strong. But when you read it out loud, it's hard for me not to raise my voice. And as I said, he's calling you bunch of snakes. You're going to have the condemnation of the grave.

He got worked up and felt angry. And it makes sense because if we understand Scripture, that he was the creator God. He is the one that speaks of in Psalms, who's angry at the wicked every day. He felt things powerfully. Jesus was a passionate person, but we know that he never sinned. He never allowed anger to cloud his thoughts, never lead him to commit the wrong kind of act.

And that's one of the things that's amazing looking at it. He could get angry and worked up, but he never had to regret anything that he said in anger. And how many of us wish we could say that in our lives? I'd love to be able to look back and say, well, I don't have to regret anything I did when I was angry. I'm not sure if I can go back the last week and claim that.

And even here, where he was cutting loose with the Pharisees, if we realize where he was in his ministry, perhaps even this was kind of planned. It's near the end of his ministry. He knew that he needed to be crucified at the right time, so he gave vent to the anger to rile up those Pharisees, perhaps to make them angry enough to do something that really was against the law and bring them up on charges and have him crucified.

So even though his anger no doubt was real, he was in control. And that's the vital part of his example that we need to follow. I'm not saying we need to work up anger and yell at people to be like Jesus. It's easy for the anger to come on its own, but we need to be like him and never losing that control. As Paul said, we might be angry, but we need to sin not. And that leads me to another characteristic of Jesus that I don't think this is unknown, but maybe it's not as appreciated as it could be.

I think of this, if it was essential for Jesus to keep vigilant control over all of his feelings, including anger, it perhaps was even more necessary that he always had a perfect control over his feelings towards women. To state an obvious fact, Jesus was a man. There was later extreme teaching by Gnostics who made the claim that he didn't really come in the flesh, that he was some type of apparition, and thus he didn't feel the physical pain, drives, needs that humans do.

But that's not true. It never was. And of course, the Gospel account of John goes out of his way to show that Jesus was flesh and blood. And John said, we felt him and we handled him, and we saw the blood come out. So since Jesus was human, that means he was born as a helpless baby, he grew to maturity, and somewhere along the way he experienced puberty. Which means, I imagine at some point, like all the rest of us, he looked at girls and suddenly saw them differently than before.

He noticed, hey, you know, that's different. Hebrews 4 and verse 15, I'm going to turn and read that. It's one we well know.

Hebrews 4 and verse 15 says, We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted, like as we are, yet without sin. And we often point out the Greek word, periezo, means tested.

He wasn't tempted, like, oh, I really want to sin, but I better hold back. No, no. I can say, I'm as certain as I can be of anything, that Jesus never felt like he was on the verge of being pulled into sin, either physically or mentally. He was never on the edge of a slippery slope, thinking, oh, I've got to pull myself back.

So I'm not trying to imply anything negative, anything demeaning about Jesus Christ. But I want to note that he was a strong, healthy man, and tested like all of us. He must have noticed the attractiveness of women, but he saw them as potential children of God, as his spiritual siblings.

Just like a Christian man can notice and appreciate the attractiveness of his own sister. That occurred to me as I was writing this, because I thought, well, I never had any brothers, but I've been an older sister. And, well, she's in her 50s now. I mean, she's still pretty, but when she was a teenager, she was a knockout. And I didn't really appreciate that until when I was in middle school, and my own classmates were saying, wow, that's your sister! Look at her!

Wow, that's my sister! I don't look at her that way, which is good. And, of course, what I'm saying is, I'm sure, well, I wanted to add to that, but I did look at, oh, yeah, she's attractive. She's got a pretty face, a nice figure, good skin. My sister was a good-looking young woman. And I could have looked at that and appreciated it without ever having to fight off wrong thoughts. And I imagine that's the way Jesus could look at all women. And it brings a thought, you know, the Scripture never comments on one important aspect of Jesus Christ, and that's the fact that He would have physically been able to marry and have children. I mean, He was a man with perfect health. He could have gotten married and had kids, but He did not. And to me, there's a couple obvious reasons why that was never, you know, it's not that He, oh, I wish I could have met someone. He knew He would never marry. First of all, He knew early on that He was destined to die young. He came to this world to be a sacrifice. So for Him to have started a family knowing that was going to happen would have amounted to fraud, you know, fathering children that He was going to leave behind. Or if He did reveal what was going to happen, it would have been cruel. So can you imagine marrying a woman and say, well, in about 10 years, I'm going to be brutally murdered in front of you. You know, marriage and children weren't for Him, and I'm sure He knew it all along. And of course, another obvious reason is if He had married and had children, imagine the division that could cause in the church and in the world. It's bad enough that the Apostle Paul had to write to the congregation of Corinth and say, you've got all these divisions.

Some were saying, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Paul, I'm of Cephas. And that was just over who baptized Him. Imagine if anybody could say, well, Jesus was my grandfather. You know, that would have been a problem. You know, we're all called to be sons of God. We're all called to be Christ's brethren without any division or class structure. And I think we all understand that.

It just crossed my mind that it's worth addressing to realize that Jesus didn't refrain from marrying because He was unable to. I imagine, as I said, He had all the physical attributes necessary. But probably even before adolescence set in, He knew that was off the table. He knew He would never experience sex. And, you know, of course, He wouldn't be the first to live a celibate life and wouldn't be the last. One of the things that I find remarkable is that knowing that, He still could associate with women, apparently, without it bothering Him.

It wasn't a big deal. He didn't have to stay away from them to avoid the temptation. And it wasn't an unpleasant reminder of what He would never experience. And it's interesting because if He'd wanted to avoid women, He could have.

As a matter of fact, in His society, that would have been expected. You know, a society at that time pretty much devalued women. They had almost no legal rights and tended to be treated as mere property. So if Jesus had chosen to just not have much to do with women, no one would have thought it odd or unusual. Who would blame Him? But He didn't do that. Apparently, Jesus liked women. He liked their company. I'm sure He appreciated their feminine characteristics. Well, He should have because He created them. He knew what was there.

He talked to women. He associated with them. The Bible says of at least two of them that He loved them. And this tells me He wasn't ambivalent, and He wasn't ignorant or unappreciative of their differences. But He had His thoughts and feelings and any physical drives so well in control that He didn't have to avoid them for the purpose of avoiding lust. He was balanced. He was in control in His thoughts, emotions, and His mind.

He liked women, but He never had an impure thought. Let's look at some of His interactions in John 4 as one of the best examples. John 4 and verse 6, of course, the story of the Samaritan woman. I'm not going to get into the doctrinal teaching here, but of course the disciples are journeying. Now Jacob's well was there, and Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat down by the well.

It was about the sixth hour. And a woman of Samaria came out to draw water, and Jesus said, Well, give me a drink, for the disciples had gone away into the city to buy food, and then ensued an interesting conversation. And it goes on. We don't know how long it took, perhaps quite some time. And if we drop down to verse 27, At this point, His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman. And yet, no one said, Well, what do you seek? Or why are you talking to her? I find it interesting. They weren't amazed that Jesus was talking to a woman. For them, it was the amazement that any man of His time would take the time to have a conversation with a woman.

But Jesus stood out in the fact that He did have conversations with women as well as with men. It turns out, though, as I said, Jesus often had women in His group accompanying Him. If we go over to Mark 15, we'll see a note of that. Mark 15 and verse 40.

This is, of course, near the end of the book, and part of the account of Christ's crucifixion. Mark 15 and verse 40. It says, There were also women looking on, this is, of course, there at Galgotha as Christ was crucified, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, the last son of Joseph, and Salome, who also followed Him and ministered to Him when He was in Galilee.

So they didn't just show up at the crucifixion. All the time when He was traveling in Galilee, these women were part of the group who served. And many other women who came up with Him did Jerusalem. This account doesn't specifically say it, but others mention that His mother, Mary, was there. And that tells us, Mary obviously was old enough to be Jesus' mother, and probably so were several of these women. But there's no reason to think that all of them were old enough to be His mother.

And that didn't matter. Jesus was able to be friends with women and to appreciate their personalities, to appreciate their feminine beauty. As I said, the same way I came to appreciate my sisters. Now, it's funny, I would tell her that now, but back when I was 16, I wouldn't have admitted to her that I thought she was pretty. Probably took years for that. But I want to note that this wasn't just that He was able to do this. He wanted to do it. He was a man who could, as I said, appreciate the feminine characteristics that He created in the first place. We know He probably had a special type of relationship with Mary Magdalene.

And there are various hints about this that the Bible doesn't explore. We know she was the first one that He allowed to see Him after His resurrection. And in John 20, verse 17, remember it says, He told her, Don't cling to Me, or don't touch Me.

Because He hadn't yet ascended to the Father. But it occurred to me that's not... It shows that her first reaction was to put her arms around Him and give Him a hug. That's not the type of reaction you have of someone who's just a teacher and an admired figure. That's someone that's a close, personal friend. Let's go back to John 11. I do want to turn there. John 11. This is the account of Jesus resurrecting Lazarus. But in John 11... This reminds me, I didn't fix this. I believe it's chapter 5. I said, I'm not going to read all the account. But it simply tells us, Jesus loved Martha and her sister... I'm not sure why it doesn't just say Mary, but... Her sister Mary and Lazarus. He loved them. Now, of course, we know Jesus as God loves us all. But this statement must mean that He had a special relationship with these three siblings. He loved them. It doesn't say He loved Lazarus and let the sisters tag along. It also doesn't say He loved Mary and Martha and put up with Lazarus. He loved all three of them. He had a special friendship, a good relationship with them. And that shouldn't be any big surprise that Jesus had some special friendships. Of course, we know of John the Apostle who said that he was the Apostle whom Jesus loved. I just wanted to stress that a man who would have had a good excuse to not have very close relationships with single women didn't need to stay away from them. He was able to have good relationships. He could allow himself to love them and not have to avoid them. He liked them, but that didn't lead him to temptation or lust in any way. I've been harping on... I hope it doesn't come across as harping, but I've been emphasizing some things that we don't always talk about Jesus. I'm not providing some new spiritual insight or certainly not discussing some new doctrinal truths. But I hope it helps us to appreciate the God we worship a little bit more, what it was like for him to become a man who was like us and tempted in all points, yet without sin. I think about how much we haven't learned or considered about Jesus today. There's still a lot out there. I'm reminded of how John wrapped up his book at the end of the Gospel account of John. It says, if we were to write down everything that Jesus said or did, the world couldn't contain all the books. There have been a lot of books written about him. But I hope it's been useful to consider just three characteristics of the ultimate leader that we don't always look at. As I said, it's worth looking at the lives of great leaders so that we can become like them as much as possible. Think of some of the things that might not come to mind. Like the fact that Jesus was no frail wimp, but he was a strong man, yet one who could be gentle and who still could rely on the much greater strength of his heavenly Father. We also know he wasn't just passive and always mild when it came to emotions. He could get angry and let people know it. Yet, he never sinned. He never let the strong emotion lead into anything he would regret. And he could love and appreciate women without ever having any impure or inappropriate thoughts. All of these things help me to appreciate all the more what an amazing brother and high priest we have who is our ultimate leader in God.