Who Do You Say That I Am?

Good afternoon, everyone. Good to see everyone here. In the spirit of our last announcement, I just wanted to make one brief safety bulletin, and that was to assure all of you I have not cooked for the potluck tonight. Therefore, it's safe for all of you to eat. My wife was kind enough to bail all of you out. Hope you've all had a good week. It is nice to see the sunshine, even though the temperature is a little bit cool. It's a nice what a difference the sun makes. I started to notice this week, as I get out on the road to get to work, that I'm starting to see a glimmer of sun in the sky, just a little bit of brightness when I leave the house. So springtime is coming. It doesn't quite seem like it with temperature today, but it's coming. So for those of you who like titles, we'll start with a question-slash-title for today's sermon, and that is, who do you say that I am? Who do you say that I am? No, I'm not talking about me. Some of you have probably had people come up to you in some situation and say, do you know who I am? It's usually when they're not being treated quite the way that they think that they should be treated. This is a different context. Some of you might recognize it as a quote from Jesus Christ. If you'll turn with me to Mark 8. Mark 8 will read the passage where this quote comes in the Bible. Mark 8 will read verses 27 through 29. Mark 8, verse 27, Now Jesus and his disciples went out to the towns of Caesarea Philippi, and on the road he asked his disciples, saying to them, who do men say that I am? Of course, Jesus was, as a matter of course, walking and covering this area as he was going and preaching and talking with his disciples as he did that. And so they answered John the Baptist, but some say Elijah, and others say one of the prophets. So they didn't answer directly. They said rather what people in that area and people they'd interacted with said about Jesus Christ and who he was. And in verse 29, he said to them, but who do you say that I am? And Peter answered and said to him, you are the Christ.

Now from where we sit today, we might read that section and come up with something along the lines of, well, duh, right? Because we read back into the Bible. We see all the things that we understand. We've grown up in Western civilization, which even in a more secular world today, generally accepts the idea or recognizes the idea of professing Jesus Christ as the Son of God. So it doesn't really seem like a very groundbreaking thing for Peter to answer and say, well, you're the Son of God.

But one of the things that we have to do, and it's one of the things that we'll have kind of a subtext in the message today, is thinking about reading the Bible from the viewpoint of the people who were living and writing the passages that we read. Because when you think about it, and when we read what Peter answered here, it wasn't everybody who recognized the fact that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. In fact, as we read the preceding passage in verse 28, we see what the other disciples said in terms of what people in general were saying about him.

It seems a little odd at first to say, well, people would say, you're John the Baptist, because clearly they recognized that it's two different individuals since they knew him personally. But at that point in time, we didn't have smartphones. There wouldn't have been media. People wouldn't have seen a picture of John the Baptist, so people would have heard about him. They would have heard the fact that John the Baptist was out there teaching.

And perhaps some people who saw Jesus Christ doing some of his miracles or heard him speak might have mistaken him for John the Baptist based on the things that they'd heard about him. Elijah, there were prophecies that there would be another coming Elijah, just as Elijah in the Old Testament turned people back to God, that there would be someone coming in that power, and of course, one of the prophets, someone who's sent by God.

So it's easy when we think back, when we look at things in the rearview mirror to piece things together and say, well, it's clear what was happening. But at that point in time, as they were going through those different events that were happening to them, it wasn't quite as clear. But what I'd like to do is reflect with that sort of in the background on this single question, who do you say that I am? And I think it's a question that's germane for us to think about, especially this time of year as we begin to approach the Passover time, and a question that we can ask ourselves and keep in the forefront of our minds.

And so what I'd like to do as we walk through this message today is take a look at those who interacted with Jesus Christ and see what they said. Who did they think he was, and why did they think those things? And even more importantly, then, to reflect on who do we think he is, and how do we react, how do we act and react as a result of that. So let's take a bit of time and go through some passages that talk about what people thought about Jesus Christ and who he was at that time as they interacted with him.

What can you think of? What different events can you think of as people were gathering impressions of Jesus Christ as they interacted with him, and why? Let's start in John 3. Start in John 3. Some people thought that Jesus Christ was a great teacher or perhaps a prophet sent from God. We saw some of that just a moment ago in that passage in Mark that we read, but we'll read John 3, and we'll read just verses 1 and 2.

This is a fairly well-known passage by many who read the Bible frequently. It's about a man named Nicodemus, and there was a man of the Pharisees in verse 1 named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you're a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. So what's interesting here is Nicodemus is described as a Pharisee, and we know from later on in Jesus Christ's ministry, especially in the latter part of his ministry, as he was teaching much more strongly about who he was, his identity, and also talking about the religious leaders of the day, that the Pharisees weren't necessarily friends of Jesus Christ.

In fact, it's a little odd to read a passage like this where you hear Nicodemus, who most people who comment on the Bible believe that he was a member of the Sanhedrin, a council that ruled that area for the Jews, and also a Pharisee. It seems a little odd that he would come and admit, not only say in the first person, I think that you're a teacher of God, but say, we think that you're a teacher sent from God.

So there's indication here that the Pharisees, even those ruling recognized, based on the things that Jesus Christ was doing at that point in time, that there was something about him that was different than any other teacher that came, someone that was actually and truly sent from God.

Nicodemus, interestingly, shows up three more times in the book of John, and some commentators actually question whether he might have become someone who believed in Jesus Christ and actually become a true believer in him. The last time he shows up is actually after the death of Jesus Christ. We remember Joseph of Arimathea, who took Jesus Christ's body. And Nicodemus was one of those who paid a fair amount of money in order to make sure that Jesus received a decent burial.

It also would not have been unusual, with the Sanhedrin being a ruling group there for the Jews, that they were monitoring what was going on in terms of people, because if you've read anything about that time, it was a fairly tumultuous time. The Romans were ruling Judea at that time. There were a lot of people who would rise up and try to overthrow the Romans, try to pull people together to cause a revolt. And it wouldn't be unusual that Sanhedrin would be keeping an eye on who was sort of rising up in the Jewish community that might be fomenting rebellion, causing difficulties, or having other things happen where they would have to step in and take care of it. So for all of those reasons that were going on, those could all form a backdrop for why Nicodemus might have met with Jesus Christ, as well as, of course, the fact that he might have actually believed in him and wanted to learn more about him. But we see here that some people at that time saw Jesus Christ as someone who was a great teacher. There's another passage that says a similar thing in Matthew 19.

If we want to turn there, Matthew 19 verses 16 and 17. And this is the story of the rich young ruler, Matthew 19 verses 16 and 17. And here it says, Behold, one came to him and said to him, Good teacher, what good things shall I do that I may have eternal life? And so Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, and that is God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments. Of course, we know as that as that interaction ended, that man went away sorrowful because Jesus Christ was pointing out the sacrifices that he would have to make in his life in order to follow him, and he wasn't ready to do that. But this rich young ruler recognized him as, in this case, a good teacher. I also find it interesting in the next verse that Jesus Christ kind of pokes at him a bit, doesn't he? And says, Why are you calling me good? There's only one good, and that's God. And so this man was, like Nicodemus, willing to go far enough to call Jesus Christ a good teacher, but was not ready and willing to recognize him as the Son of God, not recognizing him as what he really was. So that's one set of people, and there are other verses we could turn to, but that's an example of some passages of people who viewed Jesus Christ as a great teacher or as a prophet. Let's go next and look at some people who thought of Jesus Christ as a healer or as a miracle worker. What can you think of in terms of examples of this category?

Let's turn to Matthew 15, and we'll look at that. It's interesting, as I was looking through and researching for this message, the word multitudes comes up a lot in the Gospels, and that's because there's so many people that were following Jesus Christ around. And we have to think about, again, what this time was like. We have people who were living pretty much locally in their areas, taking care of their daily business of life, and teachers would come through, different people would come through. But Jesus Christ was different than the others, and why was that? Matthew 15, they saw him as a healer and a miracle worker. We'll start in verse 29. Matthew 15 verse 29, Jesus departed from there. He was, again, on the move as he was traveling around teaching. Skirted the sea of Galilee, and he went up on the mountain, and he sat down there. And then great multitudes came to him, having with them the lame, the blind, the mute, the maimed, and many others, and they laid them down at Jesus' feet, and he healed them. So this is pretty incredible when you think about it.

We have faith healers even today, people who have these ministries and claim to be able to heal people. Most people nowadays dismiss them, because I think the history has been that very few, if any of them, are authentic in the things that they do. But here we see somebody who they came in direct contact with, and they heard of the things that were happening. And that was something, a fame that spread far and wide, and the fact that people knew what was happening. He was healing them, the people of all of these different diseases. In fact, if you turn to Mark 1 in verse 38, it talks about the fact that his fame spread immediately throughout Galilee. Mark 1, 23 through 38 is the account of when there was a man who was possessed by an evil spirit, and Jesus Christ cast out that spirit. And through that entire region where he was, it says in the Bible, his fame spread. So he was a bit of a spectacle. He was known. People were looking for him coming, and as we see here in Matthew 15, 29, they were bringing all kinds of people who had all kinds of physical ailments and problems so that they could be healed. They saw him as a miracle worker, someone who could heal. Luke 5 is another passage, one that I always enjoy reading. Luke 5 verses 18 and 19. We won't read again the whole account here, but it talks about how people who viewed Jesus Christ as a great healer would go to great lengths in order to come into contact with him. Luke 5 verse 18, "'Behold, men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before him. And when they could not find how they might bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the housetop and they let him down with his bed through the tiling right into the midst before Jesus.'" So this is incredible. And of course houses at that time used to be buildings built out of mud brick, and the roof would have been built probably of a combination of branches, perhaps some straw, perhaps some mud and other things to hold things together. So it wouldn't be impossible to climb up on a roof and start to peel those things back and create a hole large enough in the rafters to lower someone down. But it took work. And these people had enough faith. They'd heard enough about Jesus Christ and what he had done, and they were desperate enough for their friend to see him healed that they were willing to do this. Climb up on the roof and lower him down inside. And Jesus Christ, of course, saw the faith that he was showing along with his friends and healed him.

So again, when we put ourselves back at this time of life, you know, we're talking about a time before health care existed. If you got hurt, if you had a broken leg even, you couldn't just go down the street and go into the clinic, show them your insurance card, see a doctor, go through the waiting room, complain about the wait and emergency, and eventually get in and get looked at. A lot of times you had to just deal with things. You might have had people in your village who knew some things about how to set a bone or how to take care of different injuries, but if you had a serious injury, that could mean that you were no longer able to support yourself in working. Whether you were a man or a woman, you wouldn't be able to take care of your day-to-day duties. Further, if you were born disabled, if you had a child that was born blind or born crippled, it was another mouth to feed. And we're talking about a society where many people lived on a subsistence basis. Whether they were day laborers making enough money to buy food, whether they were growing food, tending herds, a lot of people in the area of the Sea of Galilee would have been fishing for a living.

But these were people who in general were gathering enough food in order to survive, make it through the difficult seasons, and continue to live, but not people who had huge homes, a lot of wealth put away, not even a little amount put away in many cases. And they would need everybody in the family to be able to be there, to provide, to be able-bodied to do what they were doing. So we think of these people coming to Jesus and laying before Him the lame, the blind, the maimed, and many others. You think of people who might have had accidents, had a bone broken so they couldn't walk, or were born perhaps that way, and we see accounts of people who were born blind. These were people who had very extreme needs, and they came out to Jesus Christ and saw Him as a healer and a miracle worker who could meet those needs. Now, others saw Jesus Christ as a meal ticket.

If you'll turn with me to John 6. We talked about the fact that at this point in time, most people lived more or less a subsistence lifestyle, and refrigeration didn't exist, so preserving food was only something you could only do to a certain extent.

And so people couldn't just walk down the street to the grocery store, go down and buy a dinner at the nearest restaurant, and the fact that He fed them was something that they took note of as well. John 6 will read verses 24 through 26, and this is John 6. We'll talk about a little bit more later in the message, but this passage, this chapter in John, starts with the feeding of the loaves and the fishes, right, where the young boy had his lunch. Jesus Christ multiplied that lunch and was able to feed thousands of people. And in John 6, verse 24, Jesus Christ at that point had withdrawn to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and the people were looking for Him. And what did He say to them in verse 24? When the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they also got into boats, and they came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. And when they found Him on the other side of the Sea, what did they say to Him? Rabbi, when did you come here? And Jesus answered and said, Most assuredly I say to you, you seek Me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves, and you were filled. The attraction in this case for this group of people was either the spectacle of seeing Him do another miracle, or probably part of it as well. They wanted to be fed. And nowadays people will do the same thing as well. If you want to gather a crowd somewhere, advertise free food, and you're likely to start gathering a crowd, especially if it's good food. You read stories of people who go to incredible lengths to crash weddings and do crazy things like that, so they can see the good food and take pictures with all the people who are there. People don't really change too much in terms of how we're wired over the course of time, and people at that time were the same way. They heard there was good bread and fish to be had. They're likely to follow this guy and see what else they can find if there's some more good eating to be had.

You know, I can think a little bit. When I grew up back in Minnesota, the Minnesota State Fair was, at that point in time, at least one of the largest, if not the largest, state fair in the country. We didn't really have a lot of county fairs in Minnesota that I can remember, but the state fair was huge. People would come from all over the state, and as a kid, I always loved to go there because people would set up these booths in exhibit halls, and you'd have the firefighters there. I can still remember this little red keychain I had. It was like a small fire plastic firefighter's helmet, probably no longer no bigger than the size of a dime on a chain, and the firefighters were giving those away, and it was exciting. I'd love to go to the fair every year because I could go and see they were there. The University of Minnesota football team would be there, and they'd have posters of the football team and a calendar of all of their games for the year. I could pick one of those up for free and bring it home and put it up on my wall, and I would love to go there. The shows were there, and they were free, and you could see people singing. They had talent shows. They had all kinds of interesting things going on, and being Minnesota, they would have booths where you could pay a dollar. You could drink all the milk you could drink. That's about as exciting as it got, right?

But people don't change. People like to see these spectacles. People like to receive something for nothing. People like to see some excitement. And many people follow Jesus Christ for that same reason. There were multitudes. Thousands of people. The Feeding of the Fish and the Loaves talks about 5,000. These were large crowds that followed Jesus Christ, with very different motives that each of them had in their minds. Some thought that Jesus Christ was a political revolutionary. Did you know that?

Some people thought Jesus Christ was a political revolutionary. Again, when we put ourselves back in that time, the Jewish nation was back from a captivity, and they were living under Roman rule in that time.

And there were people who would rise up at different points in time and try to fight that Roman rule and re-establish Jewish rules. Turn with me, if you will, to John 6. We'll read verses 14 and 15. Again, the same section. This time, after the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, immediately after that, in John 6, verse 14. This is part of the reason that Jesus Christ actually withdrew and went to the other side of the lake. Then those men, in verse 14, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did, they said, this is truly the prophet who's come into the world.

Okay, good so far. Maybe they're starting to recognize Jesus Christ for what he really is. But then, in verse 15, when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he departed again to the mountain by himself alone. So Jesus perceived that these people were not just impressed by the fact that he performed a miracle. Not that they thought he was some sort of a prophet, but what he perceived was they had a political motive.

They were ready to actually kidnap him here. They said, take him by force. They were ready to grab him because he could perform these miracles and make him king. And the underlying motive there was to overthrow the Roman Empire, because they had those Roman soldiers, the oppressors, who were always there with him. We might have heard some of the stories of Herod, who ruled that area at the time. The same king who had all the boys two years old and younger in the region where Jesus Christ was born, brutally slaughtered because he was trying to kill Jesus Christ.

That's the kind of rule that the people at that time lived under. So we shouldn't consider it unusual that they would look for someone, especially when they had the prophetic promise of a messiah. But they thought of that messiah as a physical ruler, someone who would come and save them from their immediate physical needs that they had as they were suffering under the Romans.

Let me read a short passage from a website called Shema.com, and it's titled, Counterfeits, A Study of Israel's False Messiahs. As I read this, I'll ask you the question first. Did you know that there are at least three false messiahs named in the New Testament alone?

You might not have realized that as we've read through the New Testament. But this was not an uncommon occurrence that people would rise up and claim to be the messiah and try to gather a following after themselves. The first one was Judah the Galilean, again reading from this article Counterfeits, A Study of Israel's False Messiahs. Judah the Galilean is mentioned in Acts 5, verse 37. Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, also made reference to Judah the Galilean, stating, Judah the Galilean told Jews about ten years before the birth of Jesus that it was shameful for them to be, quote, consenting to pay tribute to the Romans and tolerating mortal masters after having God for their Lord, end quote.

It's interesting to note that Judah apparently had a false prophet by the name of Sadok. Very likely, Sadok presented himself to the people as being Elijah, who according to scripture was to proceed and announce the coming of the messiah. The pattern of false messiahs having false prophets was to become all too familiar. Judah and Sadok are credited by Josephus with having founded the Zealots, a group that we are introduced to in the New Testament.

So there is a follower of Jesus Christ. The name is Escaping, I think it was Simon the Zealot. And he's mentioned, actually, as someone who's one of these zealots. So there were actually people following Jesus Christ who thought that he might be a physical messiah, somebody there to overthrow the government. Some Bible commentators even believe that Judas betrayed Jesus Christ because he was trying to incite Jesus Christ to rise up against the Romans and overthrow the Romans. So there was this movement that was going on at that point in time. The second one is named Theudas. Theudas is mentioned in Acts 5, verse 36. In his historical work Antiquities, Josephus also wrote about Theudas, who, around 45 AD, so after Jesus Christ's death, influenced the majority of the masses to take up their possessions and to follow him to the Jordan River. He claimed that the Jordan would part for them at his command. Obviously it didn't, and he and many of his followers paid for their foolishness with their lives. The third one is not named by name, but is rather simply mentioned as an Egyptian Jew. Quoting again from the article, a third false messiah is mentioned in Acts 21. Rabbi Paul was nearly killed by a hostile mob. The Roman commander stationed at the temple arrested Paul. When Paul said something to him in Greek, the surprised commander replied, Do you know Greek? Then you are not the Egyptian who some time ago stirred up a revolt and led the 4,000 men of the assassins out into the wilderness. Of course, Paul assured him he was not that man. Josephus wrote of this incident as well, though exaggerating the number of followers of this unnamed Egyptian Jew as about 30,000. This man led his followers to the Mount of Olos, threatening to force entry into Jerusalem and liberate it from Roman occupation. Many of his followers were killed in the ensuing battle. Some of the people who were living at that point in time, even following him, thought and said that what he was was the physical messiah that would come and save their nation politically from the Romans. One last category of people, and this one won't surprise us, having read the Bible, and that is that some thought he was a blasphemer and even that he was demon-possessed. You could probably think of scriptures that mention this. Let's turn to John 10, and we'll see one passage that lays this out. John 10, starting in verse 30. This is as Jesus Christ is advancing his ministry and becoming much more open and forceful about asserting who he is and why he was there on the earth. In John 10, verse 30, Jesus says, So in the eyes of these Pharisees, Jesus was somebody who had to be punished because he was heretical. He was committing blasphemy by saying that he was the Son of God. He was saying that he was connected to God. He was one with the Father. And again, people who would have come from this school of thought, the Pharisees, they should have known in one respect because they knew the scriptures probably better than anyone else who lived at that point in time. But as they looked at things, as they saw things through their frame of reference, they only understood Jesus Christ as somebody who was blaspheming because of what he was claiming as sonship of God. Let's read one more passage where they go even further to claim that he was demon-possessed in John 8. John 8, and we'll start in verse 48.

Jesus Christ was saying some pretty incredible things to the rulers at that point in time, forcing them to have to make a decision of what he really was. We talked about Nicodemus earlier, who was a Pharisee, who was a ruler among the Jews, we believe a member of the Sanhedrin, because he's described that way. These are other Pharisees who would not accept that.

He was forcing them not to think about whether he was a teacher or not, not even to think about whether he was a prophet or not, but he was forcing them to make a decision of whether they were going to accept or not that he was the very Son of God, that he was divine. When we put ourselves into the shoes of the people back at that time, nothing excuses them for the things they did to Jesus Christ.

But one of the things we have to understand is that we probably would not have acted any differently if we were in their place. Especially as we reflect on our Christianity, on our calling by God, on what the Holy Spirit does in our lives, it's something that we have to realize and understand. If we walked in these people's shoes, if we lived in the times that they were in, we probably would have looked at him in very much the same way, unless God had opened our mind. So if we go back to Mark 8 for a moment and just reflect on it, there's a parallel passage to Mark 8, and it's in Matthew 16.

And it further magnifies the point that I was just making. When we look in verse 17, Jesus Christ says one additional phrase to Peter after he recognizes him as the Christ. In Matthew 16, Jesus says, So it's through the revelation from God, through the Holy Spirit, that Peter was able to perceive and understand that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.

And it was only through that means. And what I find interesting is that Peter's concept, even then, of the Messiah was very limited. But even though he understood Jesus Christ as being the Son of God, if we think about what happens later, not much later, just a few verses later, if we're reading in Matthew, Jesus Christ talks about the fact that he's going to be crucified.

He's going to die, and he'll be raised again after three days. And what does Peter do? He says, No, it's not going to happen. If I have anything to do with this, I am not going to let this happen. You're not going to die. So here we have Peter, who, through divine means, understood that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, who still didn't understand the full story. Because just a short time later, he says, I'm not going to allow you to fulfill the very mission that God brought you to earth to fulfill. And so his understanding at that point of time was still very narrow. And we know, of course, that as the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, and as he was preaching, and all of the things that he did afterwards, that Peter was powerfully converted and given all of the power of the Holy Spirit and all of the understanding that came with it.

But it wasn't yet at this point in time. And so again, we can often think about the fact that here were these people, they were living day by day with Jesus Christ, literally walking with them for three and a half years, having their meals with him, talking with him face to face, every moment of every one of those days. And that wasn't enough to fully understand the divinity of Jesus Christ and who and what he was. It wasn't until the Holy Spirit came to him and converted him and changed his mind and gave him that understanding that they could really understand Jesus Christ for what he was.

Now, this passage that we've been talking about in Mark is sort of a turning point in Jesus Christ's ministry, because in that passage he tells people, after Peter professes the fact that I know that you're Jesus Christ, the Son of God, he tells the disciples then, don't tell anyone. And what's interesting is he then goes on himself to tell everybody that he's the Christ. Because at this turning point in the ministry, he starts to become very open about it.

We see in Mark, when we go on in the different verses after that, that he encounters the blind man. He heals the blind man, who then, even though he's interrogated by the Pharisees, they pull his parents, the parents are interrogated, and the blind man says that he is Jesus the Christ, and I'm not going to change my story. And they tried to get him to be quiet and change his story, but he wouldn't. And after that comes Jesus Christ's triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, where people are saying, Huzanna to the King of Kings.

And so this passage in Mark 8 is a turning point, where he's going from having done a ministry, where he's showing signs and wonders, he's healing people, and he's preaching, but he's not as openly talking about himself as the Son of God, as he is after this point in time. So now comes the point to bring it back from ancient times, to bring it back to our time. We know who Jesus Christ said he was, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time going through those sections of what he said about himself, but if you're interested, something you can do is just get online and Google the seven I Am statements of John.

And what you'll find is there are seven distinct passages in John where Jesus Christ uses the phrase, I Am, and that's tied directly back to the Old Testament. Any Jew who heard it at that point in time would have understood exactly what Jesus Christ was saying. Because in the burning bush, for example, when God manifested himself to Moses, what did he say his name was? He said his name was I Am. And Jesus Christ, if you Google it, you'll see the seven I Am statements that are in John, and he said repeatedly on different occasions, I Am, as he was talking about himself.

He was making specific reference to the point that he was the Christ, and making people decide if they were going to accept that or not. So now it comes back to us, though. Who do we say that Jesus Christ is? Who do I say that he is? Who do you say that he is? And how do we evidence that? I think it's something that we should spend some time reflecting on.

Now, if we look at our calendars, we'll see we're less than two months away from the Passover. Amazing as that sounds. The 7th of April, I believe, is when we will keep the Passover, so less than two months from now. And I think it's a good topic for us to think about and a good theme. I don't know about you. It's helpful for me just to have small phrases that I can tie to much bigger ideas. And the one that I'm going to use this year as I come into the Passover is this phrase, Who do you say I Am?

Because when I look at myself and I look at my own life and the things that I do, I think it's something I need to ask myself on a frequent basis. And I think it's something that I need to spend some time just sitting back and reflecting on. As I look at my actions, as I look at how I spend my time, as I look at how I spend all of the different resources that God has given me, that I sit back and I say, When people look at what I do and how I do it and the motives that are within me, who do I say that Jesus Christ is through the way that I live my life? And I encourage everyone to think about whether that's something you should do as well.

C.S. Lewis had an interesting quote. Some of you have probably read some of his books or seen movies.

C.S. Lewis, not everyone knows, is a fairly well-known professing Christian and an apologist. And in one of his writings, a book called Mere Christianity, he wrote a very interesting paragraph. I would like to start with in this section as we bring this home to us.

He writes, I'm quoting from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, I'm trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him, being Jesus Christ. I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.

That's the one thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic, on the level with the man who says he's a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell.

You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. I think this is a fantastic quote because it cuts at the very heart of what Jesus Christ was saying. Whether we look at those I Am statements, whether we look at him talking with the Pharisees, he did not give anyone the opportunity at the end of the day to say, you know, he was actually just a great prophet.

Nothing more, nothing less. Because exactly as C.S. Lewis points out in this quote, the things that he said about himself were so far out there that they're either true or they're absolutely absurd. So as we look at our lives, what is it that we think?

You know, we looked at the ways that the people at that time who knew Jesus Christ physically, all of the things that they thought of him, and they connect pretty well to the way that we might think about Jesus Christ in our lives. And I have to ask myself those tough questions. Is Jesus Christ a great teacher?

You know, the Bible is something good. It gives me good knowledge, and it's a great way, great thing to set aside next to all of the other places where I get integral knowledge in my life. And when I look at the Bible and all of these other sources of information, then I have a complete picture. Is that what we think? Is Jesus Christ, are his words, one additional piece of input into our lives in terms of how we get wisdom?

Or is it the foundation? Is it the source from which everything else flows? The foundation upon which everything else is built? The filter that we put everything else through? That's what it should be. Or do we think of Jesus Christ as a great miracle worker? Somebody who, when I'm in a jam, I can get on my knees and I can call the guy upstairs. That's not what Jesus Christ said he was. Jesus Christ said he was our Lord and Master. And we'll turn to that in a moment and think a little more about that.

Where do we put Jesus Christ in our lives? It's a question that I have to ask myself, and I tend to ask myself a lot more over these next few weeks, as I reflect. He only gave us one choice of how to receive him. That is, as the very Son of God. God made flesh who gave his life for us. So let me just cover off two areas that I'd encourage us all to think about as we're going into Passover related to this. And for the first, I'll title it, Don't Be a Dead Ringer. That'll make a little more sense in a minute.

Don't Be a Dead Ringer. Let's turn to Romans 6, verses 1 through 4. Romans 6, verses 1 through 4. So I talked about the fact that Jesus Christ, as pointed out by C.S. Lewis, especially his quote, really gives us a stark choice.

It's black or it's white. There's nothing really in between that's left open as an option. And that theme is carried out as well, as our Christian lives are talked about in the Bible, and that's what's written here in Romans 6. We'll read verses 1 through 4.

Paul, writing here, says, What shall we say then? Romans 6, verse 1. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Jesus Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. What does this analogy tell us?

Especially when we think of it in terms of the choice that we're given of how we receive Jesus Christ. What does this tell us? This tells us after baptism, we make little adjustments to our lives. You know, I wasn't such a bad person. Once I was baptized and got the Holy Spirit, I was able to take that foundation of that pretty decent person I was and be even better. Isn't that awesome? It's not what it's saying. It's saying our old life died and we're raised in a completely different and new life. We're not given a choice in terms of the symbolism that's used in the Bible of saying, you know, I was pretty good and now I'm a whole lot better because I've got the Holy Spirit. Our life is replaced. We're to live a new life in Jesus Christ.

It's an interesting website I found as I was preparing for this message. It's called TodayIFoundOut.com. I haven't browsed the whole website, so I'm not vouching for it, but I found this part interesting. And I apologize if I'm going to trigger anybody's fears in reading this. TodayIFoundOut.com. To prevent deaths by burial, a string would supposedly be attached to the finger of a person presumed dead, and it was attached to a bell on the other end above ground. When the person moved, the bell would ring, and that was where you would get a dead ringer.

Now, as much as I would like to believe that, because it's a really cool story, it's actually not true. And I've looked at other websites that talk about where the term dead ringer comes from, and that's not the case. But it's a neat story. The idea that back before the days of embalming, people would be put in a coffin when thought dead, and according to this apocryphal story, they'd put the string on their fingers, so if they woke up again, they'd ring the bell and they could exhume them. The website goes on to say, you've probably heard the often repeated story about how the original dead ringer was a person believed to be dead who was then buried alive. For various reasons, there's a good amount of evidence that being buried alive was not the most uncommon thing in the world until relatively recently in human history, particularly as nobody used to want to examine the diseased, deceased too closely. So, there were cases of people being buried alive accidentally. Indeed, in 1896, TM Montgomery, who was supervising the dis-internment of remains at the Fort Randall Cemetery, reported that a little over 2% of those bodies exhumed were definitely victims of being accidentally buried alive. In other words, about 2% woke up, tried to claw their way out, and were unable to do so.

Given the oxygen supply in a coffin doesn't last that long, it's likely the actual percentage of people buried alive was higher when you include the ones who didn't wake but were still technically alive when buried. So, I'm sorry if I triggered your phobias by reading that. Alright, a little bit of a weird story, but why am I reading it? I think if we're all serious about our Christian lives and introspective, what is our old man doing?

If the dead ringer story is true, I can tell you what my old man does, and he rings that bell a lot. Right? And he's clawing at the top of that coffin trying to get out at every single point in time. And that's something that we have to reflect on, that we think about our conversion of having accepted Jesus Christ as having been buried in baptism and raised in newness of life.

Do we flip open that lid and let him out whenever he wants to come out? We know it's part of the human condition. We're not changed. We have to struggle with all of our carnality all of the time. And so we know that's going to happen. Our old man is always struggling the impulse, the human impulses that come out, especially when we're not thinking and reflecting on what we're doing. But we have to think about that within our lives. Are we being dead ringers?

Have we really accepted the totality and the completeness of what God has laid out in the form of what accepting Jesus Christ and being baptized and living a new life really means?

Let's look at the second section, then, and talk about continuing to walk with Jesus Christ. Another thing to reflect on, continuing to walk with Jesus Christ.

We talked already earlier in the message about how Mark 8 was a bit of a turning point in Jesus Christ's ministry. And from that point forward, he was much more open, he was more confrontational, and he was much plainer in his speech about who he was and what it meant.

There's another passage, though, that deals with a slightly different point in time that summarizes the stark choice that Jesus put for his disciples and his followers. I've talked about it a little bit already, and that's John 6. One of the things I would encourage everyone to do in the upcoming days and weeks is spend some time in John 6. You'll find several of the I AM statements in John 6, but you'll also see some other things. You'll see the entire range of reactions to Jesus Christ. We already read several other passages from John 6. It starts, again, with the feeding of the 5,000, with the fish and the loaves. It talks about the people who come and want to abduct him and make him a king. It has conflict with the teachers of his day. It has Jesus Christ talking about himself as the bread of life. We have to eat that bread, and we have to drink that blood if we want to be a part of him. He speaks of his true purpose, and he's challenged, and he's ultimately, before the end of John 6, abandoned by many.

Let's turn to that section, John 6, verses 60 and 61, and in verse 66.

In this section, Jesus Christ, as he's going through John 6, talks about what it is we need to do and how we need to take in of him. People weren't understanding that he was talking figuratively about his body being the bread, his blood being the wine. Some people were just trying to come up with that. You can tell, even in the dialogue in John 6, some of the people were saying, what in the world is he saying? We're supposed to eat a piece of this flesh that makes no sense. Others probably understood it and weren't willing to go to that level in following Jesus Christ. What happens then, in John 6, verse 60, when the disciples had heard all these things, many of them said, this is a hard saying, who can understand it? In verse 61, when Jesus knew in himself that his disciples complained about this, he said to them, does this offend you? He was being very plain about what it was going to mean to be a disciple, to be a follower of Jesus Christ. And in verse 66, from that time, many of his disciples went back and they walked with him no more. So one of the blogs that I read as I was preparing for this message made an interesting comparison. It said, we need to think about, are we part of the multitude or are we a disciple? I think it's an apt way to put it. There were so many people following him for so many different reasons, and among those was a very small core that was being called by him, and through God's Holy Spirit, really understanding what Jesus Christ was about. They stuck with him. They followed him. They were willing to make the sacrifices. They were willing to go on the journey that he was taking them on.

The rest of them were following him for all of these other different reasons that we talked about in the early part of this message. And when it became plain to them that those things weren't going to continue on, and those things weren't the core of what he was going to do, they weren't interested anymore. The people who were following for miracles, when they realized there was more that Jesus Christ was going to ask, and it wasn't just about miracles and bread and lame people walking and blind being healed, as fantastic as that was and is, that's not everything that Jesus Christ is about. He wasn't a showman. He didn't come just to be a miracle worker. There was much more that he was asking. And he asks those same things of us today, that we give our lives, the totality of our lives, as we read about in some of the earlier passages.

Let's turn to Romans 14, verses 9 through 11, the last passage we'll read today.

Romans 14, verses 9 through 11.

Because if we're going to walk with him, we're going to have to understand again that he is our Lord and Master.

Not just somebody who comes in and fixes things when we're in a jam, not somebody who gives us that little bit extra so we can have a more self-actualized life.

But we have to actually give our lives over to him. Romans 14, verses 9 through 11.

For to this end, Christ died and rose and lived again.

There's one reason he did that, and that is that he might be the Lord, both of the dead and the living.

The Lord, the ruler of the dead and the living. Why do you judge your brother, or why do you show contempt for your brother? Because we'll all stand in judgment before the seat of Christ.

He will be in the place of authority. For it is written, as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.

So among the reasons that Jesus Christ came, along with mercy and forgiveness and all of those other things, he came to be our Lord. He came so our knees would bow to him.

Not that he was going to be our buddy who's going to help us out with whatever we want, but someone that we would have to submit our very lives to if we were going to walk with him.

And that's something that we have to remember, because just as the people of that time were influenced by the things that they knew and understood and saw going on in the world at that point in time, the philosophies of that day, we also get influenced by those things in our day, the philosophies.

And that's why people talk about the man upstairs. That's why they say, God is my co-pilot, as though we pilot our lives and God is there to help us out when we need an extra hand.

It's not the way it works. It's not what Jesus Christ said he was. He said he came that every knee would bow to him. And so as we contemplate him and we think about the relationship that we have with him, especially as we approach the Passover, it's important that we sit back and we think about who he said he was.

It's important that we consider what it is that he asks of us and recommit ourselves to doing those things.

So in conclusion, at the turning point of his ministry, Jesus Christ asked his disciples one very important question. Who do you say that I am? That question continues to loom large in the lives of those who believe in him. So as we begin to turn our eyes to the Passover, let's consider these lessons. Is Jesus the Lord of our lives, the one for whom we have put our own will to death? And are we committed to walking daily with him, being true disciples and not members of the multitude who melt away when things become too difficult? Who do you say that he is?