Who Is Jesus? (Radio Lesson 12-11-11)

Welcome to Bible Study Time radio broadcast. We come to you each Sunday morning on behalf of the Peace Church, and we want to invite you to join us for any of our services. We’re located 8 miles south and a half a mile west of Indiahoma, and we’re just 12 miles east of Manitou right on the Baseline Road. If you’d like more information about the Peace Church, you can find that on our website, which is www.ok-peacechurch.org

This Bible Study Time radio broadcast was started by my father, Pastor James Roberts, back in January of 1977. So that was over 34 years ago, but in 1996, Daddy started his series called A Journey Through the Scripture. He led our journey through the Bible from Genesis to the Prophets. In the past three years or so we've been reviewing those lessons that relate to the first five books of the Bible. I hope that you've enjoyed and benefited from that review as much as I have.

As many of you know, my father was struggling with declining health for several years and went to be with the Lord a couple of weeks ago on Thanksgiving Day. We'll miss him greatly, and I want to say how much my family and I appreciate the many ways that so many of you here in Southwest Oklahoma have stood by us and supported us in this time of loss with so many expressions of love. It has meant so much to us. We just have to thank the Lord for you, for your love for the Lord and for your love for us.

A couple of days before Thanksgiving, our family stood around Daddy's hospital bed in the intensive care unit singing songs of praise to the Lord and rejoicing in the goodness of God. Then Daddy stopped us to say that he was prepared for whatever the Lord had planned for him, and he assured each and every one of us that he loved us. Not too many hours after that, he was no longer able to communicate with us. But as I said, on Thanksgiving Day, Daddy entered into the gates of the Lord, and I'm confident that he entered into those gates with thanksgiving. I'm sure that if Daddy could have, he would have called back to us from the heavenly realm shouting the glorious praise of Psalm 100:

Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness; Come before His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, And His truth endures to all generations. (Psalms 100 NKJV).

Two days before Daddy died, I copied the last two tapes of Daddy's Journey Through the Scripture series that still had adequate audio quality for reproduction. Those tapes that followed must have been damaged in storage over the years. So as Daddy's journey on earth ended, our review of his Journey Through the Scripture series must also come to an end, and we will therefore embark on a new course of study.

As we move headlong into the Christmas season this year, I thought we'd spend some time in the gospel of John which deals with the birth of Jesus from the divine perspective. Mark doesn't talk about the birth of Jesus at all, but Matthew and Luke present more of a human viewpoint of His birth. They deal with the observable historical aspects of Jesus' birth, and particularly those things that fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. They mention that Jesus was Immanuel or God with us, and they mention that Jesus came to save His people from their sins, but they give no clue as to how that could possibly be the case. However, the gospel of John goes far beyond the human viewpoint, telling us that the Spirit that lived within the mortal body of Jesus Christ was in fact the eternal, creator God who took upon Himself a mortal body so that He could die for the sins of the world.

John refers to Jesus as the Word and says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. (John 1:1-3 NKJV). When John says, in the beginning, he takes us back to the first verse in the Bible which states: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and John says Jesus was there in the beginning with the God of creation and He was the God of creation.

Now, how could that be? How could Jesus be with God and be God at the same time? That can only be explained by the doctrine of the trinity. When we see that God is actually three people in one being, then of course, Jesus could be with God and still be God at the same time. He was there with the other members of the Godhead, and He was a part of the Godhead. Everything that one member of the Godhead does, all three members of the Godhead do. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are seen as three different beings who always work together in absolute spiritual unity. No member of the Godhead operates independently of the other members of the Godhead. They are one and inseparable in all things, past, present and future.

What a beautiful Christmas story! God, Himself, manifest in the flesh; the creator of all things entering into His own creation with a mortal body, deliberately choosing to be born to peasants in a humble stable in Bethlehem. The Apostle Paul was one of the first to see the significance of this deeper spiritual reality. In Ephesians, Chapter 3, Paul said: To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 3:8-9 NKJV).

To the Colossians, Paul said: Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. (Colossians 1:15-17 NKJV).

In Philippians 2, Paul said: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2:5-8 NKJV).

In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul acknowledges the difference between the human viewpoint of Jesus and the divine viewpoint of Jesus, and he challenges us to rise above the human viewpoint so that we can take pleasure in the heavenly viewpoint. Paul says: Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. And in Ephesians, Chapter 1, Paul says that Jesus Christ is presently seated at His right hand of the Father in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And God has put all things under His feet, and has given Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Many Christians today acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for our sins, but they haven't really laid hold of the majesty and glory that Jesus Christ enjoyed with the Father before He was born in Bethlehem or the glory that He enjoys today at the right hand of the Father.

The body of Jesus that people saw while Jesus lived on the earth was a mortal body which was subject to death. But just because Jesus looked like everyone else, that doesn't mean that He was like everyone else. Everyone else's body was filled with the spirit of death, while the body of Jesus was filled with the Spirit of life, the eternal life that flows from the heavenly realm.

Unlike Jesus, all of us were born spiritually dead. Our selfish nature leaves us desperately empty and corrupt on the inside. Romans 5:12 says: Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men. The spirit of death invaded, dominated and controlled the human experience after Adam sinned against God.

In 2 Corinthians 5:14, Paul challenges us to do some deductive reasoning. He says, if Jesus Christ died for all of us, then it must be true that all of us were under the curse of death. And doesn't that make perfect sense? Christ wouldn't have had to die for us if we were not under the curse of death. Yes indeed, we were all born under the curse of spiritual death that could only end in physical death and eternal separation from God.

Spiritual death is easily seen in children and adults alike. Uninterrupted and unhindered, it leads to the misery and destruction of every human being. And it would lead to the absolute destruction of mankind, except for the fact that Jesus Christ came into the world to interrupt its work. He came to deliver us from death. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. Paul said: God has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.

Jesus Christ was able to deliver us from the realm of death because He, Himself, was not born into the realm of death. Though He had a mortal body which was subject to death, His mortal body was not filled with death. It was filled with eternal life. The Spirit of God simply came down out of heaven and manifested Himself in the mortal body of Jesus Christ. Paul said that in Adam all die, but all those who are in Christ shall be made alive.

When a person accepts Jesus Christ as personal Savior, God delivers him or her from the Spirit of death and fills them with the same Spirit of life that was in Jesus Christ. The words of Jesus, the actions of Jesus, the emotions of Jesus, in all of these things we were given windows of opportunity to see the glory of the life that flows from God. John said: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.

Today, that life is available to all who believe in Jesus Christ, and what a difference it makes in a persons' life. It's the difference between night and day, between life and death, between darkness and light. This difference is what the Bible is talking about when it says that a person must be born again to enter into the kingdom of God. This is what the Bible is talking about when it says that all those who believe in Jesus Christ become new creations in Christ. When we believe, we have the potential to become like Jesus was while He was on the earth. He had a mortal body, but He was filled with the eternal life of the heavenly realm.

When Jesus prayed in John 17, He said: Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. (John 17:1-3 NKJV). To know God through faith in Jesus Christ is to be filled with eternal life right here, right now.

This concept is such a powerful concept when it comes to counseling people with problems. And if we think that professional counselors and ministers are the only people who counsel people with problems, we mistaken. Nearly all of us find ourselves at one point or another giving counsel to others who have shared with us a problem that they are facing. Whether it's a problem with their children, a marriage problem, a financial problem, or whatever it may be, we are in a position of giving advice to people. So this concept of the Spirit of Christ living within us can be so helpful to us as we give advice.

This concept helps us to understand that all problems are a result of the spirit of death that is naturally inside of everyone, but those who know the Lord have access to the Spirit of life. Therefore, if a person does not know the Lord, the first matter of business that needs to be taken care of us that of getting to know Jesus Christ. An unsaved person needs to acknowledge their sinful state before the Lord. They need to acknowledge the fact that they are filled with the spirit of death, and they need to believe in the power of the shed blood of Jesus Christ to deliver them from the realm of death and translate them into the realm of life. Then, on the basis of that faith, they need to ask God to fill them with the Spirit of life.

For those who are saved, for those who have already been given the Spirit of life, our goal as counselors should be to simply facilitate the power of the Holy Spirit. All people, whether saved or unsaved, will have a tendency to influenced by the circumstances of this life. We will start to get worried about things that we have no business worrying about. And the more we worry, the more we are influenced by the Spirit of death which makes us do things that actually make our situation worse.

So as we counsel with people, we need to help them believe in the power of God. We need to help them live in the peace, and joy and love of the Spirit of God. When we enter into the calmness and the quietness of the Spirit of God, that's when the Spirit of God can actually give us insights into our problems and solutions to our problems.

When we enter into the Spirit of God, we are much more likely to avoid the pitfalls of life and we are much more likely to be able to climb out of the pitfalls of life. We, as human counselors don't actually know the solution to all of the problems that people face, but God does. Our solutions are so often way over simplified. We are more likely to just tell the alcoholic to stop drinking alcohol. We may just tell the wife who worries too much to stop worrying. But such solutions really don't get at the heart of the problem because the problem is usually not just a problem of outward behavior. The outward behavior is just an outward sign of a spiritual problem that eating away at the person on the inside.

When we know the power of the Spirit of life who dwells within every believer, we can take advantage of that power. We know that God gave us that power so that we would be able to take advantage of that power. We can pray with the person. We can read the Bible with the person. We can encourage the person with the truth of God's word that everything is going to be alright because God is in control, and everything that God does is part of His plan which is good. God is good and His plan is good. We can encourage people with the truth that God will never give us more than we can handle. And God will never leave us or forsake us. Regardless of how dark the night, we can always look forward to the morning light. We can encourage people with the words of Nahum 1:7, and this is a verse that my father would so often quote: The Lord is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble; And He knows those who trust in Him. As counselors, one of our greatest challenges is to believe in the power of God for someone else. Many times, it's easier to believe that God will help us than it is to believe that God will help others. But God knows those who trust in Him, and He is a stronghold for all those who find themselves in the day of trouble.

During this Christmas season, may those of us who know Jesus Christ be so filled with the Spirit of Jesus Christ that all those around will want to know the reason for the season and that they will be drawn to the power of the Spirit of life that is available through faith in Jesus Christ.

Thank you for joining us for Bible Study Time this morning. We hope you'll join us again next week at this same time.