Do you believe in Jesus Christ? No. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Now, do you believe in Jesus Christ? Do you believe in Jesus Christ? I do. So do you believe in Jesus Christ? No. Do you guys believe in Jesus Christ? Nope. I do. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? No. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? I don’t want to talk about that. It’s personal. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Don’t you believe in Jesus Christ? Nope. Would you say you believe in Jesus Christ? I’m sorry. I’m in a rush. Okay. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? I’m not an atheist. I believe in science. Believe in Jesus Christ. I’m sorry. It’s the end of the day. I’m going home. Do you two to believe in Jesus Christ? I’m not getting into this conversation. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Right now I’m just too busy. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? I believe in God. Do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead? That part is above my pay grade. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? I do, you do? He’s the best guy. Amen. Look, that’s an important question. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? And it’s a question that everyone has to face. It’s an important question. It’s a simple question, but also there’s a lot behind that question. I mean, we saw this morning with Palm Sunday. It’s a great day to celebrate. Many were celebrating Jesus. He’s the best ever. And then a week later, they wanted him dead. People often have, as we saw, very strong opinions about Jesus on one end or the other. And the key question is, do you believe in Jesus? And what does that mean? Who is Jesus in order to believe in him? We need to know who he is, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’ve been in this series talking about knowing God is loving God. It’s a series around some of the big theological topics of the church. And today we’re going to talk specifically about who is Jesus. If you want to believe in him and follow him and trust him, then we need to believe in him as He is. You can say, yeah, I like some of his teachings, are like, I think he’s okay, but I don’t know about if he was God and all that and rose again. Well, it’s not either or. He said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but through me. And so we’re either going to accept that and move towards life, or reject it and move towards death, and there’s no in between. So we want to look at today what Jesus said about who he is and what others said about who he is. We’ll also look at what he did. What did he do because of who he is? And then lastly, we’ll see. What does that mean for us? If you know who he is, if you know what he’s done, what does that mean for you in terms of belief and life or death? Because to reject him is death. To accept him is life, and there’s no in between. So we’re going to start by looking at just a simple definition of who is Jesus. And if you have a note outline. I’m going to start with one really big fancy theological term. I don’t often drop these, but this is one that you might hear out there someday. At his core essence of who Jesus is. The word often used is called the hypostatic union. There you go. I hope you paid extra today to come and get that fancy word. You can drop that on someone today when you’re in the line at Meijer. Ask him, do you know what the hypostatic union is? No. All it basically means it’s just a fancy word that means Jesus is both fully God and fully man. He’s both. Both are true of him. You see this in various passages in Scripture. You see in Philippians chapter four, verses six through eight, in that range, although he existed in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God a thing to be held onto. But he emptied himself, taking on the form of a man. He was both God and man. We’re going to take a second and talk about both sides of that. How could something be both? And how can he be both fully God and fully man? We’re going to talk about how the Bible describes him in that way. That’s what’s important. That’s what we want to do is make sure we’re worshiping Jesus in truth. What does the Bible say about who Jesus is? Not just how I feel he should be, or how I hope he is, or my own personal version of Jesus. No, we want to worship him in truth. So John chapter one is where we’re going to start. You remember that we went through the book of John a while back. We went all the way through it, and we spent a lot of time in John chapter one, and especially the first few verses of John chapter one, because there’s a lot there and there’s a lot there about Jesus in particular. And if you have a church Bible that’ll be on page 844. Those Bibles are out in the lobby. Grab one any time. We’d love for you to have your own copy. That’s for you to keep. I’m just going to read the first four verses that talk about Jesus and his deity. That’s where we’re starting with Jesus as God. What does it mean that Jesus is God? What does the Bible talk about Jesus as God? John chapter one is a great place to start. In the beginning was the word, and the word being Jesus and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of man. This passage highlights so much about the truth that Jesus is God. It says the word was with God. The word was God. The word was in the beginning creating. Only God has created the world. The the word gave life and light to mankind. The only source of life and light ultimately, is God. So this passage is pointing to giving us the background for Jesus being God. There’s a few other verses we can point to as well, because not only was he God, he appeared not just as some apparition, but he showed up in person. First John one talks about this. That which we have seen, which we have touched with our hands, that we beheld. He really did exist. He really was true. Historically, first John wrote about that. Others wrote as well. We saw him. We saw him with our own eyes. Over 500 saw him. He existed. Fully God. Also, Jesus, though, goes on to talk about himself. Not only does John say Jesus was God, Jesus also says he was God. And some people will say things like you know, Jesus never really claimed to be God outright. Okay. But maybe in our modern American age you might read it that way. But at the time, the way he talked about himself, those around him knew what he was saying. They knew that he was making the claim of divinity. And we can tell by the way they reacted. One verse is in John 8:58 he said, before there was Abraham I am. He was invoking the name of God. And they picked up stones to throw at him. They knew what he was doing, and they spell it out in John chapter ten. If you just flip over a few pages, we’ll look at John 10 (verses) 30 through 33. In verse 30, Jesus says, I and the father are one. And the Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, I have shown you many good works from the father. For which of them are you going to stone me? The Jews answered him, it is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for the blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God. They knew what he was claiming. They knew what he was doing. And these are the guys who were opposed to him. They knew what he was saying. Even Jesus spoke of himself as God, not just him though. If you look at other writers, Colossians, this was Paul writing to the Colossians in verses 15 through 19. He talks about how he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. By him all things have been created both in heaven and on earth, visible, invisible, whether thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is the head of all things, and in him all things hold together. And it ends in verse 19 with saying that in him all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell. He created all things. All things exist because of him, and are held together in him. That’s a pretty powerful picture of who God is. So he’s fully God. The Bible speaks pretty clearly. Jesus is God, but he’s also man. He’s God and he’s man. And those two natures are together in one person, perfect and perfect unison held together in perfect tension, neither one dominating the other. He’s got. Let’s look at his human side. If we go back to the beginning of the book of John. So it starts out talking about his divinity. But there comes a point where it says in verse 14, in chapter one, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. So Jesus came and put on flesh. We we use the word incarnation. Jesus is God incarnate. Carne is the Latin word for flesh in the flesh. He didn’t just stay God. He came and put on human flesh. I’ve listed a number of other verses here that talk about his humanity. I said already that he could be seen and touched and held, but also that just at a human level, he became hungry. We see in Matthew chapter four, after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, I think we all could say I might be hungry at that point. Some of us go 40 minutes and we’re like, I’m ready to eat. It’s time. Right. You know, he was hungry. He also even said, I am thirsty. He wept. He had emotion in John 11. I listed the references in your note notes in John four. He said, I’m tired. He sat down. He was weary from his journey. We see the human side of him in the way that Scripture talks about him. And then, of course, ultimately we know he died and humans do die. That’s in store for all of us. It says he became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. So we have these two identities, these two natures described for Jesus. He’s both fully God. He’s fully man. Those two natures in one person, held together in perfect unison. This is how Scripture speaks of him. Now here becomes the challenge I think, for most of us. Most of us like one better than the other. And in fact, most heresies come in. In your notes. I’ve listed it out. Most heresies come, many heresies come. When one nature is overemphasized versus the other. You know, I really when I think about Jesus, I really like the human side of him a lot better. I like him as a lot more relatable and and by the way, I think this happens from a good place. For most of us, this starts in a good place. Of course, we want Jesus to be relatable. I mean, if you read second, I’ve listed in your notes. If you read Second Corinthians. Chapter one, verse five. If we share in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. You know, you read about the fact that Christ suffered. Therefore he can relate to our sufferings, and he can comfort us. I love knowing that about him that he suffered and can comfort me in my sufferings, and then gives me the ability to to comfort others. The challenge becomes then when we say, therefore, he is just like me, he is too human, and we’ll say there’s less of the God side of him. I really want to relate to the human side of him. That’s when we start to not accurately portray who he is. And this goes back all the way to the beginning of the church. There’s of course, heretical groups that do that today. But at the very beginning there was a guy named Arius, and I’ve mentioned before that his followers were called Arians. That can be confusing. They weren’t like German Nazi Aryans. That’s a lot later. That’s 1930s versus three hundreds A.D. spelled different. But this guy Arius said he believed== Okay, Jesus. I think he probably is God. I just don’t think he was always God. I think he was probably created. This comes from the verse in John 3:16, which we all know John 3:16 For God so loved the world. At least this is where he got it. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. See, he was begotten. He must have been born at some point. This is why I think in most of your modern translations, that word is not there. You won’t see the word begotten because it’s confusing. You’ll see that word show up even in genealogies. He begat, begat, begat. Someone fathered someone. It can mean that. It can indeed mean that that you gave birth to another human. That’s a creation. That can be confusing. In fact, I had a seminary professor who was one of the guys that worked on the translation committee for the CSB or the HCSB. Any of you use that translation? Are you familiar with it? A couple of it. Yeah, it was started, I don’t know, probably 20 years ago now. And it was really spearheaded by the Southern Baptist Lifeways, the publishing arm. They really wanted to bring in a modern, updated translation. It’s a great translation. I think it’s very similar to the ESV in a lot of places. What we use, by the way, there’s no perfect translation. People ask me, what translation of the Bible should I read? I read whichever one, whichever one you will read. Read that one. Be in the word. In fact, how many of you committed to being in God’s Word every day in March? I know a number of us stood up when we did that. Now I’m not going to ask now how many have kept it? I know that can be a challenge, but it’s so critical to be in God’s Word. So whichever version you’re going to read, read that. Read the King James. That’s great. If you don’t understand it, read the ESV. That’s why I recommend it. Or the NIV or the CSB, whatever. Read it. Just read it. He said when they were translating, trying to come up with a new translation he was wrestling with, okay, how do we handle this verse? How do we handle this word begot, and how do we best translate it? Because we also don’t want to create confusion. And so they said, and they thought, how could we do this? And one guy said, well, listen, that word really at its essence means he’s singular in his class. Completely, entirely. One of a kind. It was used in ancient languages, much like it would maybe of a mythical figure where only one existed, like the phoenix bird. You may have heard of. Okay. Stands apart, singular in its class. One of a kind. And so one guy said, well, how about we use the word unique that that might sum it up. He’s unique, singular of his class, one of a kind. And as they talked about it, another person said, well, you know what? Unique is not always positive. If I came home from college at Christmas and said, hey, I met this girl, I really want you to meet her, I’m going to bring her home. Well, tell us about her. I wouldn’t say, well, she’s unique, right? You’d be like, is that positive? Is that negative? I’m not sure. And so they didn’t go with that and where they ended up. And if you are I think at least the current version of the CSB, most of them just say he’s the one and only son. We’re not exactly sure how to say it. In fact, they even wrestled with this back in the three hundreds when they responded to Arius. And if you read the Nicene Creed, we did the Apostle’s Creed. Here is the church. If you read the Nicene Creed, it says begotten, not made. So we don’t know what begotten means entirely, fully, exactly. But we know it means he wasn’t made. He’s fully God. And here’s the important part of that. Why is all this? I’m going to talk about the other side of it. Why is this important? When you diminish his humanity, you diminish what he did. A sacrifice had to happen on our behalf. Without the shedding of blood, there’s no forgiveness of sins. He had to be human. And so when you diminish that, you’ve diminished the power of who he is and what he did. We need to worship him in truth for who he is and not turn him into my own personal version of Jesus so that I can feel more comfortable with him. He’s fully human. One temptation is to deny some of that humanity but another, or to overemphasize his humanity. The other temptation is to overemphasize his deity. I don’t want this warm, fuzzy feeling Jesus. Too comfortable, too approachable. I think he’s just only God. There’s not any human in him. I want him to be the dominating, ruling, powerful, mighty Jesus, which he is. But when you overemphasize and say that’s that’s all he is, you diminish his humanity. And that doesn’t reflect what Scripture says. And we want to make sure to worship him in truth. Because what you believe about Jesus is really important. It is a life and death issue, and there’s no in between. So that’s just a little bit of who he is. Fully God, fully man. And some of the verses that point to who he is. Now here’s what I want to talk about. That’s who he is. But now what does that mean for us? What does that mean for us? Because of what he did. What did he do? What does that mean? Let’s look at some of what he did. What were the results of what he did? Some of the actions he took because of who he was. In fact, I’m going to look at specifically. We could look at a whole bunch. We could mention the fact that he fulfilled prophecy. We could mention the fact that he fulfilled the law. We could mention the fact that he set an example of how to perfectly obey God. We can mention a number of things that he did do. I’m going to focus on a few, and we’re going to look at specifically starting with the atonement. That’s the first word I want to look at the fact that he atoned for our sins. First Corinthians 15 talks about the fact that he died for our sins. He died in our place. And so when he died in our place, he paid the penalty that we owed. And that word atonement was actually created by God. Tyndale. If you heard of Tyndale, he translated the Bible, one of the first guy to translate it into English from the original languages. And he did such a good job that they burned him at the stake for it. That was the payoff. I’m not sure that was his agenda, but that was at a time where you weren’t allowed to mess with the Bible at all without the official approval. They didn’t want it in accessible languages. We want to keep control over the ancient languages. We want to make sure we’re the ones who tell you what it said. But we want to do the opposite here. We want you in God’s Word. Well, I want you to read it on your own. I want you going home and going. All right. Let me look at those verses. And so that’s why I’ve given you the list. Let me look at those and see. Is that really what he said? Was he just making that up as he went? I want you to wrestle with that on your own. I want you in God’s word. We want to show you how to study the Bible on your own. That is the way you will grow to know Christ. And you know him personally more than almost any other thing. You do that and prayer, putting those together. But Tyndale, when he was translating the Bible, in fact, if you do like reading the King James, something in the range of 90% of the King James is still in the New Testament, especially still Tyndale’s original words. So much of it carried over because he did such a masterful job, but he had to come up with some words in English to sum up some big ideas, like he came up with the word scapegoat. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of words that we use that are common that he came up with. One was a atonement and it just put together the words at one ment. How can I be at one with God? That’s what it means. When the penalty for my sin has finally been paid and I can be reconciled with him again, I can be in relationship with him again. They have been atoned for. They’ve been paid for. And only God can do that. By the way, if, let’s say, Elon Musk went bankrupt and needed someone to bail him out, and I raised my hand and said, hey, I’ll step up and I’ll take care. My wife just laughed the hardest in the room. I’ll take care of his debt. The judge would have the same reaction. Who are you? What do you do? I’m a pastor. I’m sure the church takes care of you, but I don’t think you can handle this debt. In fact, is there a human alive that could handle that debt? Probably not. Because an infinite debt needs an infinite source. And the only one who can pay the infinite debt we have standing with God is someone who has the infinite ability, who is perfect, who is pure. And so he first and foremost atoned for our sins. Now by doing that, he also, letter R in your outline, he redeemed us when he died. This is what happened when he died. He atoned for our sins in his death and then he redeemed us. Colossians 1:17 talks about this. It talks about the fact that you were redeemed before the foundation of the world. It’s a it’s a powerful section that speaks to this reality. And behind that idea redeemed is this idea of being bought back. I mean, if you redeem something, you’re bringing it back into the fold. Maybe you had to give it up, but you redeem it back. You bring it back to yourself and Jesus. When he died, he paved the way again for us to be in relationship with God again. So by dying, he atoned for us. He redeemed us. We could mention many other things that occurred by both of those. But also look at this. He didn’t just die. That’s one side of what he did. This is why our cross doesn’t have Jesus hanging on it. Because he didn’t stay there. He came down from it. And then he didn’t stay dead. He rose again. It’s empty. He rose again, right? And what happened in his rising again? In his death? He atoned for sins. He redeemed. He accomplished very certain things in his death. But in his life. Here’s what he accomplished. He accomplished life for us. In fact, we can be united in life with him because of his death, because of his resurrection, we can be united in life with him. And Ephesians two spells this out. In fact, we get a picture of this whenever we do baptisms because we talk about buried with him, raised to walk in newness of life. We unite with him in his death, dying to self. But we’re raised to walk in newness of life again. Ephesians two starts out with all the messiness. Verses one through three. You were alienated from him. You were separated from him. You were by nature children of wrath, following after the course of this world, on and on, on. But chapter four says, But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love for us, made us alive with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places. So because he died, because he rose again, we can have new life in him, and you can know him, and you can walk in him and new life. Now, what does this mean for us? So those are things that are true that he did and just a handful. I didn’t cover it all. There’s a lot that we could talk about and what Christ accomplished in his death and life. But how is that applied to us if we are redeemed or can be redeemed for those who believe in him, how does that apply to us? How do we experience that? How do we embrace the fullness of that? There’s a couple of things here, just a couple to mention in your outline. And to do that, we’re going to look at Romans chapter eight, because this is often called the golden key of salvation. There’s a few applications of redemption mentioned here. And we could make a long list. We could pull from other places in Scripture. But you see verses 28 through 30 in Romans eight in your church Bible. This will be easy to remember. Romans eight in your church Bible is on page 888. You should be able to find that pretty easily. Romans 8:28 is a verse, though, that I think every Christian should be familiar with. You should be able to know where to find it. You’ve probably heard it quoted. You’ve probably referenced, did or talked about it before. You should be able to go and locate it and read around it. And here it says, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. You’ve heard that verse before. I’m guessing that maybe quoted it, or at least going, I know there’s a verse about that idea that he’s going to work through this somehow in my life, even if I’m not feeling it right now, I believe that he’s going to do something through this. But he goes on to talk about some of what he’s done on our behalf, what happens for those who know him. And we know that for those who love God, this is verse 29. Let’s move on to verse 29. For those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified. And though those whom he justified, he also glorified. So we could spend a long time unpacking each of these statements in here predestined, called, justified, glorified. And there are many others that could be used to describe what is true of us now, for those who know him, I’m just going to talk about two this morning, they’re not in this list, but they show up in other places of Scripture Scripture. The first is the first thing that’s true of us who know Jesus, who believe in him and follow him. You are regenerated. Born again is how we say it. You’ve been made new. John 3:3 Jesus says to Nicodemus, you must be born again. It can’t be translated. You must be born from above. You must be born a new. And here’s the key idea none of you gave birth to yourself. I’ve seen it happen. You didn’t want to come out. You wanted to stay warm and cozy. You wanted to be left there. You had to be forced out, drawn out. And Jesus, through his death. Burial. When we believe in him, he makes us new. He gives us new life. And for those who know him, you know what I’m talking about. You’ve experienced it. You’re a new creation in him. The old has gone, the new has come. The things you used to relish in the sins you loved. You spent your whole day thinking about these sins. You couldn’t wait to go participate in them. And there might still be some struggle. There. But that desire has changed. He’s given you new life and hope and purpose and victory and freedom. He’s given you freedom. He’s given you freedom from sin. That’s because he gave you a new spirit, a new soul. He worked in you a new life, regeneration. The second is faith. Hebrews six says, without faith, it’s impossible to please God. Faith is the assurance of things not seen, the conviction of things hoped for. And he is the rewarder of those who seek him. He gives us the ability to believe in him, to trust in him, and follow him. And that comes from faith. Do you believe in Jesus? That’s the question. If you believe in him, those things can be true of you too. I heard a story this week of a guy. He grew up in the mountains in the northwest. And he grew up in a family. They were a moral family, but they weren’t Christian, didn’t go to church, didn’t believe in God, didn’t really talk about it. And he grows up, gets into high school, gets interested in girls, meets this girl at school who’s really sweet, really nice, wants to get to know her better. She says, well, hey, come to this meeting with me, okay? I’ll go wherever you’re going. Thanks for inviting me. And by the time he gets there, he realizes this is a church. I didn’t know this is what I was coming to, but I’m here. Well, let’s see where this goes. I want to get to know this girl. And he’s there. And the youth pastor’s preaching. And afterwards he comes up to him and he says, hey, I just wanna ask you a question. I don’t even know you. I’m just now meeting you. But I want to know, where do you think you would go if you died today? And this guy said, I know, I know exactly where I would go. I would go straight to hell. There’s no doubt in my mind because I know I’m far from God and I. I have not had any interest in him. And I’ve lived my life however I wanted all my life, and sure appreciate the honesty. And he said for the next eight week, eight weeks, I was a mess. I was a wreck every day. I was wrestling with this God, I don’t. That’s not where I want to end up. I want to change my life around. Would you move? I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to and It was at the end of that time that he gave his life to Christ. He could say, I believe in Jesus. He is my Savior. I’m going to follow him forever. And I think that’s the question we’ve all had to wrestle with. And so here’s what I want to do today. We spent so much time talking about Jesus. I want us each to do business with God today. You may have committed to believe in him at some point in your life, and you may be walking faithfully with him. Some of us haven’t. And here’s what we’re going to do today. We’re going to play. We moved our final song to the end, Isaac and the band. They’re going to play another song we’re going to sing together, and we can worship together. But also, I want you to know the altar is open for you to just come and pray. And here’s what, in fact, we put down more kneelers than we used to have. And we put extra padding on them for some of us who might need it to make it a little easier to get down and back up. Because we want this to be a place where people come and pray and do business with God. And even if you already know him, if you realize as we talk about who Jesus is today, if you realize, no, I have been making up my own personal version of Jesus. I’ve been trying to make him more human and less God, or more God and less human. And I’ve wanted a comfortable, easy, accessible Jesus that I create rather than worshiping him for who he is. If that’s you, I’d encourage you. Grab someone, say, hey, I just need to go pray. I need to ask God to forgive me for misrepresenting him. I need to ask Jesus to help me know Him as He is, and to move in my life and fresh ways. Grab someone, come down and pray or stay where you are and pray. I’ll pray with you. I know others would as well, but this is a time to do business with Jesus. Isaac would you lead us and sing as we talk about what this means. But feel free. Go ahead and stand. He’s going to lead us in the song and come down and pray.