Northside Church - Sydney
HIStory Week 4: Jesus: The God. Personified
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Hey, what, what compels you to press the forward button? You know what I'm talking about? You get one of those emails, they stir you up inside a little bit and you reach for that section that says forward and you look at the address book and everyone you can think in sight it's going to go to. I had one of those emails the other week and it was about the fact that apparently the White House has decided to drop the term Christmas tree this year and use the word holiday tree and it's quite appropriate that we've got our Christmas tree up tonight and it's looking beautiful and wonderful and representative of this season and now the good thing is here's my tip before you press forward, go to a, go to a site called truth or fiction.com because when you do you'll find out that the email was actually really a bit of a hoax and so it's okay the Abamas are calling their Christmas tree a Christmas tree this year. We don't have to freak out as Christians, it's all good and luckily I didn't forward it on but why am I using it tonight if it's all a hoax and a fake? Okay, I guess what I'm getting at is that it's, it's, we know it's representative of a tide that is going out in our country and countries around the world where the word Christmas is somehow fading away and more and more whether it be magazine articles, whether it be newspapers, whether it be shops, we're finding that our society wants to extract the principles of Christmas away from the person of Christmas, Jesus Christ. What we're going to find in this passage tonight is you can't do that. You can't do that when it comes to the doctrine of the incarnation, what they're trying to do is impossible and you can't take the principles of Christmas away from the person of Christmas without a collapsing. You see it's because we have a founder of a religion here who claims to be the absolute truth and if you receive him you have it, if you reject him you don't and you can't take the principles of Christmas or Christianity for that matter without oral collapsing. Why? Because when you get to the teaching tonight we'll find in John chapter 1 verses 1 to 14, this is like the mountaintop of theology and of passages in the Bible. When you get to the teaching tonight you find that unlike every other religion in the world God became a human. And John says it here in verse 14 of his first chapter in the prologue there, we've been going through it all. It says the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Father full of grace and truth. Now some of you if you know me, I know that I've always been a little bit of a political sort of guy even from my early days, I just love politics, it's a cool thing. One of my highlights of Paul Keating's career in his prime ministership was his defeat speech in 1996 not because he was defeated, I'm not that far down the right hand side but it was more because he's there in the crowd and someone should have shouted up to him there and said, "You can take the boy out of Bankstown but you can't take Bankstown out of the boy." And it was something that we've, it's been renowned, it's always been attributed to Paul Keating that you could take the boy out of Bankstown but you couldn't take the Bankstown out of the boy and in some ways I think that is almost the catch cry of the incarnation tonight. You can take the boy out of heaven but you can't take heaven out of the boy. You can't extract the principles of Christmas from the person of Christmas in Jesus Christ. And so that's the theological definition is that what we see in Jesus here from this verse is that he is fully God and he is fully man, he is unlike any other person in this world in that he's a 200% person, he is 100% God and he is 100% man and that what, what it means and what this one verse in setting Christianity apart from every other religion in the world, it sets it apart because God became a man, God became a person in Jesus Christ. And so therefore what I want to say tonight is that if God became a person and how we relate to him, how, when we ask a question, well how do we relate to God, we can just do a bit of relationship one I want, how you relate to God, what we'll see tonight in this passage is that you can get God, understand him. You can also say that God gets you in the relationship and that you get each other. Simple sort of stuff. First of all my seeing carnation means that you can get God, you can get God because God became a human, this is the amazing part that God in all these matches he comes down, becomes a human, becomes a person that has skin on and why is this so important because there is a massive difference between having an experience of God and getting God, knowing God, knowing him intimately. There's a massive difference, how do I put it? Is anyone here a fan of live music? Yeah we've got a few music, why don't we love live music, why don't we just sit at home with the CDs there and kicking our legs on the bed, just listening away to the little boombox that we've got there in the room and why don't we always just stay with the CDs. We just love the music, we fall in love with it, we get to know the lyrics and we're singing along to it, get karaoke machines if you're that into it and it's fun, we love music but you see when we go to a concert here's the thing, we witness an incarnation of the CD. It almost visually is like that when you see the artists almost come up out of the stage particularly if it's a rock style concert and that sort of thing and so we see an incarnation of the music, it's the same music, it's the same experience but it's richer because here they are in the flesh and in a certain way they talk to you, you get insights, they interact with the crowd and they relate to you in some way but the problem of course is it's only in a specific way particularly if you're like me when I go to a concert I always end up in seat 156 of Row Z Z and that's it's no way to relate to the incarnated person of the CDs that I listen to and that look that's aside from the fact that most of the people I listen to are dead or old and washed up because we're there from the 1980s but I experienced that, I took Kristen to see Taylor Swift the other year, that's my cover at least and people were just crazy for Taylor Swift, they all we heart you Taylor all this sort of stuff they just love Taylor Swift and I was there and then just watching all this go crazy and you could see the ones that were the most excited were the ones with these little gold bits of plastic attached to a lanyard and you would see them and walk through and the big beefy security guards would wave them into these areas with this special access these gold cards people would ask what are they and of course we all know them, we all want one backstage passes I mean if only we had a backstage pass we would have known you know what Selena Gomez is really like and who Taylor hangs out with and what you like to eat for breakfast and all this that we could have known all that but you see it's one thing to have an experience of the person it's another thing to get to know them intimately right now that was a great problem for God all throughout the Bible is that to come to know God when you when you look throughout the Bible that was a great problem whenever you saw God in the whenever people want to see God they found it hard to relate to him Job the Jobe was a whirlwind Abraham he was a smoking furnace the Moses he was a pillar of a smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night they talk about unrelatable it was it was a tough gig and up until the point of Jesus here's a thing God was a terrifying abstraction right hard to relate to a pillar of smoke and fire and and you see even even Moses Moses got what every person wants deep down he went up on the Mount Sinai and he he came as close as he could to get to this smokey fiery all-consuming God and he says God show me your glory I want to see it and God says you serious Moses that will kill you I'll let you see my my hind parts but but that's it and that's the way it was for centuries that people just couldn't relate to God you see the greatest barrier to faith when you agree is abstraction great it's it's it's very difficult to place your trust in a concept right and maybe that's some of the issues that your friends have in the world is I can't believe in God he's just it's too abstract even one of Jesus's followers echoed the same thing in in John's gospel in in the later parts Philip says Lord show us the father and that will be enough for us and Jesus answered don't you know me Philip even after I've been you been among you such a long time anyone who has seen me has seen the father how can you say show us the father don't you believe that I'm in the father and that the fathers in me the words I say to you are not just my own Philip rather it's the father living in me who is doing his work you know what Philip saying there he was he was asking the same thing that Moses was asking up on Sinai there he's saying Jesus can I have a backstage pass to God and what we don't get up until the point of Jesus what does Jesus say to me says Phil don't you understand I am the backstage pass to God no need to sit off in seat 156 rose ed said anymore when it comes to knowing God you can know him intimately the nuances about him look the world God's creation is his great soundtrack but because of Jesus Christ God becoming human you now get to know the nuances the complexities the meanings the motivations behind the great artists the great creator because of Jesus if God's a person then you can get God but not only that because God became a human and a human is God that's where what we see in the incarnation is that God gets you now I don't know if this year you remember that tragic story of little you you in China she was the little toddler that was run over in a in a Chinese market by a van van ran over and not once but twice and as the poor little thing lay there in a pool of blood on the CCTV cameras and the footage is quite shocking CCTV cameras recorded somewhere in the vicinity of 18 people walk up look at her and just keep walking and we see footage like that and we say what is the world coming to what is the world coming to where is God in all this what is God doing in all this pain and this suffering what would he know you know and and we do come to situations like that and sometimes we view God a bit like our politicians you know I was listening to am radio this week as I normally do I will confess that but there there are people getting outraged about the state of traffic in Sydney talk about suffering in a whole not a level that the the traffic was just absolutely mannequin you know how people go about the the politicians you know the transport minister Gladys Berrigickley in which is our local member by the way so she's doing a great job you know she wouldn't she wouldn't know what's going on she's sitting up there in ivory tower and and she would have no idea what the traffic's like and we like that these police would have no idea what that what it's like to be a real person down here and then and then we read in John chapter 1 verse 14 the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us you know John's John saying God didn't stay in his ivory tower he came from the tower and if God became truly human then we've got a remarkable resource to face pain and suffering in the world you know what I'm saying here if if if man is God and God is a man and he dwelt among us as Dorothy says puts it listen to what she says here she says the incarnation means that for that for whatever reason that God chose to let us fall into a condition of being limited to suffer and to be subjected to sorrows and death he is nonetheless had the honesty and at least the courage to take his own medicine he himself has gone through the whole of human experience from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors and pain and humiliation defeat despair and death he was born in poverty and suffered infinite pain for all of us and thought it was well worth his while you know what she's saying there she's saying look if God was a transport minister he would sit in the traffic he would battle the M2 even amongst the road works and all the craziness of his going on that well look the Bible has so much to say and throw so much light on the reasons for and the meaning and suffering and the meaning of suffering and evil in the world however the Bible doesn't give us an exhaustive answer as to why but what it does show us and it gives us something far more valuable and we get it in the hints and the songs and the cows that we sing when we see that phrasing God mighty counsellor God in Jesus Christ is the great counsellor and the best counsellors I don't know about you but are those that have been grammar is talking about this this morning those that have been through what you are currently going through they're they're the best counsellors the one that have been through the hardship pushed throughout the other side and are able to walk with you and look having been throughout myself and and most people have gone through grief and and bereavement and challenges and suffering know that the last thing they need right is a set of intellectual answers instead they just they just need the presence of a friend who has been through it and when God became a man and went through the pain and suffering that he went through he brought with him the presence of a friend who has been through it see what it means see what John is saying if God has become human if God is Jesus and Jesus is God then God's been through it we look we stare at the horrors of little you you and see the atrocity and the tragedy that is there that she's left there to die yet at the cross God himself got backed over by a truck God in Jesus was just as helpless God in Jesus was just as innocent God in Jesus was just as abandoned as a three-year-old toddler on a market floor while scores of uninterested onlookers turn the other way you see what the doctrine of the incarnation does it gives us a resource for suffering that nothing else in the world does because when we stop and look and see at the God of Christianity what we see in that is only the Christian God descends into the world and becomes vulnerable and suffered and died himself and so in other words the incarnation not only means that you can get God but it means God gets you it means God gets the challenges that you've got in your family life at the moment God gets the restrictions that you're facing with your financial situation God gets the loneliness that you currently are experiencing God gets the grief that you're feeling through the loss of a loved one he lost his own son God gets you God can get you because he became human and so finally we see that we can not only get God and God can not only get us but he can we can both get each other that's what relationship is about right I don't don't know about you but you've always sort of seen those cheesy couples always so smiley oh we just get each other yeah you know we just we so get each other that we just you know we complete each other sentences we even dress the same you know like those sort of people that we just get each other and then look and I've discovered it since haven't been married for a couple of years again each other runs far deeper than completing each other's sentences if I could just even get a hint of what some of the sentences would be by this stage would be good but it's not so much about completing each other's sentences what it's not about sentences it's about submission to one another that's what I learned in the incredible commitment that is marriage and I'm still just a yeah just a jockey a rookie at all but what I want to say is in getting each other if Jesus is God and God is Jesus then he is to be absolutely obeyed and submitted to that sounds really upfront and confronting when we say it like that and I know the modern it's because the modern person today they're afraid of that they're afraid we hate the idea of absolute authority over our lives we hate the idea that that of absolute obedience we hate the idea of submitting to someone else I want to do my own thing and sometimes you get near a church and you could hear that you need to obey sort of stuff and look it's it's true to an extent but what I want to get us to tonight is that unless you see that the obedience that Jesus demands is actually a matter of personally dealing with him with him as a person if you don't get that you won't understand Christian obedience at all look let me explain here's here's a here's an object it's a book and I can take this book it's called the Bible and I can read it I can pick it up and I can turn to the pages when I want but the book's not a living thing it doesn't make any demands of my life it doesn't sit there on my study desk of a morning and say read me you never read me anymore it doesn't say that it's an object in the same way that I you know I use my car I use a fork we can use objects for things and but that's how we relate to objects but here's a question how do you relate to a person a person's a higher order of being in a fork and look if you if you need to relate to a person as I'm finding it you need to find their needs and their goals what they want for their birthday all sorts of stuff you need to surrender your will to the needs of that person to relate to them and be willing in many cases to actually put your goals underneath that person's goals and wants and aspirations you can't here's the thing you can't relate to someone without to to some degree submitting to them there's no relationship in the world that the healthy relationship at least it doesn't operate like that now here's the question when we get to God and if God's a person how do we relate to God the other the only way to relate to a a beginnings and all wise and all knowing an all powerful person is to surrender yourself completely to him and don't you see because the more personal relationship gets the more you've got to serve that's what I'm discovering I loved it the way that one commentator put it like this look if you took the distance between the earth and the sun said that was a sheet of paper then the distance to the nearest star in our galaxy would be about thirty or so meters high thirty meters worth of paper and then if you took the the diameter of the milky way then the distance of that would be some five hundred kilometers worth of reams of paper and yet in verse three of this passage it says through him all things were made without him nothing was made that has been made you know what it's saying it's saying Jesus Christ holds all of this in his hand and the milky way this 500 kilometer ream of paper is just a speck on his pinky finger how do you relate to someone like that is that is that the sort of person is that the kind of person that you ask in your life just to be your assistant your PA how do you relate to him you say look listen Lord I don't want to deal with you every day I don't want to revolve my life around you but we're not when I've got a problem I want you to be there you know in other words you know don't don't call us we'll call you is it even possible that you could relate to someone of that magnitude and gravity in that particular way looked you do ask Jesus in your life just to make applications to you just to speak little chunks of the Bible I know you tell me how to love my enemies they're Jesus but you know it's sort of not working for me at the moment life's getting crazy and you know I can see where you're going with it I think it's a good idea but you know what I'm sort of running out of time here I've got to get going are you asking this person into your life just to make applications to you you can't take a person like that let alone a personal God of that magnitude and ask him into your life to be another version of Siri on the iPhone for us you know what I'm saying because here's why that's sort of that sort of God the sort of God that hangs around and just comes to you when you call him they can't be a God like these the creative of the universe can't possibly operate that and his wife you don't even have friends in your life that would operate on that sort of level personally right you don't even have friends that operate we just call them up at the beck and call whenever you need them then they're gone by now they don't they don't survive over that long period of time and so therefore you cannot know him personally that is you can't get each other unless you're willing to obey and to submit to him and you must submit to him and here's why because whenever Jesus calls us into obedience we get scared and yet he promises us promises us that if we're willing to come in and to submit our lives to him there is an adventure and a greatness and a joy and a fulfillment that we couldn't possibly imagine when when God calls you into absolute obedience look you get scared I get scared and oppressed because well you know here's what we ask we think well what if we ask me something to do something that I don't want to do and you know the answer to that of course he's going to ask you something that you don't want to do that's part of what submission is all about but that look I think of it this way the last relationship in the world that looks like that is the relationship out of an athlete to a coach can you imagine a young kid is in university who wants to be a superstar basket baller and so they get the best coach in the country to come down and to be with them and this coach is revered amongst all those at the Australian Institute of Sport and they come down and say coach I want to be a great basket baller but you know what I don't want you to ask me to do anything that I don't want to do is that cool you think you think a coach of that precision and that experience is going to accept that premise of course not and the coach says it's exactly why I'm here of course I'm going to train you into the ground of course I'm going to make you do that last push up when you feel like you can't take anymore of course I'm going to make you do things that you don't want to do but here's the thing I'm a coach and if you give yourself to me I will make you everything you want to be and as Jesus said the ultimate coach if you're truly my followers you obey you will obey my truth and the truth will set you free this coach comes into your life to give you guidelines and principles and disciplines to turn you into the greatest human being you could ever possibly be you can't possibly ask him into your life and not expect him to expect that of you look no one has ever you know there's no one's ever achieved greatness in their field by just hanging around no one's ever done it without submitting themselves a regime of discipline and obedience half of your careers are like that you know that you work hard and you study hard and you find a freedom on the other side of it is wonderful and amazing and you reap the rewards from it here's the question do you expect the Christian life to be any different you're a built for obedience and submission to God in relationship because he's a person you know see outside the truth you like when he used to go fishing and we'd catch a fish and it'd be flapping around there on the war for a little bit and it would take the hook out and I was one of those cruel fishermen as a little kid I never would put it in a bucket of water bucket of water and it would flap about there on the wharf until it would get slower and slower and slower but I don't know if it's been your experience but it's time to go and you pack it up and it looks too small so I throw it back in and the minute that thing hits the water tail comes to life and it just skirts back it looked virtually dead there on the wharf what I'm trying to say is outside of relationship of obedience to God you're like a flapping fish on the side of the wharf gasping for air if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ in total submission of obedience to him then you're just gasping for air but if you're willing to move into that relationship you're going to move into water that your tail is going to flick and fly and you're going to be brought back to a new life in a way that you never thought possible you were built for obedience to him so that's the only way that you were going to get him if God is a person then what is true of any healthy human relationship is true of your relationship with him you won't get each other unless you submit to him why because God's not an abstraction or an object instead the incarnation tells us that God is a person you got to get him so guys you can you can take the boy out of Christmas but you can't take the Christmas out of the boy God is who he is and he's not an abstraction he's a person it means there are differing ways in which each and every one of us are going to relate to him tonight it means that some people here tonight have had an experience of God but you don't know him yet you're still sitting in rose easy seat 156 and what I want to tell you tonight in this ministry time is I've got some backstage passes if you really want to know God you need to place your faith in Jesus Christ you can do that tonight you can know him personally you can get him for others it's tough to relate to God because of what you're going through at the moment and I feel for you and you're saying what would he know and he gets you he gets you he's been through it or Jesus Christ never calls you into a life what to do anything in life that he hasn't been through himself he's a great counselor and for some of us Christians it means some of us could be treating God in a manner that we wouldn't even treat our own friends that is as a personal assistant up there with Siri guys how are you relating to God this week are you submitting a life to him you see the challenge see the challenge that in the incarnation brings us at Christmas you can't separate the principles from the person every other religion it's not the person that saves it's the principles right the religious leader tells you the principles that find your way to another life or salvation or joy and Christianity doesn't work that way it's far more realistic it says the principles of it's not about the principles of life there it says you can't live the sort of life that you owe God so God himself comes in and lives it for you lives it perfectly and if you receive him in Jesus Christ you'll get his life not his principles and if you reject him you'll lose it you know my question is what are you going to do with him tonight what are you going to do with Jesus tonight are you feeling a bit squeezed that's what a person does to you abstractions that yourself justify and work out whatever you want to mold things people don't let you do that and Jesus Christ is not a fence sitter what are you going to do look I look at the Jesus Jesus is like one of those quirky quirky friends that knocks on your front door at the most unexpected of times you know you know what it's like you look out the little little curtain you go oh my goodness it's them again and you turn the television off and you wind down the stereo and and you are faced with a choice as you are tonight you're thinking the place is amiss my place is amiss I mean my ug boots I haven't done my hair look he doesn't care about that he knocks at the door like that quirky friend you were you were faced with a choice tonight are you going to sit there in the corner turning down the stereo hoping in that he might go away are you going to invite him in you can't do that with an abstraction but you can do it with a person God became a person let's pray heavily Father we thank you that we can get you that you know it's some weird concept tonight and Lord I just pray that some of the the concepts we have been talking through tonight Lord are just the great pinnacle of this amazing book that is the Bible Father we just want to praise you and thank you tonight for the fact that you have broken into this world in your son Jesus Christ Lord will you help us this week dwell upon the fact that hundreds of people testified that this man Jesus was resurrected was living was breathing was alive again how can we account for that Lord and although we are all these years on for those moments in which he was here in the flesh and blood on this earth everything around us tonight screams that you are a God that is alive and intimately involved with your people and so Lord I just pray tonight if there are people stirring they've had experiences of you that they they might just feel relaxed enough in this place to come and explore what it means to truly follow you and submit their lives to you and for the rest of us Lord will you help us with that this week it's not easy we always want to do our own thing and go our own way we just pray that by the power of your Holy Spirit you will move us into even greater levels of commitment to you through your son Jesus Christ and we pray this now See you in his name, amen. 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