PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: Jesus-A Poached Egg? Or Perfect Essence?

     C.S. Lewis found himself confronted with the claims of Jesus Christ.  After weighing the evidence about Christ he found himself giving in to those claims and with reluctance at first, turning from atheism to faith.  As he tried to share his journey with other scholars at Oxford he was often confronted with rejections that were followed with patronizing.  Many were telling him that they thought Jesus was a great moral teacher.  They loved his teachings and stories, but simply could not accept His claims to be God Incarnate!  Finally Lewis could no longer bear such patronage of His Savior!  This is what he said to such a reply-

     “I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him.  They say, ‘I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but not His claim to be God’.  That is the one thing we must not say!  A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be A LUNATIC-ON THE LEVEL OF A MAN WHO SAYS HE IS A POACHED EGG-OR ELSE HE WOULD BE THE DEVIL OF HELL.  You must make your choice either the 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 Him being a great teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to…it is obvious to me that He was neither a LUNATIC nor a FIEND…however terrifying or strange or unlikely it may seem…HE WAS AND IS GOD!”  (Mere Christianity)

     One of the options that Lewis mentioned was “a lunatic…on the level of a man who says he is a poached egg!”  As we look at the Gospels we see that there were those who thought just that!  Jesus had been performing miracle after miracle.  He had forgiven sins!  The inference was that only God has that right.  Jesus was claiming His Divinity!  When he cast out demons His popularity sky-rocketed!  Then He began to say unusual things.  “If you save your life you will lose it!”  “The first will be last and the last first!”  “When asked to go one mile-go two!”  “When slapped on one cheek-give them your other cheek”.  “If you are asked for your cloak-give them your coat too!”  He said things like, “Before Abraham was, I Am!”  The Scribes and the Pharisees began to say things like-“You are a demon-you have a demon!”  “You are mad!”  “Insane!”  “You are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham?  Sure you have!” They had had it with his claims of being the Son of God who had come down from heaven.  In Mark 6:3; and John 6:42 they reasoned with one another “Is not this the Carpenter’s Son?  Is not this the Carpenter?  Is He not the son of Joseph?  Of Mary?  Is he not the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon??  Are not His sisters here with us?”  As anger began to rise over Jesus’ claims, Mark 3:21 tells us that his family, (those belonging to him in the Greek, came to “take Him home because He was beside Himself” i.e. “out of His mind!”  Even his own family, which John 7 says, “did not believe in him”-began to perceive Him as the rest of the Jewish leaders did, and see him as insane and in need of rest and removal from the public!

     There is another hint as to why Jesus was seen this way.  It is seen in John 6.  Jesus began to talk about “eating his flesh and drinking his blood!”  When he did that his popularity began to flag immediately.  Followers began to leave him in droves!  Paul Brandt, in his book In His Image, gives a new slant to this defection.  He writes “deep in every Jewish person’s consciousness laid a fundamental association of blood with life.  God himself had given it that meaning…God had commanded, ‘you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it’ Gen. 9:4; The Mosaic Law would prohibit ingesting blood too. (Lev. 3:17; Dt. 12:23)…Every good Jewish housewife checked her meat to see that no blood remained.  The rule was absolute:  do not eat the blood, for it contains life.  Kosher cuisine developed, using elaborate techniques to assure that no blood contaminated the meat.  Blood was not to ever be ingested!  Against that backdrop consider the shocking, almost revolting message Jesus brought to that culture:  ‘I tell you the truth that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you!…For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him…so the one who feeds on me will live because of me!” (John 6:53-57).  That was the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back!”  Even his family began to see Him as insane!  But He was speaking spiritual things which they were taking too literally.  It was true that he was the Bread, (the Divine Sustenance from Heaven).  It was true that His broken body and shed blood would affect a New Covenant.  It was true that it could only transform and sustain those who partook of it.  Those who ate the manna in the wilderness perished.  Those who would eat and drink of the New Covenant would be cleansed and cured!  But the flesh could not see the things spiritually discerned!  They seemed crazy!  He seemed crazy. 

     Another thing that He said would seem crazy as well.  In Mt. 10:36 Jesus said, “A man’s foes shall be those of his own household”.  He talked about a family tie that exceeds “flesh and blood ties”.  Real family is the family that teaches you to “practice the will of God, and practice the Word of God”.  All other family ties are inferior that that.  That is the message today.  It may sound crazy…but not with spiritual discernment! 

     John Fawcett discerned the meaning of spiritual family ties when he wrote that great hymn-Blest Be the Tie That Binds.

Blest be the tie that binds

Our hearts in Christian love;

The fellowship of kindred minds

Is like to that above.

Before our Father’s throne

We pour our ardent prayers;

Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one

Our comforts and our cares.

We share each other’s woes,

Our mutual burdens bear;

And often for each other flows

The sympathizing tear.

When we asunder part,

It gives us inward pain;

But we shall still be joined in heart,

And hope to meet again!”

“These are my mother, my brothers, and my sisters!”

SERMON: Joshua: The Challenge of Filling Moses' Shoes

                                              Joshua 1:1-18

I.          SHOES OF A SLAVE

II.         SHOES OF A SERVANT

III.       SHOES OF A SPY

IV.       SHOES OF A SOLDIER