The MESSAGE for October 15, 2023
Who Is This Fellow?
Luke
5:20-24;
7:49
Live
Broadcast
Greater Concord Missionary Baptist
Church
As I come to us today, this question has baffled
mankind down through eons. Who is Jesus? Who is this man? This
was John’s purpose in writing, so that we may believe that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God; and believing you may have life
in His name.” (John
20:31)
“In the beginning, before God created the heavens
and the earth, the Word existed. In the beginning, was existing
the Word” John 1:1.
Word comes from the Greek Term Logos. The apostle John borrowed
this Logos term because in the Greek it means the Word. Not in
the beginning, but in beginning, no definite article “the” John
suggests that we cannot identify a past moment to call
“beginning”. He’s pointing to something that existed before
eternity past, farther back than our finite minds can conceive.
Before the earth, before the planets and stars, before light or
darkness, matter or time-in a beginning that never really has a
beginning, the Logos was already existing.
He had no “starting point.” Eternally existing,
the Logos was with God and the Logos was God. Then John wrote
something truly remarkable... And the Word became flesh, and
dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only
begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. In other
words, God became a man!
No one wanted to believe that He was God in the
flesh. They were confronted again and again with the question
that puzzled and troubled: Who is this fellow? It is true? Can
this man be the Eternal God?
We may think of men like Alexander the Great,
Caesar Augustus, and Constantine, men who conquered vast
stretches of the known world. Think of Plato, Newton, and
Einstein, men who revolutionized the thinking of humankind.
Think of all the musicians, composers, philosophers, builders,
and leaders who impacted the world so positively. Other men have
conquered more, written more, and built more. But none have
impacted the world more profoundly, permanently, or for millions
of people, more personally than the carpenter from Nazareth.
Who is this fellow, who is this man that has
power over the trivial? At the wedding in Cana, He told the
servants to fill the water pots and He turned water to wine. Who
is this man that has power over distance? Some time later Jesus
and His disciples were in Cana and a man’s son was dying some
forty miles away. He was a Sadducee and did not believe in life
after death. He approached Jesus to come and heal his son. Jesus
told him to go his way that his son was healed. The man believed
the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off. As he was now
going down, his slaves met him, saying that his son was living.
Distance is no problem for Jesus.
Who is this man that has power over time? Perhaps
because time has a way of cementing reality in our minds and
forming an impenetrable barrier against hope.
There, at the pool of Asclepius lay sick folk
waiting for the troubling of the water. For forty years he could
not get into the pool. Jesus saw him lying there and when he
realized that the man had been disabled a long time already, he
said to him, do you want to become well? The sick man answered
him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water
is stirred up. While I am trying to get into the water, someone
else goes down there before me.” Without fanfare, without crowd
pleasing predictions, Jesus simply instructed the man, Stand up!
Pick up your mat and walk. By this time the temple leaders were
beginning to take notice. This was no mere upstart rabbi from
the backwaters of Galilee.
As I get ready to t close this message, who is
this man that even has power over insufficiencies. Jesus decided
to take His disciples away from the crowds to enjoy the solitude
of the hills. But His fame had grown far and wide. As Jesus
taught His inner circle of Disciples a multitude began to gather
on the hillside. Thousands of them had followed Him into the
wilderness and had given no thought to provisions. They quite
possibly expected that He would provide for them. “I tell you do
not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about
your body, what you will wear.
Isn’t there more to life than food and more to
the body than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky: They do not
sow, or reap, or gather into the barns, yet your heavenly Father
feed them…eventually Five Thousand men and their families had
gathered on the hillside. Jesus tugged on Phillip’s sleeve and
ask him, where can we buy bread so that these people may eat?
Now, Jesus said this to him for He knew what He was going to do.
Phillip replied, “Two hundred silver coins worth of bread would
not be enough for them, for each one to get a little (John
6:6-7)”.
Phillip’s mental calculator kicked in, let’s see,
Five Thousand men and some of them have their families, well, we
will call it Eight Thousand. But Andrew had been looking around.
A lad offered his lunch sack, five barley loaves and two fish,
but what is that among so many?
John 6:9, Who Is
He? The creator, is it
true? “Can this man be the eternal God?”
The apostle Paul, who became a disciple after
Jesus was crucified, wrote Jesus is the image of the invisible
God, the first born of all creation. For by Him all things were
created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or
authorities-all things have been created through Him and for
Him. He is before all things and in Him all things hold
together. “In Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily
form. (Colossians
2:9)
Who is this Man? Before Jesus became a man, He
was the Word by which the utterance, “Let there be light”
resulted in the existence of light. He created the world long
centuries before entering it as a baby in a stable. Just outside
a little hamlet called Bethlehem. Who is this man? He is Jesus
of Nazareth. He is God in human flesh. Who is He? He is “The
Christ.” Who is this man who even forgives sins (Luke
7:49). Herod repeated the question, who is this man? Who
then is this that the wind and sea obey Him? (Mark
4:41-45. Read Mark
6:1-2, Mark 6:4.)
Then, one day He came home to Nazareth after a
long absence. While His reputation had become larger than life,
the townspeople snickered at the rumors to be true and His power
to be genuine, they couldn’t believe their eyes. Even the people
who knew Jesus best were heard to ask, who is this man? It is a
sad but undeniable truth that no one expects to find greatness
among the people he or she knows well. Jesus pointed to this
fact when He commented, “A prophet is not without honor except
in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own
household” (Mark 6:4)
who is this man?
And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the
twelve apostles with Him. He said unto them, with desire I have
desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Luke
22:14-15) The hour! The Lord had been moving forward toward
this hour from before the beginning of time. The hour drew
closer when Adam fell, it moved closer still when He stooped
down to this planet to be born. It came closer still when He put
away His carpenters’ apron to go down to the Jordan to be
baptized of John. It came closer when He came down from the
mount and set his face toward Jerusalem.
Now the hour had come. Then came the bombshell!
“Behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the
table.” (Luke 22:21)
But the moment passed. Calvary was foreknown to God. When it was
decided in the high halls of heaven to act in Creation, it was
foreknown that the time would come when God would likewise need
to act in redemption. They knew to what dizzying height sin
would soar and what abysmal depth it would sink. It was
determined that God would make the very cross itself evidence of
how far man would go in sin and make it, the instrument of His
grace. Evidence of how far God would go in salvation. Who is He?
He is the God of our salvation!
Pastor, Rev. Dr. Cullian W. Hill