Sermon Tone Analysis

\\ Who Is This Jesus?

Shaun LePage, December 4, 2005

I. * *Introduction

A.   Jesus Christ (long pause).

What goes through your mind when you hear the name . . .

Jesus Christ?

1.     Perhaps you think of a wise, hippie-like pacifist.

2.     Perhaps you picture one of the many actors who has portrayed Jesus over the years—tall and stoic with blue eyes and a British accent.

3.     Perhaps—when I spoke His name—you were reminded of the last time you heard the name Jesus Christ used as a curse word.

a)     Years ago, I was playing basketball with my brother-in-law, Larramie Crumpley.

One of the players on the other team missed an easy shot and yelled, “Jesus Christ”.

He was not asking the Son of God for assistance with his next shot.

Larramie said, “...is the way!”

The other guy turned and looked at him and said, “What did you say?” Larramie said, “You said, ‘Jesus Christ’ and I pointed out that He is the way.”

The guy had no response other than a dumbfounded look on his face for the next couple of plays.

b)    Isn’t it strange that no one ever curses with, “Pope John Paul” or “Joseph Smith” or “Dahli Lama”.

B.   Jesus Christ.

What goes through your mind when you hear. . .

Jesus Christ?

1.

In 1995, Philip Yancey—one of my favorite writers; an editor for Christianity Today magazine—wrote a book called, “The Jesus I Never Knew.”

I love that title.

This is coming from a man who grew up in church—much like most of us—a man who all his life read or heard the stories of Jesus many times—much like most of us.

2.     When Yancey began to write this book, he decided to reread the Gospels.

He decided to try and approach the stories of the life of Jesus without the biases he had developed from living in America in the 20th century and from years in Sunday School, church and Bible College.

3.     In the foreward, he writes, “Modern scholarship . . .

muddies the picture (of who Jesus is).

If you peruse the academic books available at a seminary bookstore you may encounter Jesus as a political revolutionary, as a magician who married Mary Magdalene, as a Galilean charismatic, a rabbi, a peasant Jewish Cynic, a Pharisee, an anti-Pharisee Essene, an eschatological prophet, a ‘hippie in a world of Augustan yuppies,’ and as the hallucinogenic leader of a sacred mushroom cult.

Serious scholars write these works, with little sign of embarrassment.”

(p.19)

4.     In the final chapter—in his conclusions—Yancey writes, “Icons of the Orthodox Church, stained-glass windows in European cathedrals, and Sunday school art in low-church America all depict on flat planes a placid, ‘tame’ Jesus, yet the Jesus I met in the Gospels was anything but tame.

His searing honesty made him seem downright tactless in some settings.

Few people felt comfortable around Him; those who did were the type no one else felt comfortable around.

He was notoriously difficult to predict, pin down or even understand.”

(p.258)

C.   Who is the Jesus you know?

Who is the Jesus you think you know?

Is your Jesus “tame”?

Is your Jesus the Jesus you want Him to be—the Jesus you’ve carved in your own mind—or the one carved for you by someone else?

Or is your Jesus the true Jesus?

Is your Jesus the Jesus of the Bible?

1.     Or what about the people in your life.

Who is the Jesus they know?

A palatable Jesus they can live with?

A Jesus who is content to be a minor part of their lives?

A Jesus who is more defined by their own tradition or opinions than by the Bible?

Do the people in your life know the Jesus of Scripture—the true Jesus?

Our task as the church in modern-day America is to */introduce /*some people to Jesus and */reintroduce /*Him to others.

2.     Matthew—the writer of the first book of the New Testament—had a mission.

a)     He wanted to introduce people to the real Jesus Christ.

His gospel doesn’t have a specific purpose statement—like John or Luke—but when we look at the entire book it becomes clear that Matthew’s mission was to answer the question, “Who is this Jesus?”

b)    He wanted to clear up false ideas about Jesus.

Some were saying Jesus was a bastard child.

Some were saying Jesus couldn’t be the Jewish Messiah because He was from Galilee.

Some were saying Jesus couldn’t be the King of the Jews because He died without establishing His kingdom.

Some were saying Jesus couldn’t be the Risen Lord because His body was stolen.

Matthew wrote to set the record straight.

c)     One of the most monumental moments in the Gospel of Matthew, comes in Jesus’ exchange with His disciples in chapter 16.

(i)    Read 16:13-17.

(ii) There’s that question: Who is this Jesus?

What about you?

Who do you say Jesus is?

(iii)     Jesus is saying that there is a right answer!

He wasn’t saying it was just fine for all those other people to define Him however they wanted.

“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by */man/*, but by my */Father in heaven/*.”

(iv)     God has spoken, Matthew tells us in this book.

God has spoken and revealed Himself in and through the person of Jesus Christ.

d)    In the days ahead, I want to walk through the Gospel of Matthew—chapter by chapter—and show the significance of this amazing piece of work.

We’ll take a break from it from time to time and come back to it until we’ve looked at the entire book.

This morning, I’d like to talk about the book as a whole.

Who is this Matthew?

Who is this Jesus—as presented by Matthew?

What is the significance of these 28 chapters for us and for the people in our lives?

II.

Body—An Overview of The Gospel of Matthew

A.   *Who is this Matthew?*

We really know very little about Matthew, but the gospels give us some very important facts.

*1.     **He was a sinful man whose life was eternally changed by Jesus.*

a)     Jewish Tax-collector—despised by his own people.

Tax-collectors were Jews hired by Romans to strong arm other Jews into paying an exorbitant amount of tax.

Obviously, these collectors were hated by their fellow Jews.

They were rich, but lonely.

b)    Imagine Matthew’s surprise when Jesus asked him to become a part of the twelve.

Imagine everyone’s disgust when Jesus chose one of these Benedict Arnold’s—one of these Roman sympathizers—to be one of His closest companions.

Matthew’s reaction was to throw a party and invite all his other tax-collector friends.

c)     The point, though, is that Matthew was a sinner—a really bad one.

He was almost certainly cheating people and growing rich off the hard-earned wages of his own country men.

*2.     **He was a disciple of Jesus Christ who was chosen to be an apostle.*

a)     He is a great example of what a disciple is.

Read Matthew 9:9-13.

He got up and followed Jesus.

No doubt, he had already been listening to Jesus speak and had witnessed Jesus’ miracles.

But this passage represents Jesus’ formal invitation to be part of the twelve who would become apostles.

But at this point, his example is magnificent!

“He got up and followed” Jesus.

This was immediate and literal!

He literally got up and walked away from His filthy riches and His lucrative source of income.

He chose Jesus over everything else.

He paid the high cost of discipleship Jesus demanded.

What a great example.

b)    Ultimately, Jesus is calling each of us to follow Him and it’s not so much about what we leave behind as it is about Him.