“Who do you say Jesus is?”…your answer matters dear Christian! Flowing from the lips of the baptized child of God is the answer revealed by the Heavenly Father. Your answer — God’s answer — knows Jesus as God reveals Him so that the true answer, the saving answer will always be the foundation and assurance of your forgiveness and eternal life.

Unfortunately, sin, the world, and the evil one try desperately to block this answer; these fight against the Father’s saving revelation. As a result too many people remain lost without the answers to sin and death.

This past week in our world we were reminded that we need God’s answer, God’s hope, and God’s life in the face of horrific expressions of sin and death. I was — I’m sure with you — mortified by the release of the news — last Tuesday — of the horrific execution of American journalist James Foley (I did not attempt to watch the video…and pray that you did not see it either).

These things evidence that the evil one prowls around seeking to devour just as Scripture warns (1st Peter 5:8). We should never take these real-life events for granted…they represent the evil ones’ attempt to fill our hearts with fear; to distract from our hope; to make our love cold; and to forget why we are here.

To know Christ — in accord with who He really is — is to know however the One who has promised that not even the gates of hell will prevail against His Church…to have Christ is to have life even in the face of death; it is to be assured of the Resurrection no matter the attack upon you (us).

That is, to know Christ is have Christ and to have Christ is to have life!

If this is true — and it is of course — then it stands to reason that dark forces would counter by doing everything in their (limited) power to attack the very revelation of Christ…bottom line: sin and the devil don’t want you to know Jesus and the full implications of His saving presence!

In response: God has given His Church. Through Christ’s Church Christ comes…this is why we come to Church…this is why I hope to see you in the morning!

An excerpt from tomorrow’s sermon:

“The Most Important Question You’ll Ever Be Asked”

 (Matthew 16:13-18)

For Your Life in Christ the 11^th Sunday after Pentecost

August 24^th, 2014

Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church of Irvine, CA (LC-MS)

Pastor Espinosa

 

Introduction: The Great Challenge of Our Time

1. Alister McGrath in his book Evangelicalism & the Future of Christianity explains that the 18^th century Enlightenment established human reason as the highest standard for knowledge and truth, but it gave way to the late 20^th century into-the-present worldview called postmodernism (182f).
2. Once upon a time, we thought we had everything figured out through human reason, but two things happened: 1) we discovered human reason isn’t as accurate as we thought (e.g. we thought that Newton’s physics was fairly seamless, then along came Einstein); 2) the reliance on human reason ushered in horrible atrocities like the Stalinist purges and the Nazi extermination camps. We are now no longer so willing to boast in human reason.
3. So what are the implications of the new view? We can’t really know anything with certainty and what is true and what is real depends on a person’s personal view. Postmodernism is the age of relativism. Welcome to the present!
4. Interestingly enough, our post-Christian era is looking a lot like the pre-Christian era. During that era (before the establishment and explosion of the Christian Church), Jesus asked this as recorded Matthew 16:13:

 

Matthew 16:13: “When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’”

 

1. Various disciples chimed in to give answer. These are translations of the relativistic answers recorded:
2. Jesus is a great king who has come to threaten Herod’s rule. That is a political figure, but still a man.
3. A great herald of Messiah who had returned to continue the work of preparing for the true Messiah, but still a man.
4. A great prophet who is legend who perhaps had risen from death, but still a man.

 

1. What do all of these have in common? Jesus = still a man!
2. As one theologian put it, “They thought well of Him, but not well enough.”
3. In our sin, we think well of Jesus…just well enough to coax our consciences, but in sin we limit who Jesus is…we do not want to answer to Him as Almighty God, we want His Word to be relative. In our sinful hearts, we don’t believe in truth! Just versions of the truth! We don’t think of Him well enough!
4. In his book The Case for the Real Jesus, Lee Strobel refutes among other things the popular assertion, “People should be free to pick and choose what to believe about Jesus.”
5. This is exactly what we do, but here’s the problem:

From Strobel: “…truth is true even if no one knows it, admits it, agrees with it, follows it, or even fully grasps it…The problem is that people can have beliefs that are ‘useful,’ maybe temporarily and for certain ends, but they may be completely false (236).”

 

1. In today’s Gospel, the Word asserts that there is an authoritative viewpoint: God breaks onto the scene and asks the single most important question you will ever be asked in your life:

 

Matthew 16:15: “He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’”

 

Part I: While You Still Live and Breathe, What Do You Say of Jesus?

1. As for the foolish opinions about Jesus, Jesus didn’t even care to discuss.
2. There is only one answer Christ commends:

 

Matthew 16:16: “Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’”

 

1. Jesus praises THIS answer, because it is THE answer!

 

Matthew 16:17: “And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.’”

 

1. Crucial components of what we’ve just read:
2. What is that revelation from God? (from vs. 16)
3. Jesus = “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
4. Epiphanius the Latin (5^th or 6^th century): “If Christ is the Son of God, by all means he is also God.” (Ancient Christian Commentary, Ib, 45)
5. The Venerable Bede (c. 672/673-735): “He calls Him the ‘living’ God by way of distinction from the false gods which heathendom in its various delusions made to itself to worship, either of dead men, or – greater folly still – of insensate matter.” (The Lutheran Study Bible, 1616)
6. That is, since Jesus the Son of God is God, then He is also the Living God which means that Jesus is the source of life!
7. Do we believe this? When we doubt and we seek answers for our burdens under every rock and yet all the while refuse to worship Jesus Christ and call on His Name. Instead we rely on “flesh and blood” = “[the] mortal state of weakness and fallibility.” (Lenski, 623)

In Jesus’ Love,

Pastor Al