The Real Jesus – Uninvented and Undistorted

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[Message] It is a pleasure to be here and have an opportunity to address you concerning the Scriptures. The ministry of the Jesus Seminar you may probably recognize from the title will be a good part of the introduction to the message today, and we are living in days in which the professing Christian church is having difficulty understanding exactly what the gospel is, exactly what the work of the local church, and it’s, I guess we should say, very discouraging when the picture that the world is given of Christianity is the picture that emerges from something like the Jesus Seminar. The message this morning is devoted to the issues that are raised by that particular seminar, and the issue essentially is “Just Who is Jesus Christ?” One could never hope to answer that question thoroughly in a message, but the essence of it I think we can answer. The passage that I’ve chosen to look into is one that I think bares directly upon that question of who Jesus Christ really is. So will you turn to Matthew chapter 11 and verse 20 and follow along as I read through verse 30? The apostle writes,

“Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not: Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.”

These, of course, are very strong words that our Lord has spoken, but they have an application for us as well. “And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.” Notice twice he mentions “mighty works.” They are the works of healing, works of restoration to life, other unusual mighty works which our Lord and the apostles had preformed. “But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee. At that time Jesus answered and said.”

It’s very interesting to notice the “at that time” because our Lord had set out seventy previously on a kind of missionary journey. Luke suggests that they had returned just about this time. So, at that time, that is the return of the seventy, with the remarkable statements that even the demons had been subject to them, they were astonished at the power that they had been given by God in the ministry they were performing. “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.” The word that is translated “seemed good” is really a noun that means “good pleasure.” It’s a term that is used of the sovereign activity of God, and in Ephesians chapter 1 for example, and other places. So, his good pleasure is the good pleasure of his will.

“All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. (Perhaps better to render, ‘Wills to reveal him.’) Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

So many of us think it’s not true. His yoke is not easy. It’s not light, but if we really understand it, it is as he says, “easy and light,” because he promises to do everything that the Father demands of us as we rest in him. May the Lord bless this reading of his word. Let’s bow together in a moment of prayer.

[Prayer] Father, we give Thee thanks for Thy word. We give Thee thanks for the greatness of the Son of God. We thank Thee for the purity of the deity that he possesses. We thank Thee for the relationship that exists between the persons of the Trinity, that beautiful oneness and that beautiful distinction, and we thank Thee for the way in which the ministry of truth has been brought to men, and we thank Thee for the way it has been brought to Believers Chapel, and we thank Thee for the way it has been brought to us. We know, Lord, that we are very, very poor objects of the grace of God, but we are indeed thankful and grateful for the fact that Thou hast opened our hearts and minds to know who Jesus Christ really is, and we worship Thee. We worship him in the Holy Spirit, the third member of this marvelous, loving Trinity.

We ask, Lord, Thy blessing upon this congregation, upon this church, upon its leadership.

We pray particularly for those who have requested that we pray for them. We ask that Thou wilt meet the needs of the hearts of those who are troubled or have specific problems. We bring them to Thee.

We pray for our country. We ask, Lord, for the United States of America, and we pray especially that there may be a true turning of this great land to the gospel of Jesus Christ so needed in our day.

We give Thee thanks for the privilege for proclaiming the word of God. We thank Thee for those who minister here in the Sunday school, in the pulpit, in all of the kinds of activities that represent an attempt to reach out to the world about us. And personally Lord, we pray that each of us may be truly fervent witnesses for the gospel of Jesus Christ, proclaiming in the right kind of spirit what he has done for us.

Bless our meeting. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

[Message] I want to give my thanks to the elders, to Dan, to others who made it possible for me to have an opportunity to harangue you for a little bit. There are always things that preachers want to say to people, and so I’m thankful for the opportunity to say what I want to say and say it to you.

The subject is “The Real Jesus – Uninvented and Undistorted.” The Jesus Seminar about whom you may have read in Time Magazine, various other periodicals that play to the general public is looking for the “Real Jesus” as they put it. And we’re interested, of course, in what they’re finding. It’s already pretty clear that they’re on the wrong path, and the text that we’re looking at, I think, will at least make it somewhat clear that they are on the wrong path.

Perhaps I should say a few words about The Jesus Seminar because some of you may have missed what has been written, or perhaps you saw it and weren’t interested in reading the articles. But The Jesus Seminar is a small body, self chosen incidentally, not chosen by others, of unaffiliated academics, by no means incidentally the cream of New Testament scholarship, as a matter of fact it has been said by a man who is one of the cream of New Testament scholars that not a single one of the men, professors and various institutions is from a major graduate faculty. Now that doesn’t mean they’re not fine names, might even be University of Texas or Southern Methodist, but they’re not regarded as the cream of New Testament graduate schools, and this group does not have a man, according to this man, and I think he’s probably being fairly generous, who is a member of one of the institutions has among its staff the cream of New Testament scholarship.

They gather twice a year, the Jesus Seminar, and they debate the historical Jesus; just who was the historical Jesus? It’s really an entrepreneurial venture of Robert Funk and it has a deliberately provocative style because they want the media to pay attention. And so we are reading about it in the media and particularly the media that is read by the majority of the people of the United States. So the Jesus Seminar is happily advertised by the media. Everything they do is done for advertisement purposes of those that are involved. For example, they don’t just express scholarly opinions about verses here or there, they vote publically on whether texts are genuine or whether they have a certain measure of genuineness, and they do it in media style. They do it so that you’ll remember it.

For example, they don’t vote, “I agree.” They take colored beads and vote by the color coded beads. They’re expressions about statements of the gospels of Jesus Christ. A red bead means that’s something Jesus really said. A pink bead means that sounds like Jesus, but we’re not sure it’s Jesus. Gray, well, maybe possibly that’s something Jesus said. And black, well you can probably guess. There has been a problem here. Some mistakes been made. That’s not something that Jesus said most likely. What’s interesting about it is that these sayings of the Bible that are discussed in the gospels, they are put in the position of proving their authenticity. In other words, the text is forced to prove its authenticity to us.

The seminar has a purpose. They say they want to liberate Jesus.” The only kind of Jesus you people, like you, want is a Jesus that you can worship. That’s a mythical Jesus. You want someone you can worship. A cultic Jesus, he’s the Jesus of the cult of which you are a part, the Jesus of the fundamentalists. The real Jesus is a different Jesus so they affirm. And the Jesus Seminar is trying to show us exactly what kind of Jesus is the real Jesus. Funk suggests that Jesus’ words have been altered to suit later circumstances of the spreading Christian movement. Their effort is a book they’ve published. You probably have seen it, The Five Gospels. Oh there’s another gospel added to the four, Thomas. Thomas’ gospel has been added. So there are five gospels, the search for the authentic words of Jesus.

Funk says, this will give you a clue, he says, “We need a new fiction. We need a new gospel, a fiction that we recognize to be fictive.” Isn’t that interesting, “A fiction that needs to be fictive?” Well I must confess. I’ve lost out. I don’t know what fictive means. [Laughter] So, I looked it up, and it means something close to fictional. And I couldn’t really tell the difference. Webster didn’t give an exposition of the difference, but it seems to me when he said a fiction that we recognize to be fictive, he means it’s not all together totally fictional, but nevertheless it’s fictive. You get it? [Laughter] Get it? Well you’re smarter than I am if you did. So you people, you pious people, you don’t really want the real Jesus. You want someone you can worship. You want the cultic Jesus.

So what kind of Jesus have they found so far? They tell us some things about what they have found. They say, for example, that the one that we call Jesus does not announce any apocalyptic returns. He doesn’t really have any ideas of an apocalypse, a future coming of the Lord and all of the things that are described by the apostles and others connected with the second coming of Christ. That wasn’t Jesus. He was a “party animal.” Those are his words, “party animal,” and he was no goody two shoes. We know, of course, we cultic fundamentalists, I guess we would be called, believe that he was without sin. Well that obviously is not the real Jesus.

Hal Torsek [ph 18:43], a Methodist pastor at the time the publications of the seminar began to be made, said that, “The seminar was providing good objective information about Jesus for Christians who feel threatened by fundamentalism.” Now that tells you a whole lot about the entire movement. They’re not really looking for the truth. They’re looking for something that will comfort you people who are threatened by those who believe the Bible.

So I’m not afraid of them. I’m not afraid in the slightest because standing behind the word of God is the eternal Trinity, and he has survived all kinds of attacks ever since the day of Adam in the Garden of Eden against the truth of God. And down to the present day, they are still fighting the truth and they will continue to fight the truth. We should not be surprised. We have to change our views from time to time when we don’t understand the Bible correctly, but the essence of the word of God has remained through the centuries and is still with us and it still stands and some of you young people you will live to laugh about the fiction of the Jesus Seminar fifteen or twenty years ago. When I read that that they are looking, they want “good objective information about Jesus for Christians who feel threatened by fundamentalism,” Ah ha, these people are threatened themselves. Ah ha they already know. They’re up against something that they’re having difficulty with.

Professor Stephen Patterson said, “It’s unlikely Jesus wanted to compose a set prayer.” And so the seminar voted against the Lord’s Prayer. Now, our Lord introduces that prayer by saying, “We should pray after this manner.” In other words, he didn’t pray the set prayer. He said use that as a guide. So if we read the Bible, we can immediately see that our Lord is not a believer in set prayers either. But they don’t read the Scriptures enough to learn those simple facts it would seem.

Well I think the Scripture sets forth something here in verse 27 especially that is important for us at this time. Vincent Taylor a very well known New Testament scholar of the last generation said, “A phileo relationship with the Father to which there is a parallel nowhere else is the secret of the ministry and work of Jesus.” That’s the real foundation of the claim that our Lord makes in verse 27. “All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son wills reveal him.” In other words, no one ever understands the Father who has not been willed by our Lord to understand him.

I call that the sovereignty of our Lord, the sovereignty of God in the revelation of truth. This is the foundation of the Christian faith; the soul mediator of the knowledge of God is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is unique, solitary, supreme in the dispensing of the knowledge of God, which he does through the third person, the Holy Spirit. So, what a bomb for our times, to know this fact. Our times filled with the restlessness of the worldlings strewing tennis and golf balls over the landscape looking for meaning in life from the patent medicines of the soul which are offered by the religious hucksters of our day who do not turn to the source of the knowledge of God in holy Scripture.

I think so many of us are kind of like a fever tossed man. You’ve been in this state I know. You’re on your bed. You’re fever is high. You’re looking for something cool upon which to place your head. You’re pillow is warm so you’re looking for a place on it that’s cool. You turn it over, put your head there. Soon it’s hot too. Whatever you try, it’s hot. The problem is it’s not the pillow; the problem is you. You have fever, but that’s the way we do, and so our society is something like that.

Jesus Christ says he promises a rest, and the rest that he promises is grounded New Testament knowledge of God. Someone said of William Wordsworth that his poetry was poetry that was for weary feet the gift of rest. But it was only temporary. Our Lord, of course, offers the eternal rest.

Now, I’m going to just say a word or two about the context. You could say a lot about the context. It’s very interesting, and it’s very important. But I think you can read the word of God. You, I believe most of you, believe the Bible, and so, reading through it you understand a whole lot of it, maybe more than I do, and no doubt in many cases that’s true. Our Lord in verse 20 through verse 24 is denouncing the unrepentant cities who’ve had the ministry of him and of his emissaries, the seventy who have gone out for example. So, after some penetrating words of the perversity of the generation, our Lord turns to the cities and pronounces woes upon them. In verse 20, “He began to upbraid them where most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not.” I’m sure that our Lord did this in great human disappointment, although he knew, of course, what was going to transpire.

“Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, (those works that demonstrated his Messiahship) which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. (Our Lord incidentally not only knows all things, he knows all possible things as well.) But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.”

Now at this point the seventy return, and so we read in verse 25, “At that time Jesus answered and said.” “At that time,” this is when the seventy returned. Do you remember what they said? They spoke about all of the wonderful things they had done, and they said, “Even the demons were subject to us.” And so our Lord turns to the Father and says, “I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” This has been called the great thanksgiving. “I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” Bitterly disappointed, perhaps in his human nature, now of course hearing from their lips the things that had transpired, rejoiced his heart, and he offers this marvelous sentence of gratitude for divine revelation. “I thank Thee that Thou hast revealed these things unto babes.” Rejoices over the believer’s acceptance of the revelation that has come to them. And what a lovely term for us, “Babes.” That’s what we are. We’re babes. If you don’t believe it, I know. You are. You’re a babe. So am I. We’re babes. He reveals his truth in babes, babes in spiritual understanding.

Then he talks about the Father’s sovereign grace in revelation. “Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.” What has transpired? It’s good in the sight of the Father. That term is the great term so often used for the sovereign working of God, his loving kindness. Read Ephesians chapter 1 sometime with that in mind. That’s what you’ll find. “Even so, it seemed good in thy sight Father.” So, Jesus rests in the Father’s plan.

It has been said that if a person’s truest thoughts are revealed in prayer, I do believe that is so, a person’s truest thoughts are revealed in prayer, this is a precious spiritual autobiography of Jesus Christ. I have a small study. I have lots of books, a desk. Of course I have a computer. And I have one chair. It’s hard for me to keep something out of that chair. I just don’t have room. I put things in that chair, but the chair is where I often pray. And if you ever wanted to know, most of you wouldn’t ever want to know, but if you ever wanted to know what I am in my heart you might find it by that chair. But there’s no place to stoop. So, I think it’s true that if you hear a person pray by themselves, or if you know of a person who prays by themselves that’s probably the key to their spiritual and other kinds of situation, or position, or condition.

But he moves on, you can see that the idea of our Lord’s truest thoughts are expressed in his great delight over obedience to the Father, “Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.” And now this is the heart of this passage, the Son is the supreme grantor of revelation. “All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son wills to reveal him.” I’m translating in my mind from the original text. This is added as if he was sunk in a beatific soliloquy someone has said, “All things delivered unto me,” and so forth. Speaks of the way, the way that revelation comes to us. It comes from the Father through the Son, from the Father through the Son by the illumination of the Spirit the other texts adds. If we understand anything it’s come from the Father through the Son by the Spirit. This is a wonderful text you know, “All things have been delivered unto me of my Father.”

Now I know that many of you in this congregation are readers of the Gospel of John. Now if I were to take this text, if I hadn’t told you all of this, if I were to take this text out of this gospel and just lay it out there for you and say, “Where do you think that comes from?” I believe that many of you in this audience would say, “It comes from John because John says some things that are very similar to this. So, I’m not surprised that people should say, “This probably comes from the Gospel of John.” Turn to chapter 3 of the Gospel of John and one or two other places and you’ll find things that are very close to this.

In fact one of the things that this text speaks to me about has to do with history. Some of you may remember the name Detrich Bonhoeffer. He was a very important theologian in his own way, earlier in this century, back when I was in my prime, and we studied Bonhoeffer because he was the popular theologian around thirty, forty years ago, Detrich Bonhoeffer had a great grandfather who was Professor of Church History at the University of Jena in Germany. His name was Karl von Hase, and he said with reference to this text that, “It was a thunderbolt from the Johannine blue,” and later on English students of the gospel said with reference to it that, “It’s a bolt from the Johannine blue,” using a common expression that we used. Well that’s kind of the way it is. It’s something that you can sense is authentic. It comes from our Lord.

Just for a few moments, let’s notice the three parts of it. “All things are delivered to the Son.” The context with the seventy returning telling about the marvelous works that they performed by the Spirit under the instigation of our Lord’s ministry. The context suggests that when they say, “All things are delivered to the Son,” suggests authority over nature, authority over disease, authority over Satan because even his demons were subject to them, staggering the mind. “All things have been delivered to the Son.” Everything, everything is under his authority and power. From ages past too, “For even so Father for it has seemed good in Thy sight.” It’s not just that. That’s a manifestation of it, but this is something eternal, has been going on all along. All of the truth that we have comes through the Son, and he is the supreme grantor of revelation. “All things have been delivered to him.”

And furthermore than that there is an incomparable expression of mutual intimacy with the Father. Notice after that first line, “No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son.” Think of that for a moment. What is he saying? Well he’s saying in a sense that I have such tremendous joy. I have enough to satisfy the whole world because in my relationship to the Father I have the secret of all of existence. More than that, he expresses an absolute, let me put this carefully because this is something derived from B.B. Warfield, what is involved here is an absolute reciprocity and interpenetration with the Father. In other words, they are so much one that what one person has the other has. That’s what makes them God. That’s why we have God the Father, God the Son because there is this reciprocity and interpenetration of knowledge. “No one knows the Son save the Father, no one knows the Father save the Son.”

In other words, Professor Warfield said, “As if the being of the Son were so immense that only God could know that being thoroughly; and the knowledge of the Son was so unlimited that He could know God to perfection.” What a magnificent way to put it. Let me read it again. “The being of the Son so immense that only God could know it thoroughly.” Only the Father can know the Son thoroughly because his being is so immense. “And the knowledge of the Son is so unlimited that he could know the Father,” who also is such a being, and know the Father, “to perfection.”

The Jesus Seminar is looking for something and here it is. But it’s not just here, it’s everywhere. They’re blind walking in the midst of light, but they cannot see. Well, time flies. I have an hour and ten minutes left to say and we only have ten minutes. So I better say something in a hurry.

The third thing about this statement is the last line or two. I’ve already said something about it. “And he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.” The Son is the sovereign grantor of divine revelation. So all things are delivered to the Son. There is an incomprehensible expression of mutual intimacy with the Father, and the Son, alone, is the sovereign grantor of that information. In other words, salvation comes only from the Father through Christ, from the Father through Christ.

Well I would say that he holds the secret of life. So it follows naturally there is an invitation to rest. He holds the secret of life. No wonder he bursts from his soliloquy with, “Come unto me.” This is the full answer to the question which is found earlier in the chapter which I didn’t read. When John heard the things that Jesus was doing he called two of his disciples to him and he said go ask him the question. And the question was, “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” And John’s answer is here. It is he who should come. So he speaks, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,” and isn’t it interesting that he is the sovereign dispenser of the knowledge of God. It depends upon him from the Father. He alone wills to reveal the truth, but an invitation is given nevertheless. There is nothing wrong with saying, “We serve a sovereign God who saves whom he intends to save, who he wills to save, but he offers an invitation to come.” So if you say, “Well if he is a sovereign God what’s the use of an invitation?” the invitation is the means by which the saints of God come to the Father through the Son, and the invitation is given.

Now let us say this, if you don’t want to come, then you don’t have any excuse. You cannot say, “The theology is not good,” because you don’t want to come. If you want to come the door is open for you to come. So it really comes back to you doesn’t it? Has the Holy Spirit placed within your heart the desire to come, to come to him, to receive what he offers, eternal life from the Father, through the Son in the Spirit to enter into life? The sovereignty of God is not incompatible with a free invitation to all. Jesus says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

Rejected by the cities he turns to burdened Jews under the yoke of the law because they were heavy laden. Seeking to try to fulfill the Mosaic law was an impossible task, and if they were earnest and sincere, they would have to acknowledge it’s too much for me. I cannot keep the law. Not surprisingly, Paul said the knowledge of sin came by the law. That’s how we learn what we are; try to keep the law my friend. You will discover that what you need is Jesus Christ. The consequences of the coming, our Lord is conscious of universal power, “Come unto me and I will give you rest.” We don’t have to underline give do we. “Come unto me and I will give you rest.” Don’t go to the church. We’ve had plastered all over our news papers in recent weeks the clear knowledge that there is no church to which we can go to find eternal life. As a matter of fact in our churches, not simply Roman Catholic but Protestant as well, is often the place to be led astray. We don’t come to the church. We don’t come to the sacraments. We don’t take the wine and the bread in order to have life. Jesus said, and it’s so fundamentally true, “Come to me and I will give you rest,” and it’s give, give. I will give you rest. He doesn’t want anything from you. He wants to give you something. “I will give you rest.”

So you who labour and are heavy laden, I was going to say something about this, and I think maybe I can say it real quickly, but there is a marvelous passage in the prophet Isaiah in which Isaiah gives some needed information for those of his day. It’s the 46th chapter. I’ll just read along. You don’t have to look at it. I’ll give it so plainly and clearly you won’t even need to read it. He begins the 46th chapter, “Bel boweth down,” now Bel was the Babylonian god, the god of the Pantheon, the whole Pantheon. “Nebo stoopeth,” Nebo was Bel’s son.

Now Isaiah is full of sarcasm. He says, “Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts.” He’s prophesying the fall of Babylon, and people are going to be leaving and they’re going to be carrying their idols with them. They’re going to have their carts, and they’re going to put their very expensive idols made out of gold, and they’re heavy, those magnificent idols that the false gods had. He says, “Your carriages were heavy laden; they are a burden to the weary beast.” What a god, what a god who is no help to me, but he is a burden to an animal, they’re their beasts. The gods on their carts as they’re leaving, and the Babylonians worshiping them like the citizens of the United States of America and what they worship. They worship their Nebo’s and they worship their Bel’s. They don’t realize it, but they are worshiping them, and they’re just as ridiculous. They get weary worshiping something that cannot save them.

“They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity. So they follow their gods into captivity that could not save them. “Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which are borne by me,” “borne by me,” what a difference to bare your god around and to have a God who bares you around, all the difference in the world. “From the belly, which are carried from the womb: And even to your old age I am he.” Even to gray hairs, that’s a comforting verse, even unto gray hairs “will I carry you. I have made, I will (carry or) bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.” That’s the difference between the gods of the Jesus Seminar and the God of Scripture. Their gods you have to carry around. Our God carries us around. He made us. He refers to the fact that God called Israel as a nation into existence. He made them, created them as a nation. And he promises to carry us. That’s one of the greatest things in holy Scripture, he has brought me into life and he says he will carry me on into his presence.

So, to sum up, the Son, the Son, The Son has an unshared Sonship. It’s not shared by anybody else. It belongs only to him. I don’t know whether that’s what I was seeking apart from the Spirit but I know when the Spirit began to work in my heart, that’s what I was seeking. The Jesus Seminar was right. I was seeking someone to worship for I could not find any comfort in all of the other things that people try to find comfort in in their worship. The weary search, my friend, ends in Jesus Christ. “Come unto me.” Augustine has a famous statement, and you’ve heard it many times. It reads something like this, I’ll translate the Latin. “You have made us, according to yourself, and our heart is without rest, inquietum, without quiet, without rest until it shall rest in Thee.” Famous statement from The Confessions, “Maybe modified man is made for Christ and his heart is without rest until it rests in him.” Christ’s invitation is designed to welcome us back. So, what would you like? The real Jesus of the Jesus Seminar or “The Real Jesus – Uninvented and Undistorted.” I prefer the latter. My earnest prayer for each one of you is that you to think about, whatever you may have put in the place of Jesus Christ, maybe a false idea of Jesus Christ, maybe it has no connection seemingly with him, but you think about where your hopes really are, and if they’re unsatisfactory to you, they are unsatisfactory. I hope they’re unsatisfactory to you. They won’t save you. They won’t carry you, and that you in your heart will feel a pressure from God the Holy Spirit to turn away from your trusts and trust in him. Let’s stand for the benediction.

[Prayer] Father, how grateful we are for these marvelous words that our Lord spoke which so clearly point to the hearts of most of us the nature of the real Jesus of Nazareth, the eternal second person of the Trinity, adequate to create, to bring to life, and to carry into the presence of the Lord God…

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