The Radical Jesus

What I want to do is I want to look at Jesus, and we will never see him when we try to look at him through our sin. He'll be so obscured, he'll be so distorted, we will not see him, and until we grow desperate for him, we will still not see him because we will not be looking to him, we'll be looking to everything else, all kinds of other things, and not be able to really see Jesus. We are in desperate need of a fresh revelation of this Jesus, because the American Jesus is not the Jesus of scripture, but another Jesus, a wimpy little weak Jesus that is not really that great and awesome and powerful, not a God that can really deliver, a humanistic kind of Jesus that exists just to make us happy, but not a God that is out to shake our lives to changes because he's out to work for our eternal salvation. Jesus is God, was God incarnate in flesh and blood, and the very idea that Jesus is the Almighty means that absolutely everything about Jesus is 100% radical. There is no way that there could be anything about Jesus that is just nominal. Everything about him was radical because he was the creator God. If we could grab that knowledge, it should so overwhelm us with who this savior is, that that God, not a different God, not a lesser God, not some little God, but the only God that there is, that Jesus took upon flesh and blood and walked this planet, but if Jesus is absolutely radical, and he is the author of Christianity, and if he said that the servant is not greater than his master, then biblical Christianity is 100% radical. In America, we don't want a radical gospel. We want a tame little Jesus with a tame little message that leaves us in a tame little religion, but the real Jesus is radical. He's radical, the core of who he is, and when we come to true salvation, it is radical that he takes us from the kingdom of hell to bring us into the kingdom of heaven, delivers us from all the slavery and all the bondage. He sets us free that we might be children of God. It is radical, and we need to restore the radical nature of this faith because God is wanting to turn this world upside down. He's not trying to do it through superstars. I think God is so weary of superstars. Because I am sick of superstars. God is looking for average individuals that he can send in the highways and hedges, and that he can use them to lay down their lives for others. You understand this faith is radical, and if it's not radical, it's not biblical. There is one faith that he delivered to the church, and it is a faith that is radical. It is a faith that is ablaze with a passion for the glory and honor of Christ that others might come to Jesus and know the depths and the heights and the riches of his love. It is Christ's likeness that makes true radicals, and this world does not need tame Christians. Your family does not need a tame individual. Your children don't need a tame father. Your community doesn't need some tame little Christian among the rest of the tame little Christians. God is looking for revolutionaries, and to be spiritual revolutionaries, we must have a spiritual revolution on the inside first, because until the revolution takes place in our own heart, we can never be agents of the revolution Jesus began 2,000 years ago. Not a revolution of bloodshed and violence and hatred, but a revolution that lays our life down that others might know of this wonderful Savior. This is what the faith is. This is what he calls us to. So what does he tell us in Philippians 2.5? Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. That is Christianity summed up. That is the full picture of it. Take that one verse, and you see Christianity. Look at Jesus. Who is this Jesus? Live like this Jesus, and that's what the faith is. Anything other than that is another gospel. Kind of disturbing, isn't it? Kind of exciting, because you know what he wants to do it in? Frail little old people like me and you. He's looking just for people that will learn how to throw themselves at the master's feet and be willing to follow him through the path of pain or difficulty or sorrow or joy, that we will follow him because we bow our knee and we swear fealty to him. Those are the men and the women that he can use to turn the world upside down.