Focussing on Jesus No.9 The Extra-ordinary Man

The Lord is with thee, worship his majesty. Words from his mouth come to his tongue. His hand of grace so makes all.

Lift up on high the name of Jesus. And be part, the glory part, of Jesus our King. Majesty, worship his majesty.

Jesus who died, now glorified, King of all the living. Do sit down. But what really were we singing about? Obviously, a man called Jesus and a historical figure.

Someone who has had an impact on our world, on history, more than any other individual. During these last Sunday evenings when we haven't had guests, we've been focusing in on the Lord Jesus. And I've tried to show you from various parts of the gospel what the Lord was like.

What his opinions were on a variety of subjects. There are many folk who believe that they could give you a definition of Jesus. But actually he doesn't slot into any obvious category.

When he was on earth he was an enigma. That means to say he was a puzzle. And I guess to some degree that's the case today.

Majesty, how do you answer the question, who is Jesus? What was he really like? Listen to an attempted, but it was a forged, attempt to describe Jesus in the day of his flesh. He is a tall man, well shaped, and of an amiable and a reverent aspect. His hair is of a color that can hardly be matched.

Falling into graceful curls, parted on the crown of his head. Running as a stream to the front, after the fashion of the Nazarites. His forehead high, large and imposing.

His cheeks without spot or wrinkle, beautiful, with a lovely red. His nose and mouth formed with exquisite symmetry. His beard, and of a color suitable to his hair, reaching below his chin.

And parted in the middle, like a fork. His eyes bright, blue, clear and serene. No man has seen him laugh.

Blue eyes, reddish complexion. No man has seen him laugh. That's got to be a dud description, although it was passed out to the church, as being an accurate representation of Jesus.

It's got to be false, because there's no way, coming from the Middle East, he's going to have blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion, like a healthy European. And the idea that Jesus never laughed, where do you get that from? When interspersed in his teaching, is certainly a sense of humor. This is an attempt to present Jesus as a sort of likable, handsome, charismatic person.

Let's listen to a more accurate description, written, interestingly enough, years before Jesus was ever born. Just as there were many who were appalled at him, his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man, and his form marred beyond human likeness. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. When you go to Mark's Gospel in the sixth chapter, if you've got a Bible, you might like to turn to it.

You get a number of suggestions as to who Jesus was, what he was like, because as I indicated in the days when he was on earth, as today, the interesting issue of the time was, how do you explain this strange man who comes from the north of Palestine, or the north of Israel? And here's what the town people had to say. The folk with whom he grew up, in the third verse, they tell us that they know his family, Mary, they know his brothers, James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. They know of his sisters.

And what's more? They know he's just a carpenter. And that's the category in which they placed him. A carpenter.

When they focused in on Jesus, they saw him as an ordinary workman. And they were jealous, offended by him and his claims. Go down the chapter a little bit, and you come across a man called Herod, 14th verse, not the Herod of the Nativity story, but a man who was equally as cruel.

And he's in difficulty because he can't solve his conscience. Remember how in Lady Macbeth, Lady Macbeth says, Out damned spot. What does she mean? Well, there's something that she has done that she can't get out of her conscience.

And so she says, Out damned spot. Herod's like that. He's got a damned spot.

Something he's done. What has he done? Well, he slain John the Baptist. He had him murdered as a result of John's declaring that Herod's marital situation was invalid and that he was a sinner.

So Herod has John killed, but it seems as though Jesus has come back. And the only way you can interpret Jesus is by saying he's a prophet. He's John the Baptist come back, which is Herod's more sharpened version of who he thinks Jesus is.

A carpenter? A prophet? Later on in the same chapter, you find thousands of people in the company of Jesus, and they really do need a leader because we're told that they're like sheep without a shepherd. And they've been with Jesus for quite some while. They're not just like sheep without a shepherd, verse 34.

They are also a people without a king. And following the incident of the feeding of the 5,000, although it's not recorded in this particular account, it's there in John's gospel, they try to make him a king. They try to crown him.

So when they focus on Jesus, they say at home he's just a carpenter. They say in the court he's a prophet. And then here is a large number of folk who say he's a king.

And when you get to the end of the chapter, and it's a remarkable chapter in giving you some idea as to what they thought of Jesus, he's in the company of his disciples. They're in great difficulty, as we'll hear read more fully in just a little while. And it's nighttime, at least it's 3 o'clock in the morning, but it's still night as far as the darkness is concerned.

And these disciples are really in trouble on the Sea of Galilee. And walking on the water, can you believe it, coming towards them is an apparition. And they say he's a ghost.

Four categories into which Jesus is slotted. A carpenter, an ordinary working class man. A prophet.

A king. A ghost. And not one of those categories on its own is wrong.

And not one of those categories on its own is right. Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on the mountainside to pray.

When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night, he went out to them, walking on the lake.

He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out because they all saw him and were terrified. Immediately he spoke to them and said, Take courage, it is I. Don't be afraid.

Then he climbed into the boat with them and the wind died down. They were completely amazed for they had not understood about the loaves. Their hearts were hardened.

So you go to the extraordinary sixth chapter of the Gospel of Mark and you find there this fourfold option as to how you interpret Jesus. And when you look at all the suggestions, you know that there's not one that you're going to finish up overcomfortable with because the Lord Jesus really defies all definition. How do you describe something that is beyond description? A person who's wiser than the wisest, more compassionate than the most compassionate, more brave than the most dedicated soldier, one who comes from the most ordinary, in some degree, anonymous background, and yet does such remarkable work that he bisects history.

How do you categorize Jesus? I've had resort before now, theologically, believe it or not, to the film Mary Poppins. Some of you will remember it. How do you describe something that is more super than super itself? Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

When you look into this chapter, you find that each possible interpretation of Jesus is right as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. I mean, focus in on him as a man from Nazareth, from Capernaum. He is a carpenter, but he's more than just an ordinary carpenter.

As I tried to show you last week, he used wood and made yoke for oxen. At least I think you can deduce that from Scripture. But the Bible says of the people who came into contact with him and embraced what he had to teach, we are his workmanship.

He's actually used his expertise at the spiritual level as a carpenter on us. Now, the truth of the matter is, of course, that these people who said, wrote him off just as a carpenter, they weren't quite trying to be complimentary. They were jealous, jealous because of what had happened about his teaching, about the people who were impacted, about the miracles that he had done.

But you know what it is. Come from your ordinary city where people know you, and it's your contemporaries, it's your closest folk who don't really esteem you, and they wrote him off just a carpenter. He was, though, but more.

And when you go to what Herod had to say, you find that, once more, it's basically correct. The folk who were around in Herod's court were the people in the marketplace, were, in some senses, not far from the truth when they said, he's a liar, he's a prophet, like one of the prophets. And Herod isn't miles away from being accurate when he says, John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead.

I mean, Jesus wasn't literally, of course, standing in the place of John, but he was passing on. He was the inheritor. He wore the mantle of the ministry that John came to bring into the world As John was a prophet, so Jesus is a prophet.

But he's more than just a person who brings an ethical teaching that causes someone like Herod to be afraid. In fact, quite frankly, declaring my own interest, if Jesus is just an ethical teacher, I'm afraid. I can't cope with Jesus.

If Jesus has left me the Sermon on the Mount, then he's not given me much help because I can't keep the Sermon on the Mount. I need more than a carpenter. I need more than a good religious teacher, a prophet.

So, move on a little bit. The first offerings, one was put as a result of jealousy, and the other was put as a result of indignation and terror on the part of Herod. But here's Jesus in the company, as we've seen him during the whole of this series, the company of the disciples, and he always has them in mind because actually he's engaged in an educational process.

He is training the disciples who are his apprentices to go and to continue his ministry when he is no longer physically present. Now, you imagine that we had someone on the South Coast between Littlehampton, Worthing, and Lansing whose character was so dynamic in terms of the ministry that he had to proclaim that the whole towns went out to hear him because the population of Bethsaida, where Jesus now is at, is no more than 3,000. And we are told that 5,000 men.

Well, most congregations have twice as many women as men, but let's just lift it to 10,000 and let's put in the kids. You see, what I'm saying is that the Lord Jesus in the magnetism of his ministry compels an audience from people in the area where he was brought up as a boy. And they've listened to him for a long time.

And he's concerned because of their hunger, so he meets their needs. Now, with such a vast company of people, there's no way that they can see what's happening right in the center, at least not all of them. They'll be obscured by the person in front.

Jesus has got a handful of loaves and fishes, and divine multiplication occurs, and these loaves of fishes are so increased that the whole crowd is fed. That it has happened, they know. How it has happened, basically just the disciples are aware.

But because Jesus has met the needs of this people, not only in terms of what he's had to teach, but in terms of what he has had to give, there is a movement on to make him king. And if you asked who Jesus was, as far as this bunch here are concerned, they would say that he is the king. But you see, I need, and you need, a Jesus who is not enthroned simply because he can meet the needs of poverty, because he can fill the bellies of those who are hungry.

Both of these pursuits are honorable. And both of these callings, in a fashion the Lord Jesus fills. And as a result, they want to make him king.

But you see, if you again put together his role as a carpenter, literally understood or spiritually understood, you add it to his role as an ethical teacher, defined, if you like, sharpened as a prophet, and you add it to the sort of obedience that one would give to a king who is kindly and satisfies the hunger of folk, you still have not got a sufficient definition of this man Jesus. You might have got certain super aspects, but back to the film, you haven't got him a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. There's more.

There's more. Moving from the language of the cinema to the language of theology, you have not got an acceptable Christology. You haven't got a complete definition.

So you move on again. In this, as I say, remarkable chapter, which actually does help you to take a glass and focus in on Jesus. Now, he's successful in his ministry.

He has caused the townspeople to move out towards him in great numbers, and he wants to get away from the scene as soon as possible. And he doesn't want the disciples who are in on the secret, presumably to tell the people who want to make Jesus king, but with the wrong motivation, how it is that he fed them. So he sends the disciples away, and he dismisses the crowd.

The disciples get into the boat, and they go ahead of Jesus back to Bethsaida. And Jesus sends the crowd on his way, on their way. What does Jesus then do? He goes to the wilderness, where you find him on so many occasions in Mark's gospel.

When Jesus is in the wilderness, it's because he has an appointment with God, his Father. So here is Jesus. The multitude have gone, and over in the distance, on the Sea of Galilee, going into the horizon, are his bunch of disciples.

And we are told that they are on their own. He leaves them. He goes to pray.

He was alone on land, and the disciples are on the sea, straining in trouble. Now, stay with the disciples for a moment. You remember I said that the picture of them in the boat has been interpreted through church history as being symbolic, as representing ordinary people like you and me who follow Jesus.

Now, when Jesus is absent from the disciples in Mark's gospel, as you read it, up to the end of this sixth chapter and onwards, they're always in difficulty. Jesus absent, the disciples in problems. And one of the things that the Lord wishes of the disciples is to bring them to such a degree of maturity that when he is physically taken away from them, they will still be able to continue.

That's what he wants of you. That's what he wants of me. To find ourselves in danger as his disciple in the storm of temptation, but able to cope.

Now, these disciples, they discover that the weather is not just rough. It's horrible. It's a nightmare in terms of seafaring conditions.

And they're not making any progress, but they are hanging in there. You can't blame the disciples. The wind is against them.

And I want to say to those of you who are committed to Jesus, there will be times when you don't go forward, but just to hang in. The Lord is about all that you can do. So what does the Lord, because he has all knowledge and realizes the circumstances in which the disciples are placed, what does he do? Well, you see, here is where you run out of categories.

A prophet doesn't walk on water. A carpenter doesn't walk on water. Even Canute couldn't send the tide back.

So to say that Jesus is a carpenter, to say that he's a prophet, to say that he's a king, even though being correct descriptions at one level is not to say sufficient, because, well, he starts to move towards the disciples at three o'clock in the morning. He's walking on the water, and they see him. And they wonder, who is this person that has set out towards them? About the fourth watch of the night, he went out to them walking on the lake.

He is about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. So here's another little bit of definition of Jesus. And in one sense, it's right, isn't it? Great is a mystery of godliness.

I mean, there are things that Jesus can do. He represents something that is extra-human. He is a human being, but he's more than human.

He's son of man, but he's son of God. He's human, he eats. He's human, he sleeps.

He's human, he thirsts. But he walks on water. He multiplies loaves and fishes.

And he's just done that. And even the fact that this is recent and therefore well in the memory of the disciples, it's not 24 hours into history, they nonetheless can't appreciate of Jesus. That he has more than just an ordinary ability.

He is an extraordinary person. And as he starts to pass by, and we can appreciate their dilemma. They're terrified.

And they say, he's a ghost. It's a phenomenon. And in one sense, again, they were right.

And to be awestruck in this sort of condition is exactly the way in which we would have reacted. Here's Moses in Sinai, he's hiding in the cleft of the rock, and the glory of God passes by. And he's amazed.

Here is Elijah, and he has a similar sort of experience. He has what theologians call a theophany. He's into the mystery of God.

And the prophets react as these men react. As Jesus shows that he is more than just an ordinary man, he shows something of the transcendental nature of God. But why? Why does he pass by? Was it because, basically, he wishes to teach the disciples this? That though he is physically not in their boat, physically present in their circumstances, they still have no need to be afraid.

You see, Jesus physically absent does not mean Jesus uninvolved. So your life's partner walks out. The Lord Jesus doesn't walk out.

So you're in difficulty because your health starts to fail, and you're no longer, perhaps, as blessed with close friends as you used to be. But Jesus remains constant and available. You see, this is the Lord Jesus.

Call him friend, and you've got him in the right category, but then how do you define the quality of friendliness that he offers? Call him dependable, and you've got him in the right category, but he goes beyond your normal understanding of what dependability is. See him as a father who always demonstrates love towards his prodigal pig-smelling child. And again, you've got him in the right category, but what a father, what a parent, what a being is this person we call Jesus.

In the frailty, the disciples so arrest the attention of Jesus that he does stop. And the first thing he says to them is the thing that he echoes down history and speaks to all who are in trouble. Take courage.

It is I. Ego eimi is the Greek. You can translate it, take courage. I am that I am.

In the Old Testament, as I described this morning, sometimes the Jews looked upon the sea as being their enemy. And you can read in the Talmud how when the threatening white-crested wave is about to break on the bow of a ship, someone could stand up and in the name of I am, rebuke the spirit of the waves. And the claim is that the danger subsides.

And here is Jesus, more knowledgeable about the Talmud and Jewish folklore than you and me. And he speaks to these men. And he says, it is I. Fear not.

Then he climbs into the boat. The wind stops. They're completely amazed, even though they don't fully grasp the significance of what has happened.

My friends, don't you see that any category into which you place Jesus is bound to be only good as far as it goes, but will never be complete. He is more than you can ever say about him in terms of human language. And yet, as I close, think through the person of Jesus and his challenge logically.

I mean, in one sense, he is so ordinary. He never wrote a book. He never went to university.

He never traveled more than 120 miles from the place where he was born. He never married. He never did one of the hundred things that we generally associate with having had a full life.

And he dies prematurely at the age of 32 or three. And yet it's said of him that of all the armies that ever marched, of all the navies that ever sailed, of all the kings that ever reigned, of all the parliaments that ever ruled, all put together have not influenced the life of humanity more than this one person. Who is Jesus? He is the Lord of creation, who can still the storm and multiply loaves and fishes.

He is the Lord who can bring redemption, whose holiness is kept intact, and who on the cross of Calvary offers his life as a ransom for the sins that you and I have committed. This is Jesus. A carpenter and more.

A prophet and more. A king and more. Mysterious and more.

Put it all together and you're beginning to understand just a little of who he is. And the Bible will give you the most accurate answer when it tells you in summary fashion, in final form, that Jesus is Lord, the second person of the ever-blessed Trinity who became man, that you might benefit from his ministry, his life, his death, his resurrection. This is our Jesus on whom we focus our attention and to whom we give our love and our devotion.

Let's pray. I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus, the Nazarene, and wonder how he could love me, a sinner condemned unclean. Thank you, Lord, for coming.

Thank you, great Father, for sending your Son. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for opening our eyes and softening our hearts and giving to us this night an even greater appreciation than the disciples had at the point in which we read their reaction in these verses of Scripture. Thank you for whom we have come, for what we have come to know about our beloved Savior and enable us all to embrace him and to make him Lord of our lives.

Amen. Let's sing Jesus is Lord, which I think is 3-6-7. Sorry, my eyes are not focusing.

Is that right? 3-6-7. Let's stand and sing. Just before we go, please be seated for a moment and I'll pray.

You've had a copy or should have had of our notes and news giving you ideas as to what you could be involved in in terms of our church program this coming week. As I mentioned this morning, we have five prayer meetings and I'm looking for good attendances as our August program is quite busy. We need to bring it to the Lord.

And we'd like your company, if you can make it on Wednesday at what we fondly call our Bible School, which has been running now during all the years that I've been here and probably even before. So if you can be present on Wednesday, we'd be glad to see you. There's a prayer meeting for the Andrew Hansen family in Henneker Cook at 122 Shirley Drive tomorrow.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you again for all your goodness to us. We thank you for the amazing nature of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We thank you that he's your unspeakable gift, defying all descriptions, blowing every category. But we praise you for what we know of him and increasingly come to appreciate. Your Son, our Savior, always send us out in that glad knowledge for his sake to live for him.

Amen.