“Getting Past the Jesus Question”

One of the dimensions of pastoral life that I really enjoy is working with little children. One of the things I have done for years now is to keep a bowl of candy on my desk, and the children of the church know that if they can answer a Bible question, they can get a piece of candy. If they are too young to answer a question, they know they can just give me a hug and then get the candy.

Several weeks ago, one of the young boys came up to me and said, “Pastor, can I try to get past the Jesus question?” What he meant by that was, “Can I try to answer the Bible question so I can get a piece of candy,” but what came out of his mouth was this amazing statement that perfectly expresses the sentiment of much of humanity. “Can I try to get past the Jesus question?”

Jesus has a tendency to make people feel uncomfortable. If you don’t believe me, bring Him up tomorrow morning when you go to work. Just watch what happens to the conversation. One of the reason people are uncomfortable with Jesus is because He makes unequivocal, categorical statements. This doesn’t sit well in a culture that holds diversity as a preeminent value. We see a good example of Jesus’ categorical speech in John 14:6 when he says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” If you are of the persuasion that there are many different paths to God, each of them equally valid, you are going to be very uncomfortable with Jesus because Jesus says “there is only one way to God.”

This truth is taught in Acts 4:12 as well when Peter makes this assertion. “There is salvation in no one else [talk about a categorical statement]; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved." People of the mindset that there are many different paths to God are the ones who say, “Pastor, can I try to get past the Jesus question?”

Another reason Jesus makes people uncomfortable is because He has such high expectations of His followers. I had a guy in my youth group once who went to West Point. After several months, he had his first weekend leave, and he was telling me what life was like as a cadet, and after the conversation I could see why so few people aspire to go to West Point! I knew things were regimented, so I asked him if he had a rule book he had to follow. He chuckled and told me he had three, three ring binders, that regulated every dimension of his life! West Point and our other military colleges have very high expectations of their students because they are training the leaders of our armed forces.

In the same way, Jesus has very high expectations of His followers. Listen as I read this passage from Luke 14, and as we go through it, note how much Jesus expects of us if we decide to follow Him. Now great multitudes were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, 26 "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. [Jesus does not use the word “hate” the way we do. He is using it in a comparative way, not an emotional way. What Jesus is after in this verse is that when we compare our devotion to Jesus with our devotion to our family, our devotion to Jesus is so consuming that our devotion to our family looks like hatred.] 27 "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. [Condemned criminals carried their own cross to the place of their execution.] 28 "For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? 29 "Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' 31 "Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and take counsel whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 "Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks terms of peace. 33 "So therefore, no one of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.

Is it safe to say that Jesus has extremely high expectations for His followers? Jesus doesn’t want nominal adherents. It is curious to me that the people in the NT that are spoken the most highly of are people who we would consider rash, or excessive, or even imbalanced. Take for example the widow in Mark 12. In verse 41 we read that Jesus “sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the multitude were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums. 42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent. 43 And calling His disciples to Him, [Jesus] said to them, "Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; 44 for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on." How much sense does that make? Or how about the actions of Mary of Bethany in Mt. 26:6-13? “Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper, 7 a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume [300 denarii, according to Mk. 14, was about one year’s salary for a rural worker of that day - does anybody here have perfume that cost them a year’s wages?], and she poured it upon His head as He reclined at the table. 8 But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, "Why this waste? 9 "For this perfume might have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor." 10 But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, "Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me. 11 "For the poor you have with you always; but you do not always have Me. 12 "For when she poured this perfume upon My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial. 13 "Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done shall also be spoken of in memory of her." The people in the NT who are the most highly spoken of, like the widow and Mary of Bethany, are people we would consider to be rash or excessive, but Jesus has high expectations of His followers, which often causes us to be uncomfortable. Knowing what Jesus expects of us often causes us to wonder how we can get past the Jesus question.

Another reason Jesus makes people uncomfortable is because deep down in our hearts we all know that we are accountable for how we live. God created humanity with an inborn sense of right and wrong. You can go to the most primitive tribe on the face of our globe, and they will have a code of behavior they live by. It may be barbaric by our standards, but there are lines they have drawn that the tribe has to live within. And when you cross the line, you will suffer the consequences. This sense of right and wrong is based logically on the concept of accountability. In other words, if there were nothing outside of us that was compelling us to live within the boundaries, we wouldn’t! That is the concept behind accountability, and in Acts 10:42 we read the testimony of the Apostles who say, “And He [Jesus] ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One [Jesus] who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead.” One of these days, every human who has ever lived will stand before Jesus the Judge. In Matt. 25:32-33 we read, "And all the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.” Jesus will divide His followers from those who rejected Him. In Ps. 98:9 we read that “He is coming to judge the earth; He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.” This is why Jesus makes so many people uncomfortable. Down deep we all know that we are ultimately accountable for how we live.

The final reason I’d like to share with you about why Jesus makes us uncomfortable is that Jesus makes some preposterous claims. How many of you have ever been in a group setting where a person is telling a story that everybody knows either isn’t true or is greatly embellished? I was sitting in my dorm room one evening with some friends when my roommate started telling an amazing story of how he made a fabulous dunk in the final seconds of a basketball game and they won the championship. Now the problem with this story is that my roommate was amazingly un-athletic. He fancied himself to be quite the athlete, but he wasn’t even six feet tall, he was quite chubby, and was a severe asthmatic! So as he is telling this story, which we all know is preposterous, an embarrassed silence filled the room while we all painfully waited for him to get it over with.

That is the nature of preposterous claims. They set us on edge a little bit. We get nervous and want to change the topic. So when Jesus says in John 10:17, “I lay down My life that I may take it again, no one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again,” this kind of claim doesn’t sit very well with many people. We see another of these claims in John 11:25. “Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die." Or how about this claim in Matt. 16:21. “From that time Jesus Christ began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.” Really now! When many people are confronted with the claims of Jesus, they awkwardly remain silent and just wish the conversation could head in a different direction. That is the nature of preposterous claims. Or to put it like the little boy, “Can I try to get past the Jesus question?”

I realize that most of the people I am speaking to this morning have not tried to evade the Jesus question. You have a very clear understanding of the exclusivity of Christ, and you have accepted that. You have submitted yourself to the high expectations He has for his followers, and you have accepted his claims to not only die to pay for your sins but also to rise from the dead in demonstration of his power over death.

But what about those of you here who would rather not talk about these things? You are uncomfortable with Jesus being the only way to God, you squirm a little bit when you think about what Jesus expects of His followers, and you are skeptical of His claims to have risen from the dead. Let me challenge you to stop trying to get past the Jesus question and face up to it.
On Sunday morning we are celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This is not myth, this is not wishful thinking, this is not an elaborate hoax that has been passed down for generations. This is a truth that has a tremendous amount of both biblical and secular historical proof. And when Jesus rose from the tomb after three days, his resurrection made it possible for you to experience eternal life.