DaVinci Code Series #5

Answering the Code – Who is Jesus? - Part 2

Dan Brown's best-seller, The DaVinci Code, is kicking up controversy. An unintended side effect is to help him sell the book! A few of you have told me that you wouldn’t have paid much attention to the book, except that I’ve been talking about it here! Yet, I feel compelled to speak to the erroneous material which the book presents as ‘facts.’

One person wrote me this week to thank me for this series of messages.

She said, “I thought at first that this series was just drawing attention to the book and did not really want my "mind" to go there, I know a little church history and I thought it was just review stuff, but I listened with an open heart and mind. Then that week Jehovah's Witnesses came to my house, and I used some of what you said, I was ready for them....

I have a close friend for over 25 yrs who claims to be "a non-practicing Catholic" and we go back and forth with the Word , who wrote it and so forth. I have given him The Case for Christ, The Message and he has never even read them. His conversations exhaust me but I have never given up on him. I forwarded him 2 of your TFTD's "Fact or Fiction" and the one where you quoted C.S. Lewis on Christ being a teacher, etc. and I think the truth is finally starting to break through to him....Our last conversation, he kept saying everyone thinks their way is the Truth and I said but Jesus said, He is the WAY, the Truth and the Life!, and that is what you preached on Sunday! I ordered the cd for him.

... So, just wanted to let you know, your words, your preaching on this subject is useful, and necessary. We all need to be equipped with knowledge of the "sword of the Spirit", not just for ourselves, but for all the "non-practicing" people out there who need to hear the "Divinity Code"!”

I am going to stay with this theme again today. It is important that we are grounded in the Scripture’s truth!

I ask -  Who is the person, Jesus Christ, that captures our attention?

            Is His life important to us for reasons other than His place in our cultural and social values?

Dallas Willard observes,

“Very few people today find Jesus interesting as a person or of vital relevance to the course of their actual lives. He is not generally regarded as real-life personality who deals with real-life issues but is thought to be concerned with some feathery realm other than the one we must deal with now. And frankly, he is not taken to be a person of much ability. He is automatically seen as a more or less magical figure– a pawn, or possibly a knight or a bishop, in some religious game.” The Divine Conspiracy

Is Jesus Christ a person of relevance to our lives?

Many people today unconsciously tend to dismiss many ideas as quaint, out-dated, or ridiculous just because they were not first conceived in the last one hundred years! A kind of smug arrogance colors our thinking. At the end of the 19^th century, Christianity fell under the assault of theologians who were spell-bound by scientific discoveries and ideas that were beginning to radically change the way people understood their world. The faith had always had detractors that attacked from the outside of the Church, but the attack one hundred years moved into the church herself, beginning in the seminaries of Europe. Eventually a German theologian, Frederich Nietzsche, declared that God was dead, not literally intending that anyone think that God has passed away, and that His funeral was scheduled!

He was declaring that humanity had outgrown the need for a deity. We had become gods in ourselves. Nietzsche believed that we could become supermen by exercising our will to power and he asserted that humans must learn to live without their gods or any other metaphysical consolations.
 

This thought is repeated in The DaVinci Code. On pages 267-268 - the character of the novel. Leigh Teabing, who is the scholar, the teacher, says -

“We are currently in an epoch of enormous change. The millennium has recently passed and with it has ended the 2,000 year long astrological Age of Pisces - the fish, which is also the sign of Jesus. As any astrological symbologist will tell you, the Piscean ideal believes that man must be told what to do by higher powers because man is incapable of thinking for himself. Hence it has been a time of fervent religion.

Now, however, we are entering the Age of Aquarius - the water bearer- whose ideals claim that man will learn the truth and be able to think for himself. The ideological shift is enormous, and is happening right now.”

Amazingly, many people think that is true! Humanity has outgrown the need for God to show them the way of life. They are ready to throw off God as the Way, Jesus Christ as the Truth. Most are not ready to become declared atheists insisting that humanity has out-grown the need for the Divine. However, deeply influenced, often unconsciously, by the secular mind of our age Christianity is being rewritten into something less than God means it to be.

Jesus has been re-defined as a legendary Teacher, an ethical Master. For most people, even those who claim to be Christian He is not the commanding Lord of Life, the One who is the Judge of all, the Ultimate Truth.

This is reflected by the readiness of so many to accept a work of fiction called The DaVinci Code, as accurate in both history and theology. We love Jesus, the man, gentle, meek, and mild. We love the Jesus who held the little children and blessed them, who fed the 5,000 on the hillside overlooking Galilee, but the Jesus Christ, Lord of Glory, that reveals His majesty in the book of the Revelation... He is dismissed as an invention of men, as a tool of those seeking power or status.

But, in redefining Jesus Christ to meet our own intellectual pretensions we are dismissing the Bible and the authority claimed for it. Listen to what Peter says about the Gospel stories:   2 Peter 1:16-21

We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

19 And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
 

Peter recognized that people would scoff at the claims that God had come to earth to live among us and that He would return to establish His Kingdom. Skepticism is not the province of this time alone. So he says, “we did not follow cleverly invented stories.” The Message says, “we weren’t just wishing on a star...”

The Gospels are stories that are full of wonder.

• The story of Jesus’ life begins with angelic announcements to a peasant girl who then delivers a baby without being impregnated by a man.

• It continues with accounts of miracle feedings, amazing healings, astonishing wisdom, a tragic death, and a resurrection from the dead.

No collection of myths has anything over the Gospels when it comes to content that challenges the world as we know it. What’s the difference?

The Gospel writers assert that they are making a truthful account, creating an historical record, not making up collection of religious fables! They told us the account of a real person that came with a mission of unbelievable proportion and scope. They never said they were recounting a fable for the moral lessons contained!

Why should we believe the Gospels’ record of the life of Jesus?

A. Peter says, “We were eye-witnesses to the work of Jesus Christ!”

They are ‘first person’ stories! They weren’t reported speculative stories. They weren’t theorizing about what might have been, could have been, or should have been. They lived with Jesus. They talked with Jesus. They saw the unbelievable happen right before their eyes.

We give much more credence to an eyewitness than we do to hearsay.

So why should we dismiss the accounts of Peter, John, Matthew, and others? Telling their stories brought incredible difficulties to them, eventually costing everyone of them their lives, but they never recanted. Only the truth has that kind of lasting power.

B. Peter tells us that he heard GOD endorse Jesus Christ’s work.

Peter returns in his memory to the Mount of Transfiguration where James, John, and he heard the voice of God speak audibly. “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” The experience made a profound impression on Peter! Did he waver? Yes. Did he doubt? Yes, when tested at the Crucifixion, when he simply could not grasp the plan of God, he lost faith for a time. But when he saw the Resurrected Lord, Peter put it all together and from that moment gave his life to spread the word, “The Christ has come bringing Life and He is the King of Kings.” Knowing full well that many would find this story a tall tale, Peter underscores his place as an eyewitness saying, “We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.”

I am compelled by the eye-witness accounts of Jesus’ life and work. I am impressed by God’s own testimony concerning Jesus Christ!

Let me close by exploring quickly what Jesus’ mission was and why we cannot ignore Him.

The very heart of Christianity is the Cross of Christ!

That is also the most offensive part to many moderns. The Cross is the symbol of the central work of Christ, the place where God and human were reconciled. John says, {1 John 2:1-2 (NIV)} “...we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

The Bible is very clear about the universal need of human beings. That need is not met with more food, with clean water, or even with a safe place to live. Those certainly are important parts of our daily lives, but the one problem that is common to every person - regardless of sex, age, race, economic status, or education - and it is the problem of sin! Romans says it starkly - “All have sinned; all fall short of God’s standard.”

Many people who are ready to acknowledge that people sin, that they miss the high standard of God, propose a ‘new’ solution that is not about a sacrifice. Instead, they propose that better education, more economic opportunity, greater human rights, and even legislation to regular human behavior as the remedy for human failures and sins. Even some theologians are suggesting that modern humans are so far removed from blood sacrifices that the whole idea that Jesus Christ died as the sacrifice for sin, once for all time and all people, is now irrelevant!

In this, these so-called ‘wise men’ steal from us the majesty of Christianity, the glory of the Cross!

“My faith is built on nothing less,” the hymn says, “than Jesus’ blood and righteous!” This is solidly Biblical. Paul, John, Peter, and Luke join in speaking of the importance of Christ’s death on the Cross as the means of taking away the sins of the world!

There are many who teach us better ways to live, to relate to each other, to work at overcoming our tendencies to do wrong. There is only One who bridges the gap that sin opens between us and the Perfectly holy God of Heaven! His Name is Jesus!

Like it or not, becoming right with God cannot be accomplished in any way other than by the Sacrifice of Christ.

Prior to Christ, God gave His people a system of sacrifice that was temporal, annually renewed, that gave them

relief from sin, for a time. But listen to what He says of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ- {Hebrews 10:9-12 (NIV)}