Who Is Jesus?

Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Matthew 16. Matthew chapter 16. Just for today, I want us to spend some time in Matthew chapter 16, verses 13 through 17. And I want us to just take the morning to just gaze upon Jesus Christ.

And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be, who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? To you.

If you were to survey people in our culture today and ask them this question, you would get maybe as many different answers to this question as people that you're asking. I don't know that throughout human history anyone has provoked a wider array of opinions about himself than Jesus Christ has. Maybe you're here today and you yourself don't even know for sure who it is that Jesus is. And we're going to allow him to direct us in that endeavor, this morning.

But if you were to ask people who is Jesus to you, you would get a variety of answers. some would say, I know Jesus is my homeboy. I've seen that, t-shirt around from time to time. I remember, a number of years ago, I was listening to a talk show.

On Easter Sunday, and the talk show host was, the topic for that hour was who was Jesus. And people were calling in with various theories as to who Jesus was. And there were some evangelical Christians that called in and said he was God incarnate. He was the Son of God.

And there was one caller who called in after a few Christians had called in. And he was very condescending about Christians, opinions of Jesus. And he says these evangelical Christians, it's just ridiculous believing that Jesus was the Son of God. That's just crazy.

And the talk show host said, Well, who do you think? Jesus was, and the guy said, Well, that's easy. He was an alien from outer space. And then went on to explain why he was persuaded that that was the rational thing to believe.

If you were to approach a Jehovah's Witness and ask him or her who Jesus, is, in fact, you don't even need to approach them, they will approach you. They will come to your doorstep as they have mine, and they are happy to tell you who they think Jesus is, and they would say he is not God. He is a God, according to their own translation of John chapter one, verse one. If you were to talk to a person of the Muslim faith, they would tell you in the Quran, it teaches that Jesus is a prophet of God, a great prophet of God.

He was born of the Virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life. He did, many miracles throughout his life. He even raised the dead in the Koran.

He is referred to as the Word of God. However, they would say that Jesus is not the Son of God, and to believe that he is the Son of God, to believe that he is the second member of the Trinity is not only wrong, but it's blasphemy. So there's a variety of opinions out there about Jesus, some of them high and some of them low opinions of, of him. Oprah Winfrey would profess to have a high opinion of Jesus, but she has said Jesus can't possibly be the only way to God.

Richard Dawkins, the anti-theist who is basically spending much of his life persuading people away from a belief in God. He does acknowledge that Jesus lived in human history, that he existed on the pages of human history, but his belief about Jesus is revealed in this statement. Jesus would have been an atheist if he had known what we know today. There are many other opinions.

John Lennon of Beatles fame said Jesus is alright. The Doobie Brothers, the great theologians of the past, said Jesus is just alright with me. Oh yeah. You'll be interested to know that even in the New Testament people were confused about who Jesus was.

he was hard to, to figure in Mark's Gospel, we learned that his own family members at one point thought that he had literally lost his senses, that he was a lunatic, that he had gone crazy. in Matthew 27, we learned that some of the religious leaders, they referred to him as that deceiver. So they viewed him as an outright liar. in Matthew 12 and John 8, some among the Jews, believed, and they even told Jesus, let us tell you our opinion about you.

You are a demon possessed man, and you do the miracles that you do by the powers of, of darkness. They also thought of him as an illegitimate child and as a half breed, as a Samaritan. You see these various opinions of Jesus showing up. in the gospel accounts, and even in our passage this morning, there were people who thought highly of Jesus.

and, but their opinion of him was that, well, maybe he's John the Baptist risen from the dead. Maybe he's Elijah, who has come back, maybe he's Jeremiah, who has come back, maybe he's some other prophet that is risen from the dead. we're not sure. He seems like a really good person, a great person, and has the power of God upon him.

So maybe he's one of these individuals, and if you read Matthew 11:3, you see that even John the Baptist, Who at one point pointed to Jesus and said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. There was a point later on, where John the Baptist was in prison, and he sent messengers to Jesus asking, Are you the one we've been waiting for? Or should we wait for someone else? He was wondering, in that moment, Who is Jesus?

Is he the Messiah? Or do we still wait for the Messiah to come? So this is a good question. Who is Jesus?

I would submit, That this is the most important question that any of us will ever ask. This is the most important answer that we will ever provide to any question. We can be confused about a lot of things, right? And we are confused about a lot of things, but we can't be.

About who Jesus is. If you're here today, and, maybe you're just seeking and investigating the Christian faith, and you've got a lot of questions like what about the Bible and doesn't science disprove the Bible? what about evolution? And how that conflicts with the creation accounts that we see in Genesis chapter 1 and 2 and how can a loving God send people to, to hell, on and on.

you may have some really great questions that you are asking, and I, I would never encourage you to ignore those questions. I would just encourage you to prioritize your questions and put this question at the top. This is the most important one. Who is Jesus?

You answer that question. You'll be able to reason from your answer to that question to some of the other questions that you may be asking. When I was 17 years old, I was raised in a Christian home. I was reading my Bible of all things one morning.

And as I'm reading the word of God, a doubt entered my mind. And the doubt was, what if this isn't true? And If the passage I was reading was not true, then that means that the Bible contains errors, and if the Bible contains errors, then it can't be trusted. And if it can't be trusted, then everything it says about how to live life and about Jesus and the way of salvation and the afterlife cannot be trusted either, and that sent me on a spiral of doubts for about 1.5 to 2 years.

And after I graduated from high school, I got a job making $3 an hour, which was below minimum wage at that time, which was $3.35 dollars an hour, just so how old I am. but I got a job at the Basic Inn Motel as a desk clerk working 11 at night to 7 in the morning, and for that 8 hour period I pretty much had about 7 solid hours to do nothing but read and research and study. And so I used that time to research the Christian faith, and I just told the Lord, Lord, if you exist, show me that you exist, and if you do, I'll give my life to you.

And I began reading and one of the books I read was Evidence That Demands a verdict by Josh McDowell, and I appreciated what he did in that book.

Basically he put before the reader, this question Who is Jesus and encouraged the reader to answer that question. And so I focused on that question, who is Jesus? And as I did so and found the answer to that question, to my satisfaction, I then began to reason from who Jesus is to the other questions that I was asking, and many of them got answered. And even those that I could not answer and probably still cannot answer, it gave me perspective on even those questions I did not fully have the answer to.

And so to make things simple, I would just encourage you to prioritize. Don't ignore the other questions, but answer this question first. Who is Jesus? If you're here today and you're a believer, don't say, Well, I guess this is just for those who don't know who Jesus is.

Actually, this is very much for us as followers of Jesus. It's interesting. that there's going to be a question asked. Jesus is going to ask some people, who do you say that I am?

And the people he asked that question of were his followers. So we need to be confronted with this question from Jesus, who do you say That I am. That's not just a question for those who are not believers in Him. And we can break this question down into two questions.

One of them is, who is Jesus in actuality? Who is he really in actual fact? And then the second question is, who is Jesus to me? See, there's some people, if you ask them who is Jesus, they'd give a factually wrong answer.

and we all know that I gave some examples of that, but then there are people that if you ask them who is Jesus, they would give a theologically correct answer. and feel good about that, but in the way that they live their lives from day to day, they indicate in practice that they view Jesus as someone less than what they would profess to believe him. To be, does that make sense? This happened even in Jesus' day in Luke chapter 6, verse 46, Jesus says, why do you call me Lord, Lord?

But you don't do what I say. You guys are professing the right thing about me, calling me Lord, that's good. That's accurate. But then you turn around and you don't do what I say.

And by your lifestyle, you are indicating that you really don't believe that I am Lord. You call me Lord, Lord, but I am not Lord to you in your life from day to day. I've been guilty of this. I want you to ponder this even in care group tonight.

Yes, I might say that I believe such and such about Jesus, and that's good and biblical. But by my actions and my attitudes, what am I really saying about who He is. If I say, yeah, he's my refuge, my strong tower. Well, do you ever run to him?

do you ever make use of that? Or by your lifestyle, do you indicate you really don't believe that he is a sufficient strong tower? I remember when I was in seminary, I was, eating breakfast with a brother in the Lord, and I was in a place of defeat. And I was complaining to him about how defeated I was and how discouraged I was in my battle against sin.

And this brother looked at me and just stopped me in my tracks, and he said, Milton, you are talking right now as if Jesus is your little sister. And what, he was right. He says, you talk about, you're talking as if Jesus is for you and he's cheering you on, but he just can't do anything to actually help you. Now I would have never said I believe Jesus is my little sister.

But the way I was living my life and the way I was talking betrayed the fact that yeah, that's what I was thinking at that point. So even if you're a believer, I want you to feel confronted by Jesus with the question, Who do you say that I am when you get up tomorrow morning to have him standing there by your bedside saying, Who do you say that I am today? When you face a temptation later today in that moment of temptation, look at Jesus and hear him say to you, who do you say that I am?

Hear him asking you that question again and again, and profess your answer to that question.

It's a lengthy introduction, but basically what we'll do is Jesus is, he's wanting to bring this to the forefront. of our thinking and we're just gonna observe three things that Jesus does to clarify this matter of his identity for his disciples and for us. The first thing he does is he asks his disciples what other people are saying about him. He wants to know, what as you disciples are interacting with other people and having conversations with them, what are you hearing?

What are people saying about me? Who are they saying that I am? And the disciples could have said, well, there's a lot of people that hate you, Jesus, and they think you're a liar, they think you're crazy, and so forth, but they don't really go there. they go to those that liked Jesus, and they thought highly of him.

And what the opinion of those individuals were. It says in verse 13, now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he began asking his disciples, saying, Who do people say that the Son of Man is? Who are people saying that I am? I want you to think about this right now.

Let's have a conversation about this. What are you hearing about me? And they said, Well, some say you're John the Baptist, and others, Elijah, but still others Jeremiah or one. Of the profits, let's ponder each of these briefly.

there were people in this day who looked at Jesus, saw his miracles, and thought, I know who he is. He's a great person. God's powers on him. He must be John the Baptist.

And that might seem weird for us, but if you read all of Matthew's Gospel, you will observe that John the Baptist is dead at this point of the narrative. And, Long story short, he got beheaded by King Herod because that's what his wife and His daughter asked for, and so he had him beheaded and his head handed to his daughter on a platter. Well, after that had happened, no doubt Herod felt guilty about that, and he began to hear news about this person called Jesus, who is teaching things and doing miracles, indicating that supernatural power is upon him.

And here is Herod with a guilty conscience that is plaguing him.

And it says this in Matthew 14. At that time Herod heard the news about Jesus and said to his servants, This is John the Baptist. He has risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him. This is John the Baptist, and he's come back from the dead, and that means I'm in trouble.

That's what he's saying. This is bad news for Herod, he has come back to haunt me. And no doubt Herod shared that. in fact, he's saying this to his servants.

He shares that with his servants, and no doubt they were spreading the word about Jesus to where there were enough people who had this opinion to where the disciples were able to say, well, some people Jesus say that you are John the Baptist. Now, having said that, to be confused with John the Baptist, is actually quite flattering. To anybody but Jesus, right? Jesus himself said in Matthew 11 that among those born of women, there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist.

If someone came up to me after a Sunday morning and said, Are you John the Baptist?, I would be honored by the fact that someone would mistake me for, for him. But obviously, as great of a man as John the Baptist was, this opinion of him falls short. of who Jesus really is. The disciples said though that there are others who say, That you are Elijah, Jesus.

and again, to be confused with Elijah would have been flattering to anyone except Jesus. Elijah was known to be the greatest among all of the prophets, throughout Israel's history, so great that he never died. He went up to heaven in a chariot of fire. And the Jews expected him to, return one day and even in the book of Malachi.

the last book of the Old Testament is prophesized that Elijah would return to prepare the way for the Lord, that he would be a forerunner to the coming of the Messiah. So again, for people to think that Jesus was Elijah was basically to say we like him, we love him, we think very highly of him. But he is not the Messiah. He is merely the forerunner to the Messiah.

And then this might seem odd to you, but there were people, the disciples are saying here who were saying that Jesus was Jeremiah. Jeremiah was one of the prophets of Israel. He occupied a curious place in the thinking of the Jewish people at this particular time. it was stated in a book called 2 Maccabees.

That before the Babylonians came in and took Judah captive, that Jeremiah went into the temple. He went into the Holy of Holies, and he took the Ark of the Covenant and the altar of incense, and he had those items taken out and he hid them in a cave under Mount Nebo. We don't know if that's true or not. It very well may be true.

We don't know, but this is what people believed during the day. It was in the literature. This time and because of that, there were many Jews who believed that before the Messiah came back or before the Messiah came, that Jeremiah would return and he would take the Ark of the Covenant and the altar of incense, and he would restore those items to their rightful place in the temple. And when Jeremiah returned and did that, everyone would know what's next.

The Messiah is coming. When you look at these three opinions of Jesus, as flattering and honoring as these opinions are of him, they all fall short. And basically what they all have in common is this, that as great as Jesus is, he is not the ultimate. He is the penultimate.

That's a big word, but let me just explain that real quickly. when you're speaking of words and syllables, the ultimate syllable is the last syllable. The penultimate syllable is the one before the last, OK, and so what these opinions of Jesus reflect is that he's not the ultimate. He is the syllable, as it were, before the ultimate.

He is not the ultimate end. He is merely a stage or a means to a greater end or a greater one. that we are looking for. The Jews of this day had a view of what the Messiah would be like, and Jesus is not fitting in with their stereotype, their expectation of what the Messiah would be and do when he came.

And so they're thinking he's not the Messiah. He must be someone who is coming before the Messiah. There's one other opinion that the disciples point out, and that is, they tell Jesus that some believe that you are one of the prophets. And what that means is one of the Old Testament prophets, when you compare this with Luke's account of the same conversation, and Luke 9:19, the disciples are saying that people think that you're one of the prophets of old who has risen again.

So you're not just a prophet, but You're one of the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah, or whomever, that's actually has risen from the dead and you are back and doing miracles and teaching and, and preaching. So Jesus is, trying to draw the disciples in focusing on who He is and to answer this all important question. And he begins by just asking them in your conversations with other people, who are people saying that I am? And they give him some of these answers that they are hearing from others.

Jesus then looks at the disciples, and he asked them point blank who they believed that he was. That's the second thing Jesus does to clarify this matter of his. Identity. And that is he asked his disciples what they themselves were saying about him.

And Matthew 16 says, then he said to them, but who do you say that I am? The way Jesus does this is phenomenal to me, and if I can just take a moment, like, Every one of us ought to feel the gaze of Jesus upon us, and he's asking us, who do you say that I am? Like young people, you may be 6 years old, 9 years old, 11 years old. At the end of the day, Christ is going to ask you, who do you say that I am.

He's not going to want to know what your parents said. But who do you say that I am? Even right now, he's asking you, who do you say that I am? You say, well, my mom and dad are saying, no, no, no, that's not what I'm asking.

Who do you say that I am? Who am I? To you All of us in this room are being confronted with that question right now through the preached word. And so he's asking them, who do you say that I am?

Now, in part, Jesus is saying right now, tell me who you say that I am. But this could also be translated. Who are you saying that I am? pointing back to the interactions that the disciples were having with people, and people are saying, yeah, I think he's Jeremiah or John the Baptist.

And the disciples are saying to Jesus, yeah, that's what they're saying that you are. And then Jesus, it could be translated as saying to them, well, who are you saying that I am when you're talking to these people? Who are you telling them that I am? But at the very least, he's asking them to quantify and give expression to their view of him.

And so verse 16, by the way, when he says, who do you say that I am, that word you is plural. Who do you guys say that I am? He's wanting to know what they, the disciples were thinking about him. And I emphasize that because when Simon Peter provides an answer, he's answering for all of them.

This is not just he doesn't say, Well, here's what I say that you are. I don't know about these other guys. He's saying, No, this is Who we are saying that you are. Simon Peter answered, and here's his answer, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Wow. And saying to Jesus, you are the Christ. Now keep in mind they've been hanging out with Jesus for 3 years now. They've seen Him.

In a variety of situations. they have seen him tired, they've seen him weary, they've seen him thirsty, they've seen him in the midst of the storm in the Sea of Galilee. They've seen him asleep on, on the cushion in the midst of that storm. They've seen him in some very high pressure situations.

they know him, they have watched him, and after being with him for three years, for them to say, we know exactly who you are. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. What person must Jesus have been to engender that conclusion? About him.

I'll tell you, if you hung out with me for 3 years. And at the end of 3 years, I said, Who do you say that I am? I don't even want to know what you might say. you can talk to my wife, she can give you ideas of what to say.

She's been with me for 33 years of, of our life. But 3 years with Jesus, almost 24/7 in many cases. And this is the conclusion that they come to about him. You are the Christ.

The word Christ is the Greek word. That is the translation for the Hebrew word Messiah or meshiach. And a meshiach is an anointed one. That's literally what Christ and meshiach mean.

It's someone who has been anointed, and what they're saying is you are the anointed One. You are the Messiah that we and the people of Israel have been waiting for. You're not fitting with a lot of our expectations of what we thought the Messiah would do when he came. But we know, Jesus, that you are the anointed Messiah.

There's a lot of passages we can look at. Let me just point you to one to give you an idea of what the people of Israel were looking forward to with the coming of the Messiah. It speaks in Psalm 2 of the Anointed One of God's Messiah. And here's what Jehovah says about his Messiah to the people of Israel and to all of the nations, I have installed my King.

You are my Son today, I have begotten you. That's his coronation day as King. And then Jehovah says to his anointed one, ask of me, and I will surely give you the nations as your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as your possession. You shall break them.

With a rod of iron, you shall shatter them as earthenware. And then to all of the nations, all of the peoples around the world, the message is kiss the sun, pay homage to the sun. Worship the Son, lest he become angry and you perish in the way for his wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him.

You can make quite a list just from Psalm 2 of the expectations and thoughts that were associated with the Messiah. He is to be a king installed by Jehovah. He will be the Lord and the possessor of all of earth. He will judge the world.

He is to be the deserving recipient of our homage that we pay to him the world over, and he is the one in whom we must find shelter, safety, salvation, refuge, whatever word you want to use. And Peter looks at Jesus and says, You're the one. You're the one. You're not some forerunner.

We're not waiting for another. You're not some means to a greater end. You're not penultimate. You are the ultimate.

You are the one we've been waiting for. You are the one that Jehovah has anointed to be our king and to be our judge and to be our Savior, to be the one in whom we find safety, salvation, and refuge. I know who you are, Jesus. We know who you are.

You are the Christ, the anointed One. The sun. Of the living God. We don't have time to develop that expression, but just know that in the ancient Near East, the title Son of God was a royal title that was bestowed upon kings on their coronation day.

You even see that alluded to in Psalm 2. Today I have begotten thee. You are my son today. I have begotten you.

And for a king on his coronation day, that was his birthday as a son of God. And so even in scripture, you have references to the Messiah as the sun. That's a royal title in Romans 1:4, I believe. Paul tells us that Christ was declared to be the Son of God with power through the resurrection from the dead.

That was his coronation day as King, as Messiah, and he says, You are the anointed One. And then he just simply restates it, the Son of the living God. That's a royal title. You are the King, the King, the Son of not just God, but the living God, the God who lives and in describing God as a living God, he's not just saying he's the God who is alive, but the God who is at work, the God who is moving, the God who is stirring right now.

Living water was water that was in motion. As opposed to static, you are the son of the god who is stirring right now, and he is working, and he is on the move, and we see that in you. And so Peter confesses this. You are the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of the God who stirs, the God who is at work, the God who moves and who's moving right now, and we are blessed to be your followers.

Peter is saying on behalf of himself and the other disciples, Well, we hear Peter say this, and the question we ask is, did he get it right? if we've never read this before, we would say, OK, some say Jeremiah, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah or some other prophet risen from the dead, but Peter, He is saying on behalf of the disciples, you're the anointed One, the Son of the living God. Is that the right answer? Well, Jesus' response makes it clear that it is the right answer.

And that's the third thing that Jesus does to clarify his identity, for his disciples and us, and that is he affirmed his disciples' confession of Him as the Christ. look at this, and Jesus said to him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah. Bar Jonah is just Aramaic, Bar means son, Jonah means John. So he's just saying, Blessed are you, Simon, son of John.

And guys, if you're ever talking to Jesus and he asks you a question and you give an answer and He says, Blessed are you. And he uses your full name. That's a good indication you've given the right answer. Blessed are you, he says, Simon, son of John.

In fact, it's intriguing to me, the comparison of what Peter has said to what Jesus says here. Jesus says, who do you say that I am? And Peter says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus replies by saying, Peter, you are blessed, Simon, the son of John.

Let me tell you who you are, Peter. See, when we come to Jesus, and we discover who he is, Then through him we discover who we are. And we let him tell us that. He says, Peter, while we're in this moment, let me tell you who you are.

And what you look like through my eyes. You are blessed. You are blessed. This word blessed means you're enviably privileged.

this idea speaks of someone who is in such a privileged position that someone who is a third party, someone is so blessed by God that a third party would look in at that person's privileged status and envy them. And what Jesus is saying to Peter, you've given the right answer, and you are. In an enviably privileged position. You are so blessed.

And then he says, and I'll tell you why you're not just blessed, but you're blessed because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. So let's just call this blessed because all of us who know the Lord, we could say we are not just blessed, but we're blessed because You are blessed, Peter, because you did not get your view of me from men. You're blessed because you didn't just conduct a survey. And find out what everyone else says.

And then whatever the majority said, you came to that conclusion that well, everyone is saying this who Jesus who Jesus is. So this is who I believe him to be. If you just follow what everyone else says, you will not be blessed. Peter, you're blessed because you did not get your view of me from men.

He's also telling Peter, you're blessed because you got your view of me from my father. And at the end of the day, that's the only opinion of Jesus that really matters. Amen. What does God the Father think?

of Jesus and through his miracles, the Father was testifying and screaming a message of approval of Jesus Christ that he is the one that I have anointed to be the king and the Judge and the savior. Of all who find refuge in him. He's also telling Peter, you're blessed because my father chose to show you the right way to view me. You're blessed.

By the way, Jesus would say the same thing to you if Him. If you say I know who you are, Jesus, you're The Messiah, the Son of the living God, he wouldn't say, You are smart. You are wise. You're so much smarter than everybody else.

No, he would say, you're blast. You're not smart, you're just blessed. This ought to humble us. when we're seeing the way other people believe and think as we interact with them and their crazy notions about Jesus, and they get it wrong.

that's not the time to pat ourselves on the back and say, man, they just don't get it. They just don't get it. It's just so obvious. How can they miss this?

Jesus would say, no. The only reason you get it, it's not because you're smarter than anybody else, it's because my Father in His grace chose to reveal this to you. This is supernaturally known. Supernaturally disclosed.

It's not something that people arrive at. Based on their own smarts. If you're here this morning, you may have your own idea of what the blessed life is, man. If I could just have this car and this house, and if I could have this girl or this guy and this many children, if I could just attain to such and such a weight and body shape and body type and physical fitness and this much money or whatever.

That's the blessed life, then I'll really be blessed. Peter. Or Jesus looks at Peter and says, no, you're blessed, simply because you got this question right. Jesus knows he's staring into the eyes of a guy who at the end of his life is going to get crucified upside down, because of his belief that he's just confessed to.

From an earthly standpoint, people would look at Peter and his life and the suffering he endured all the way to the end of his life and say that guy is not blessed, but Jesus says, no, you're blessed. If you have nothing, if you have nothing, Except me and an understanding of me. You are truly blessed. The blessed life is found in Jesus.

Let me close with this. If you go to verse 20. So I'm sure Peter's like, Whoa, bingo, this is the right answer. And we're believing the right thing about Jesus.

Let's go tell the world about him. Verse 20 then Jesus warned his disciples that they should tell no one that he was the Christ. He's saying, keep this under your hats for right now. Later, he's going to tell them, go into all the world and make this known, but At this time, because there were so many wrong notions about the Messiah.

It would not have been a good thing for word of this to get out. About Jesus, but at this point in time, Jesus as the Messiah, that's something that the Father was disclosing supernaturally to those whose hearts were truly open to him. Who is Jesus? He's the anointed one.

He is the Son of the living God. Is that your conclusion about him? You might think that's an easy conclusion to arrive at. But as we close, just think about this, to conclude that Jesus is the Messiah, is to conclude that you need one.

To conclude that he's the anointed One is to conclude that you're not the anointed one. There's a lot of people walking around who think they're the Anointed One, who are going to get themselves to heaven. I know how I'm going to get to heaven. I know how I will get God's righteous verdict on my life.

I will live in such and such a way and look at all these things that I have done. They would never say it this way. But what they're really saying is, I am the anointed One. I am my own savior, my own Messiah.

To believe in Jesus as the Messiah is to embrace the fact that you are not, that you are a terrible Messiah, and that you need a Messiah. To believe in him as your savior is to acknowledge that you need one, you need to be saved from your sins, to acknowledge that he is your ruler, is to acknowledge that you need someone to govern your life. And to rule your life that you will submit to, to believe in Him as your refuge is to embrace the fact that you need. A refuge.

And I hope that all of us who know him will embrace him, embrace this question that he is asking us, that we will, even in the days of this coming week, feel confronted and loved by this question. Who do you say that I am? Maybe later this week you're fretting over something, you're upset, you're angry. Just stop and hear Jesus say, Who do you say that I am?

Let's, let's start there. That's not just the most important question for nonbelievers. It's the most important question for us as believers from day to day to settle that. And then reason from that to whatever it is that we are dealing with.

If you're here today, and you've never embraced Jesus as the one that the Father has anointed to be your Savior, I call upon you to agree with God the Father, and to look to Jesus and say, you are the Savior for me. Let's pray together God has touched your heart in any way, if there's any way we can pray for you, encourage you, come alongside of you, Just let us know that on the back of the connection card. That is in your bulletins and then feel free in a minute or two to put that in the offering bag as it goes by this morning.

And if you want to talk to anybody about, Jesus and how you can know more about Him and what does it mean to believe in Him.

Please come and talk to me. Talk to anyone. Just about anyone in this room about that and, and we'll be happy to help you in this room, we're all a bunch of broken sinners that have come to Jesus as our anointed Messiah, and we're finding salvation in him. Lord Jesus, we thank you for who you are and for revealing yourself to us the way that you have.

We pray, Lord, that, that you would help us to embrace this question and, and have a ready answer, and then be ready to think from the answer to that question to whatever it is that we find ourselves dealing with from day to day that we might glorify you, and may we go forth from here and to announce to others who you are. In spite of what others may say that we say, no, here's who the Father says that he is. Here's who Jesus really is, and may we proclaim you Jesus, throughout our spheres of influence.

And leave the results to you and asking you, Father, to enlighten them to see what you have enlightened us to see that you, Jesus, are indeed the Christ.

Make us more faithful, more passionate messengers for you, Jesus. We thank you for your giving of yourself to us at the cross so that we might have our sins forgiven. And be made right with God. We thank you for the opportunity that we had to give up our offerings to you, Lord, and to worship you through our giving of a portion of what you have blessed us with, Lord, take the funds that are given in this offering and use every penny for the spread of this great message of Jesus Christ.

The anointed One, the Son of the living God. And we give ourselves to you at the same time, Jesus, and all God's people said, Amen.