“The Case for Christ - Learning the Truth of Jesus Christ”
                     (part 17)      

What a scandal! 

A Jewish unmarried maiden of Biblical days was pregnant!

How shocking!

One of the problems the society may have had with Mary’s predicament was that they could not have seen how such a thing was possible.

Even if Mary did, or could have, explained the cicumstances surrounding her conception through the power of the Holy Spirit, how would such an unbelievable story be accepted?

It was hard to acknowledge the truth of it!

But - do you know what was even more scandalous than Mary’s predicament?

The ultimate scandal - the ultimate shock - really is that God - the Most holy One, the All-righteous One - would enter humanity at all, especially in the form of a helpless  child!

He came in such lowliness - He concealed His eternal majesty but - it was in this way that He could identify Himself with all those with whom He would do His divine work.

Unbelievable, unthinkable, so far-fetched and inconceivable that He should come at all - is it not?

It is a divine mystery of God’s love!

It is hard to grasp!   

Let us face the fact - it has always been hard, and just as difficult now, to acknowledge the truth of God’s Word!

The world, in general, still suffers from the same spiritual
malady as it did in Mary’s day: how can the fact of Jesus Christ be explained to anyone?

The written record, the Scriptures that we have before us today, is still the cause of man’s current consternation!

If it had been written by just one or two historians recording historical events, perhaps we could ignore their accounts on the basis of ‘biased opinions’.

But because the Incarnation was prophesied centuries earlier by various men, and then witnessed by the New Testament writers, we must be reasonable and unbiased in our assessment of God’s truth in Christ and investigate with open minds. 

I was quite amused by a short newspaper article this past week in which the author answered the question of how to reduce political bias.

Her solution was well crafted: (I quote) '...it is way easier to feel than it is to think, regardless of one's intelligence. To help remedy that situation..., I have a suggestion: Every American should try to spend some time providing volunteer help to...[his opposite political party]...doing the routine administrative tasks...while surrounded with the 'opposition', we should take time to listen...to know more about them...and their principles...be sure to keep your mind open and your mouth shut. I predict you will be surprised...far less biased than you were before.' (end of quote).

Now - is that not a sensible, reasonable, earthly way of learning and 'seeing if these things be so' concerning the Scriptures and what it reveals to us?

That is what the shepherds did after the angels announced Christ's birth to them: '...Let us go...and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.' (Luke 2:15)     

They were considered 'lowly' folks, uneducated, not high on the social scale so - the argument goes - certainly, they would proceed according to their feelings rather than base their findings on fact: it is not an intelligent, well-reasoned way to assess findings.

But - lest we forget - the Gospel writers, such as Matthew who was a tax collector, and Luke who was a physician, made some interesting observations when they wrote their biographies about Jesus Christ. 

You see, they were both intelligent, professional men who knew nothing of Jesus Christ at first, but - after 'hanging out' (as the young people would say today) with Jesus, by Matthew, and after spending a great deal of time with Paul and other Christians, by Luke, they learned a great deal.

And they recorded in writing what they learned.

Listen - and read with me Luke's reason for writing in Luke 1:1-4 - Luke 1:1-4, and, I am reading from the Amplified:

'Since...many have undertaken to put in order and draw up a [thorough] narrative of the surely established deeds which have been accomplished and fulfilled in and among us, 

Exactly as they were handed down to us by those who from the [official] beginning [of Jesus' ministry] were eyewitnesses - I repeat, ‘eyewitnesses’ - and ministers of the Word [that is, of the doctrine concerning the attainment through Christ of salvation in the kingdom of God],

It seemed good and desirable to me, [and so I have determined] also after having searched out diligently and followed all things closely and traced accurately the course from the highest to the minutest detail from the very first, to write an orderly account for you...,

[My purpose is] that you may know the full truth and understand with certainty and [with] security against error the accounts (histories) and doctrines of the faith of which you have been informed..'.

He could now - after diligently searching things out for himself, after spending hours upon hours with those who were eyewitnesses about the truth of Jesus Christ - pass on this information with accuracy and with certainty.

There is also Matthew, being a Jew himself, who laboriously detailed Christ's activities in his Gospel writing.

He was one of Jesus’ disciples and part of His circle of friends and family and could easily gather the facts of Jesus’ birth.

He could also give much attention to showing that Jesus fulfilled all of the Messianic prophecies given about Him by God's prophets and establish His kingdom on earth.  

These are just two of the professional writers whose witness we have considered thus far in the coming of Christ.

Paul, another very highly educated man, wrote the more detailed description of Christ’s coming in Col 1:15 and in Gal 4:4 and 6. 

God sent forth His Son Who was ‘...the exact likeness of the unseen God...the visible representation of the invisible...Who being essentially one with God, and in the form of God(possessing the fullness of the attributes which make God 'God')...’.

And, in Galatians, ‘...He sent forth His Son, coming into the world, born of a woman, sent Him forth out of Himself, just as He sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts...’.

The truth of the Son of God Incarnate, the truth of God having come in the flesh to make visible the invisible, the truth of man’s deep spiritual need and God’s provision of that need by salvation through the Son He sent, is truth that we actually can know.

And we can know it just as Matthew, Luke, Paul and all others learned it.

We can know that truth, first, by listening, by learning, by - as the earlier quoted author wrote - by ‘keeping the mind open...’. 

You see, we humans are so conscious of our earthly lives - about ‘what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink,...what ye shall put on’ that we forget the most important issue of life: of that invisible, spiritual void nagging us deep within.

It was the great issue of life Jesus was addressing in His sermon to the general populace in Matthew 6:25.

Now - do not misinterpret what I say here: yes - we need to attend to the physical part of our beings and do that with wisdom and prudence - that is legitimate and very proper.

But - our emphasis on that tends to push out the spiritual fulfillment that our inner beings cry for - we try to fill up 
the void there with all sorts of illegitimate and foolish ways!

It is when we become Christians, accepting the truth of God’s Word, that this changes and we actually become physical beings with the capacity of filling the spiritual void.

The norm of our being is shifted to where it should be in its place in God.

That is when the truth of His being, the truth of His Son and His Son’s work, and the truth of His Life merges with that spiritual part of our beings and we become whole, sensible, spiritual beings living whole, sensible, physical lives!

Now - let me explain very carefully: we can ‘hang out’ in the company of Christians, we can fully investigate, reason, assess, be fair and unbiased in coming to conclusions about Jesus Christ.

And, we can even see our own personal need of believing and accepting Him as our own Saviour.

That is all proper and good, and moving in the right direction to become those beings God has ordained for 
us to be.

That is gaining the objective aspect of truth that He has opened to men. 

Somewhere along the way, we may have even received a little burst of light - just a quick glimpse that seals the truth of Christ for us. 

Yes - that is the way it should be - for as God sent forth His Son...so also He sent forth His Spirit into your hearts...’.

And Jesus gave us one of the reasons for God doing that in John 15:26:

John 15:26: ‘But when the Comforter is come, Whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me,...’.

The reason we receive that quick glimpse, that revelation of the truth of God’s Word, was because the Holy Spirit was putting spiritual life into those words we were just investigating as words - He was opening up the truth of it. 

It is His Spirit in us Who bears witness to the truth of them.  (Rom 8:16)

This is important - very, very important - this is how we are to become conscious of our kinship to God.

That consciousness is not there until He - the Spirit of God - stirs it up in us: and, we confess Him as our Savior.

It is a divine mystery of His work of salvation.

From this point onward, we will not look to some other power or means for fulfillment anymore.

It is then that we know that neither technology nor social progress, neither education nor isolated reforms - as vital as they all are in our worldly needs - none of them will deliver us from a hollow life - only He has done it!

Now - to know all these things in our minds is a good thing - it is right thinking - it is honest thinking, but how does it get way down deep inside our beings so that the spiritual void there is filled up once and for all?

That is a good question. 

What we investigated and what was revealed now needs to be learned by the same Holy Spirit demonstrating it in our lives. 

And He does that by our daily, physical living where we grow and where we learn something new about it each day.

Every day we live, every year we live through, every experience we have, every circumstance we meet are all opportunities for this to happen.

Each one - each one is put before us to give us the opening to let Him bring us on into a living experience in the way of Christ - to demonstrate the truth that is revealed by Him of Jesus Christ.

It happens when we yield our hearts and lives to that operation of the Spirit of God in us.

What He does is, in reality, brought down to actual living.

This actual living, under His operation, is what opens more of the revelation of God’s divine truth - He makes it all real to us within our beings.

This entire operation of the Spirit is like the picture of a flower coming into full bloom.

We first see the seedling popping through the soil; then, we see the plant growing on upward, reaching for the sunlight. Then, comes the further growth of the stem, then the bud, and finally the flower is in full bloom.

We see only the process from the outside - we cannot see the process that is taking place inside the plant, from the roots on upward to the full bloom of the flower.

There was a time in the early days of the charismatic movement when a ‘household word’ among Christians was:
‘well, what is God doing in your life these days?’

What He was doing only He knew!

I could never really answer because I did not know: yes, His goal, I knew; His process - no!

You see - we cannot break the stem of the flower to discover the process without killing the plant altogether!

How it happens, we really cannot retrace; neither can a psychologist nor psychiatrist tell us how for ‘...the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.’ (1 Cor 2:11)

We only realize that He is always working, always bringing us through one set of problems to another, always influencing and shaping us by the truth we have embraced, always making Jesus more real to us.

It is a divine mystery of His inner working - that is all!

In the process, we have learned that in the spiritual realm, understanding things with our minds alone does not work - it gets us stuck in that mode of trying to reduce God to our way of thought or to put Him into some sort of a formula.

Neither does understanding things with our senses alone - to fit the Scripture into that mode of thought brings forth all sorts of oddities, antics, and ways of trying to fix ourselves.

But - it is only by a true revelation of Christ by the Holy Spirit.

He brings to life the deep, spiritual concept we found by our fair and unbiased investigation of God’s Word that is hard to grasp otherwise!

And He further carries it along by demonstrating that Word in His operating power as we pass through physical life.

That is what will set ourselves free from ourselves, will strip us of unreality, and will bring us into a fresh opening of the truth of His Words through all life.

The invitation by Jesus always has been and always will be: ‘Come unto Me, all of you who are heavy-laden, [all who struggle and are overburdened about this] and I will give you rest - I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls...’. (Mt 11:28)  

Oh - that we would all be humble enough to receive the Word of God with ‘...an honest and good heart...keep it and bring forth fruit with patience...’. (Lu 8:15)