Jesus’ Claim On Your Life

In a Thursday morning Bible study that I have been teaching since June, we are currently studying the Gospel of John. Among the unique things about John’s Gospel are the claims that Jesus makes about himself. Among the four Gospels, we read these claims only in John. He did not so much write a narrative of Jesus’ life as he wrote a reflection on who Jesus is.

Consider, for instance, the uniqueness of Jesus’ “I am” statements that John presents:

• “I am the bread of life” — John 6:35.
• “I am the light of the world” — John 8:12.
• “I am the good shepherd” — John 10:11.
• “I am the resurrection and the life” — John 11:25.
• “I am the way and the truth and the life — John 14:6.
• “I am the true vine” — John 15:1.

Those are just the most familiar of the claims that Jesus makes. Each of them is filled with meaning, but let’s examine just one for a moment: Jesus’ claim to be “the light of the world.”

When Jesus makes that claim, he continues by saying, “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Then he demonstrates what he means by the claim through the continuing dialog and events of the text.

• When the Pharisees challenged the validity of the claim, he went on to claim, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also” — John 8:19.
• He then claimed that he is going away — referring, of course, to heaven — and said, “Where I go, you cannot come” — John 8:21. We cannot go there, he said, because “You are of this world; I am not of this world” — John 8:23. We can only go where he is when he takes us there because we put our faith in him.
• When we hold to his teaching, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” — John 8:31-32.
• Finally, when the Jewish leaders claimed Abraham as their father, Jesus made the remarkable claim, “Before Abraham was born, I am” — John 8:58.

These claims only scratch the surface of Jesus’ claim to be “the light of the world.” Jesus then demonstrated the effect this claim can have on us by healing a blind man in John 9. The man who is healed saw Jesus far better than the leaders of the Jews who were teaching the people about God, but they did not know God.

When this man who was blind believed in Jesus, Jesus made a claim on his life, and he makes a claim on our lives. We need to believe Jesus’ claims, and then we need to let him claim our lives as we walk with him, trust him, and learn from him to know the Father.

IS YOUR CHURCH INNUMERABLE?

There are some things that are innumerable – too numerous to count: grains of sand on the seashore, stars in the sky, and drops of water in the ocean. On a recent drive through Rocky Mountain National Park while in Colorado, I added another one to the list: rocks in the Rocky Mountains. Some actions are innumerable: the tears a mother will shed for her children, and the times a four-year-old will ask “Why…?”

The population of the world is innumerable today. World population remained steady at about one billion people from the time of Christ until about 1600. Then it began to increase until it reached about two billion people during the last century. During the lifetime of most of you who are reading this, world population has grown from two billion to nearly seven billion. That is innumerable (This analysis can be found in Unleashed by Dudley Rutherford, et al from Standard Publishing in the chapter “Innumerable.”). As of July 1, 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the world’s population to be 6.96 billion.

In the book of Acts, the growth of the number of Jesus’ followers could be described as innumerable:

• Acts 1:15 begins with 120 followers of Jesus before Pentecost.
• In Acts 2:41, the number multiplied to more than 3,000.
• In Acts 2:47, the Lord was adding to their number daily.
• Acts 4:4 records that about 5,000 men were now Christians.
• Acts 5:14 tells us that “more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.”
• Acts 6:1 says that “the number of disciples was increasing.”
• Acts 9:31 records this about the church: “Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.”

By AD 350 there were thirty-one million Christians, more than half the population of the Roman Empire! The church was growing so rapidly that it became virtually impossible to count. Today there are some two billion Christians in the world.

I review those numbers for you in order to ask a question: How does the church once again become innumerable? How does your church become innumerable?

I realize that the number of people in most churches can be counted. As Christians, however, we are part of the world-wide church, so every church should be seeking out as many lost people as they can, so that together we become innumerable. Here are three emphases that I find in Acts that together enable the church to reach innumerable people.

(1) Emphasize the centrality of Christ. If you read through the messages preached by Peter and others that are recorded in Acts, you will find that every one emphasizes Christ above all else. Peter’s message on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 sets the stage by telling us that Jesus’ miracles prove that he is from God, that he was crucified and rose again, as foretold by the prophets and witnessed by the apostles, that he was exalted to the right hand of God, and that he poured out his Spirit on those who witnessed his resurrection. Messages recorded in each of Acts chapters 3, 4, and 5 all repeat that emphasis on Christ. Christ must be emphasized above all by the church.

(2) Emphasize the need for salvation. When Peter concluded his message in Acts 2, he was asked, “What shall we do?” He responded, “Repent and be baptized … in the name of Jesus Christ” and you will receive forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. This emphasis on salvation continued throughout the messages in Acts, with Peter even announcing in Acts 4:12 that “salvation is found in no one else” except Jesus. This is not just the message of the church. It is the message of every individual Christian. Most people come to Christ because a friend or family member has reached out to them in the name of Christ. Make this the emphasis of your life and your church.

(3) Emphasize the practice of love. In the snapshots in the book of Acts into the life of the early church, we have various pictures of the church loving and caring for each other and for those in the community around them. The church in fact became known in the world around them as a community of people who loved each other and those around them.

Your church can be innumerable. Begin to ask how you can build these three emphases into every aspect of your life and the church. Make your church not just about your church, but about the church around the world reaching innumerable people.

The Gospel–Available to All

Among the stories in the Book of Acts of people who chose to follow Jesus was an Ethiopian man whose story is told in Acts 8:26-39. We do not know his name. He is only known to us as an Ethiopian eunuch who was in charge of the Ethiopian queen’s treasury.

He had gone to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home when the Holy Spirit instructed Philip to go to the desert road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza. This was the lesser of two roads that went from Jerusalem to Gaza. It was the least traveled road because it stayed out of the populated areas. As he did with Philip, sometimes God sends us to the most unexpected people in the most unexpected places to share the Gospel or to minister to people in Jesus’ name.

When Philip came upon this man on the road, the Spirit instructed him to approach the chariot. When Philip did so, he heard the man reading from Isaiah 53 in the Old Testament, and had the opportunity to explain Isaiah’s prophesy about Jesus to the eunuch and to baptize him.

The Ethiopian, although he was a worshiper of God, was not a Jew nor a Samaritan. He was from an important country as the Ethiopia of that day was a much larger region than today’s country of Ethiopia. At that time, Ethiopia was the whole region of the upper Nile River. As the first non-Judean or non-Samaritan to come to Christ that we know of, this man would become important in the expansion of the Gospel outside Judea. God was beginning to direct the church to take the Gospel to everyone, even the unexpected.

One of the early leaders of the Christian church movement in the U.S., demonstrated that kind of out-of-the-box thinking to lead others to Christ. Barton W. Stone preached for a small church at Cane Ridge in Northern Kentucky beginning in 1791. Stone had a conviction for diversity during a time of slavery, and led the Cane Ridge church in becoming an abolitionist church.

The Cane Ridge Meeting House, as it is still known, had a second level. In the early yeas of Stone’s ministry, the church still had some racial separation and black people had to sit in that second level. As a result of a great 1801 revival at Cane Ridge, many of the white men who were slave owners were convicted by the Holy Spirit and Barton Stones’ preaching to set their slaves free. A few years after that, there were black elders and leaders in the Cane Ridge church, and the entire separation between the races was gone. White and black people worshiped alongside each other on both levels of the church.

God used Barton Stone at Cane Ridge in much the same way that he used Philip in Acts 8 — to make the Gospel equally available to all who believe, regardless of skin color, nationality, position, or any of the other distinctions that we make between people. God is still in the business of using the Holy Spirit to unleash the church to turn the world upside down by reaching all people. Won’t you join him in that effort? Let the Spirit unleash you.