Next ‘09 | Christ’s Life

“Who is He?  If He was just another prophet, His resurrection is little more than a historic curiosity.” –Kevin DeYoung

The opening words of Kevin DeYoung’s main session sermon were these, “You don’t know me.  You don’t need to know me.”  Before the conference, many people such as myself has no idea who this man was.  Yet, after he spoke, all of his books sold out quickly and it was not because of his eloquence.  DeYoung had a passion for Christ and took the subject of Christ’s life, which some might ironically see as the most boring of the topics, as opportunity to explore Christ’s person.

DeYoung preached on a passage of Scripture where Jesus says very little, Luke 8:22-56, but says quite a bit about Himself.  This text contains the familiar stories of calming the storm, driving out demons from a possessed man, healing a sick woman and raising a child from the dead.  While the miracles are obviously miraculous in themselves, they testify to the power of Jesus Christ.  His wonders echo the words of Psalm 67 and Psalm 107, the latter of which reads, “He stilled the storm to a murmur, and the waves of the sea were hushed.” Luke 8:24 says that Jesus rebuked the winds and they instantly stopped.  No tricks. No magic spell.  Jesus simply commanded the winds to stop because, “That was Jesus’ storm.”

“This is not an ordinary man,” DeYoung said. “This is not a long shirt, soft-spoken, sheepish Jesus.”

The simplest commands of Jesus Christ reveal His power.  In this passage, Jesus only says about seventy words, about the size of two or three tweets.  Yet Jesus clearly had authority not only in His teaching (Matthew 7:29).  Nature, demonic forces, bodily infections and death obey Jesus Christ because He made them all.  ”Jesus barely says a word,” DeYoung noted, “and miracles happened.”  It is as the old preacher said, if Jesus had simply said “Come forth!” to Lazarus in John 11:43, all of the dead would have risen from the grave.

So what does this mean for us?  It means, DeYoung said, that your Jesus may be too weak.  People love Jesus so much because of how they invent their own versions of Him.   Jesus Christ is the Son of God, through whom God made the Universe, and in whom God’s fullness is pleased to dwell.  Among the many purposes of Christ’s life is this: His sinless actions, His compassionate ministry, His understanding of the Scriptures, His miracles and even His ancestry reveal the attributes only attributable to God.  The fact that Jesus Christ is God and not just some Galliean peasant or a man “with high cheekbones and long-flowing blonde hair” should shape the way you view His life.

2 Chronicles 6:36 says, “there is no one who does not sin.” In Jesus Christ, it is almost as if God rewrote that Scripture.  There is only one who does not sin, only one who is spotless before God.  And even the wind and the waves obey Him.

Tags'09, 2009, Christ, David, DeYoung, Kevin, Life, Next, power, storm, Wells, Words