The Lesson

Apr 20, 2021

"So the Word became human and made His home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen His glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son."

- St. John, John 1:14

"Filter bubbles are the work of algorithms programmed to constantly reflect back to us variations of our own image. The more we feed them our "likes," our "clicks," our "choices," the more of ourselves the algorithms volley back. Soon, if we’re not careful, we begin to live in a house of mirrors. All of our content is designed specifically to look like us."

- Tim Leberecht

When I was fresh out of seminary… when dinosaurs still roamed the earth… I was pastoring my first church in a small Indiana town. One morning, after church, a young nine year old girl named Brandi Watters came up to me and asked:

"Pastor, we learned in Sunday school that Jesus is God in a human body."

"That's right," I replied, "He is."

"But… isn't God everywhere… throughout the whole world… all at the same time?"

"Yes… God is omnipresent."

“Soooo… if God is that Big, how can He possibly fit all of Himself into a regular size human body? Wouldn't He explode?"

"Brandi," I said, "That is a great question, and I'm sure your Sunday school teacher has a perfectly good answer for you!"

Wow! Talk about a little girl totally reducing two years of graduate theological education into a shiny pile of rubble. As I waltzed through an intellectual explanation of the doctrine of the Incarnation… and then danced through a highbrow rationale for the doctrine known as the hypostatic union, which says that "in Jesus dwells the fullness of deity in human form" (Colossians 2:9)... that's when she stopped me… and, with a sweet apology for making me sweat, said, "That's OK, Pastor, I believe in Jesus anyhow!"

What do you do with those things about God, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit, about life, about death, about pain and suffering, about all the stuff on this side of heaven that we do not understand? Let's say you lose your job, your health, your savings, and you have three kids, a home, a car payment, a spouse… and you're about to lose your mind… when an eighteen year old kid comes up to you, who’s never lived on his own… his parents still pay for everything… he's got no clue about the stresses and pressures of life… never worked a day in his life… and he says to you: "Don't worry...God is in control!" Does that bless you? Or does that mess with you?

Listen, if you have to understand everything before you will trust Jesus, you will never trust Him. You and I need the faith of a child… biblical faith… that says: "I don't know what this means, but I believe the One I've given my life to."

A businessman was talking to me about his company and its products, and I said, "Man, you really believe in this company, don't you?" He said, "No, I don't believe in the company… I believe in the CEO (who he knew very well)." He said, "I don't care what company he’s running. If he's running it, I'd buy stock in it… because I believe in him!"

You cannot do Christianity without Jesus! You cannot divorce His principles from the Person! Just consider… You hold onto the principle that God will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5)... but, when it feels like God did forsake you… when it feels like He did leave and abandon you… if all you have is the Principle, you will be undone! But if you have the Person, then when the circumstances you're in don't line up with the principle you believe, you can still know that even when the principle isn't working, Jesus is still working for you in that very moment because He loves you!