Do We Need Jesus Today?
Our blessed Lord Jesus is our Saviour. He
reveals Himself to us by His example, His teaching, and finally by His death on
the cross on which he died for the sins of the world. His deeds reveal his love
for us, that He would "bear our sins upon the tree" that we might not
have to bear them when we stand before the judgment seat of God the Father. His
mercy and goodness are infinite.
One day as our Lord was teaching in the
synagogue on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, a man with an evil
spirit cried out to Him saying, "Let us alone; what have we to do with
Thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth?"
The question asked by this man with an evil
spirit in the synagogue in old Capernaum is a pertinent one for all time. The
questions comes ringing down through the ages to us in our day; and people
today, may well ask the same question: What have we to do with Him? "What
have WE to do with Thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth?" Many people in our own
day are saying to Him still, "Leave us alone. Leave us alone in our
indifference. Leave us alone in our petty jealousies, and in our petty hatreds.
Leave us alone in our sin, in our selfishness, in our rejection of God's Word
and of God's ways. We're getting along well enough. Leave us alone! What have
WE to do with Thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth?"
This question was asked of Jesus in Capernaum
almost 2000 years ago, and today many people are questioning still: Does Jesus
really matter? Does He? Is He necessary in our modern living? Can't we get
along without Him? What have we to do with a Galilean carpenter who is a total
stranger to our modern civilization? His world and ours are centuries apart;
and ours is an enlightened age; a scientific age. We are becoming more and more
self-sufficient, we think. And as time rolls on, and the universe expands and
our worldly knowledge grows, and our wealth increases, and as our concern with
the world around us presses on our minds (inflation, business conditions), the
Man of Galilee seems to get further and further away from the things that make
up modern living, and he seems to many people, apparently, to become really
irrelevant. The writer, Thomas Carlyle, in the last century sums it up for us:
The story is told that one day Thomas Carlyle was standing looking at a picture
of our Lord hanging on the cross, and as he stood gazing up at the picture, he
is reported to have said, "It's all very well, old fellow, but you have
had your day." You have had your day. And as we look around us in the
world today and see the indifference toward God and toward His moral commands
and the attitude of many people toward our Saviour and toward eternal truths,
it makes one shudder at times, and we well may ask with Thomas Carlyle,
"Has He had His day?" He seems so far away!
Has Jesus had His day? Do we modern people need
Jesus? We do Indeed! We need Him with all of our being! With all of our souls!
He, and He alone, He only, is our hope of joy and life. He only is the means of
our peace with God. He only is our assurance that we are the children of God.
He is our hope of immortality in God, He is our assurance that the faithful
shall stand before the throne of God in glory -- justified, saved, redeemed,
redeemed from sin, redeemed by His blood shed on the cross. We need Jesus,
indeed we do. And we have Him, we believe through our faith in Him, and we
bless God for Him.
In our modern world today, we live in the midst
of thousands of distractions, and we need Jesus, for one thing, to simplify our
lives and to provide a foundation for our thinking. Life is becoming so
complicated for so many --with the radio and newspapers banging on our
consciousness, and all kinds of philosophies from the materialism of Karl Marx
to the idealism of Mary Baker Eddy, of the Christian Scientists, with the TV
and telephones and the atom bomb and supersonic airplanes, inflation, threats
of war, world unrest, and people bickering over little things. Our souls cry
out for a resting place amid the turmoil of this worldly existence. We need
some place where our souls may rest secure. We need a solid foundation on which
to build our lives -- on which to build character, human dignity, personal
integrity, honor, morality. We need an anchor to hold us firmly to THE ETERNAL.
And something which Christianity proclaims is the God-Man who walked the earth
showing us God. It is the God-Man who was crucified, showing us the Love of God
that could die for us, and showing us at the same time the hideousness of Sin
that crucifies the Lord of Glory. Our lives today are becoming so complicated.
Our minds are bombarded with all kinds of knowledge -- scientific knowledge,
historical knowledge, philosophical knowledge, moral depravity and so on and
on; and we need something to anchor all of this knowledge to. We need something
to show us the significance of it all, something to make sense of it all,
something on which we can solidly place our feet amid the times and tides of
human destiny. We of the Christian faith have such an anchor and such a
foundation: it is Jesus, the Lamb of God. St. Paul, writing to the church at
Corinth, said, "And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with
excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For
I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him
crucified." This is simple enough: "I determined not to know ANY
THING ...save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." This is so SIMPLE, so
simple that the modern sophisticated man is tempted to scoff at it, it is so
elemental. It is elemental, but at the same time it is basic and it is true.
Faith in Jesus simplified things, it organized things -- it organizes our
lives; if we have enough Faith .... enough Faith to make any difference. When a
man can say, "One is my Master, even Christ Jesus," and makes it the
business of his life to do His will, life for him becomes so much simpler and
happier and more satisfying. And when the storms of life come, he is not
distracted or overwhelmed. He is founded on a rock, and he walks in perfect
peace and happy safety, hand in hand with His blessed Saviour. Jesus is our joy
and our life. He fells our lives full, if we will let him.
We need Jesus to make us inwardly sufficient for
life, for meeting life, for living fully. We need Him to impart to us His moral
and spiritual power, regenerating power, by which our natures are changed, and
this gives us the strength to do God's will, to fulfill his purpose, and to be
the kind of people we were created to be -- that is, to be more like Jesus
Himself.
And how the world needs such power today! It is
obvious that while the world has been making tremendous advances in many
spheres of life, it is going backwards morally and spiritually. Though men can
now control fantastic material forces, they are still unable to control
themselves. Observe the spread of homosexuality and drug addiction. And many
people today are finding that for all their education and for all their
so-called culture, for all of their advantages, for all of their wealth and
power, they still lack the moral and spiritual resources even for being happy
and for building a happy home. They still lack the spiritual power to break off
some unworthy, soul-destroying habit, or to achieve victory over some besetting
sin, or even to control a wagging tongue. Materially, we are sound and
prosperous, but inwardly there are many who are inadequate, who do not have
Jesus in their hearts, and their lives are going to pieces in their hands. And
try as they will, they cannot save themselves. Men cannot lift themselves by
their own boot straps.
We all stand in this world of sin where we all
must cry, "God help us." And we do, and He does. And it is here again
that our blessed Saviour, Jesus of Nazareth comes in. For His coming into human
history means that God can and has and does help us. He is our Good Shepherd.
He said, "I am the good shepherd."
In Jesus Christ is love, amazing and divine;
there is forgiveness, large and free; there is moral and spiritual power freely
offered to all who will ask for it. In Jesus Christ, God is in action. All the
divine resources are focused and concentrated in Him, and made available to us.
this is not imagination. For Christian experience in every age, and in this
present day, witnesses to the fact that, when a man honestly and wholeheartedly
surrenders his life to Christ, and receives his forgiveness, and follows Him
day by day -- that man discovers that he is in touch with great spiritual
resources, with the very power of God Himself -- sufficient to sweep his life
clean, to change his nature, to rescue him from vile habits and evil courses,
and to make him a new man, with a new joy and new purpose in life, the builder
of a Christian home, a Christian community, a Christian world. So long as men
are morally weak and spiritually impotent, and unable to save themselves (and
this is the nature of fallen man); so long as that old problem of what the
theologians call sin and the men in the street call "selfishness,"
ignorance, weakness remains unresolved, Jesus of Nazareth will never be
out-of-date; He never will. An honest facing of the facts of our inner lives is
sufficient to convince us that we have not yet outgrown Jesus Christ; and we
never will. We need Him desperately. We have to have Him. He is our all in all.
And so today the church continues to proclaim
the gospel that can change men. It is offered to all as the hope of mankind,
our hope of eternity, of peace of God dwelling within us. Its cleansing and
renewing power is available. We do not have to wait until we feel "good
enough" to receive it. It is enough if we feel that we need it and want it
-- want it badly enough to get down on our knees and say:
Jesus of Nazareth
have mercy on me;
Dwell in my mind
that I may know thee.
Dwell in my heart
that I may love thee.
Dwell in my will
that I may trust Thee and obey Thee.
It is only when we offer our minds, our hearts,
our wills -- our whole being -
to Him that we really begin to know Jesus; and
when we give ourselves to Him, we know Him, not only as the carpenter of
Galilee in the first century, but now, today as our Saviour, Redeemer, and
friend, Now --as the Power of God unto salvation in this world, NOW!
In days of old, when Jesus walked the earth, the
evil spirit in the man in old Capernaum cried out, "Let us alone; what
have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth?" What do we have to do
with Jesus? What does He mean to us? to me? to you? We know full well. The hymn
writer says it for us:
How sweet the name
of Jesus sounds
in a believer's ear!
It soothes our
sorrows, heals our wounds,
And drives away our
fear.
It makes the wounded
spirit whole,
And calms the
troubled breast;
'Tis manna to the
hungry soul,
And to the weary
rest.
Dear Name, the rock
on which I build,
My shield and hiding
place,
My never-failing
treasury, filled
With boundless
stores of grace.
Jesus, my Shepherd,
Guardian, Friend,
My Prophet, Priest,
and King,
My Lord, my Life, my
Way, my End,
Accept the praise I
bring.
This is what we have to do with him. God grant
that he may be these things to all of us.
