February 15, 2005
THE Story
I've had a recurring thought and inclination in the past few months. I've wanted to go to a friend and ask them to tell me about Jesus. In some ways, it seems like an odd request, because I already know about Jesus. I've been a Christian for nearly fifteen years now, and I've absorbed a slightly higher-than-normal (among Christians) dose of Sunday School, and I've read the Bible through a few times. But still the inclination persists. Why?
I want to hear the story again afresh. I wish I could hear it for the first time again, without any of the baggage that I've picked up in my sixteen years of being a Christian. I want to be astonished again at the idea of God becoming man. I want to feel the agony of His death and the rapture of His resurrection. I want to see Him again. This reminds me of something GK Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy:
But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has neverr got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.GK Chesteron, Orthodoxy, p. 60
We get tired of things, and it is a great sadness. We have such good food, yet don't enjoy it. We sleep in such nice beds, but forget about it. We wear such awesome clothing, but don't notice. And we serve God Himself, but rarely find it awesome.
But getting back to my original question, my strange inclination to ask people to tell me the story of Jesus. I still send that request to each person who reads this - please, tell me the story of Jesus. Let me hear it afresh and anew. However, in order to be fair, I will try to tell the story myself.
I will try to tell it simply and concisely, because I know I tend to go on and on and on. However, I have long suspected that any truth worth knowing can be expressed simply ... I suspect that the most important truths and the best stories are ones that children can understand and remember, but ones deep enough that anyone can spend their entire life telling and retelling the story without exhausting it. I will try to be true to that conviction now.
God made the beginning. He was before the beginning. Of all that exists, only God has no beginning. God made the beginning because He wanted others like Him. God did not make the beginning because He was lonely, but because He was full to overflowing. God is what we call a Trinity, which means that He is three persons in one. It's hard to understand, but there are things like it everywhere. A triangle has three sides but is one triangle. To be wise, a person needs knowledge and understanding and experience. You yourself have a heart and soul and mind, yet are one person.
God made everything else that exists. He made angels, which are spirits like Himself. A spirit is another hard thing to explain (there are lots of hard things to explain about God). A spirit is an invisible, nonphysical person. Your body cannot see it or feel it or touch it. Basically, a spirit is a person without a body.
Now, when God made beings like Himself, He did something fearsome and awesome. He made them free beings like Himself, who could choose what to believe and who to love. He did this so that He would have someone else to talk to and love, someone who would talk back and love back, someone who would be different from Himself.
One of these angels was called Lucifer, which means "angel of light," I think. Lucifer loved himself more than he loved God. Lucifer thought that he should be god. Lucifer chose not to submit to God, and to be his own boss instead. Many angels followed him, preferring to serve themselves rather than God. There was war in heaven, and Lucifer and all his angels were flung out of heaven into hell.
Heaven is what we call the place where God lives and rules. Hell is what we call the place He is not. Lucifer and his followers rejected God, perferring a life without God to one with God. Because of this, God created hell as a place where He would never go, where His spirit would never enter. He gave hell to those rebelling angels who wanted a world without Him.
Now, I'm not sure exactly when all this happened. I know it was a very long time ago. I don't know if this was before God created our world or not. Maybe someone else does.
But I do know that a very long time ago, God made the whole world. He made the stars and the sky and the oceans and the land and the plants and the animals and the birds and everything. It's hard to know exactly how long ago God made the world. Many people believe it was about eight thousand years ago. I believe that it was much, much longer ago ... somewhere between twelve and fifteen billion years ago. You'll have to make up your own mind about that, and study the Bible and science. But the important thing is that God made it all very carefully.
I don't know if God made any other intelligent creatures like us, creatures like Him but with bodies. The Bible doesn't say anything about them, and we haven't found any evidence for sure one way or another. I think He might have, just for fun, but I'm not sure. Maybe we'll find out some day.
Anyway, God made us - humans - probably around eight to ten thousand years ago. At least, that's what I believe. He made two people - a man and a woman, who are our oldest ancestors. The man's name was Adam, and the woman's name was Eve. And God gave them a beautiful garden in which to live, and told them to take care of it. You see, God made us masters of this world. We are in charge of everything - the animals, plants, rocks, oceans - everything. We are the masters, by right, and we are to take good care of the wonderful world God gave us.
Now, in the middle of the garden, God planted two trees - one was the Tree of Life, and one was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God told Adam and Eve that they could eat of any tree in the whole garden, except for the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and He warned them that if they ate of that tree, they would die. God gave this command to test them. Later, when Jesus came into the world, He would say that the way to know if you love God is to see if you keep his commands. The way Adam and Eve could show their love and faithfulness to God was to not eat of that one tree.
Now, remember Lucifer? Well, another name for him is Satan - the enemy. Satan entered the garden and possessed a snake, which means he could control the snake as if it was his own body. He came to Adam and Eve and talked to Eve. He lied to her and told her that she would not die from eating the fruit, and that it would make her like God, knowing good and evil. Eve believed Satan and ate the fruit and gave some to Adam, who was there with her but didn't say anything. He ate, too.
As soon as Adam ate the fruit, the humans felt guilty for the first time. When God came to the garden to walk and talk with them, they hid from Him. God knew what they had done, and He was very angry. He cursed Satan and promised that humans and Satan would always be at war. He cursed the woman, making it very painful to have children. He cursed the man, making work burdensome and difficult and painful. But He also made a promise that one day one of their children would crush Satan, and He provided clothes for them. God is always like that - He hates sin and punishes it ruthlessly, but He always has mercy, too. He always makes a way for people to turn from sin and be forgiven and made right.
Adam and Eve's sin is very important. Because of it, all their children (which is every human being in the world) is born twisted, with a corrupt nature. Every human is born in rebellion against God and with a sinful desire to defy Him. Every human has the same choice that every creature made in the image of God does - a choice to serve God or to make your own way. But now every human is born into the enemies-of-God camp, with a nature that always wants to make its own way. This is because of our ancestor's sin.
God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden to keep them from eating from the tree of Life and living forever. Adam and Eve had children, and their children had children, and so the human race began to grow. A long time after that, but still many years ago, God spoke to a man named Abram and told him to leave his home and his family and to go to a country God would show him. God promised that if Abram did this, God would bless his descendents forever, and make them a blessing to the whole world. Abram believed God and did as He said. Because of this, we still remember Abram with great honor these thousands of years later. He was a good man who believed God and did what God told him.
God led Abram to a place in the Middle East called Canaan. Now it is the region of Israel and Jordan and Lebanon. He gave him a new name that we remember better - Abraham. And God miraculously gave Abraham and his wife Sarah a boy of their own, long after the time when they should have been able to have kids. This boy was named Isaac, and he had two sons. One's name was Jacob, and the other's was Esau. It is through Jacob that the nation of Israel comes ... Jacob's name was later changed to Israel. Jacob had twelve sons, whose descendants became the twelve tribes of Israel. God brought Jacob and his family down to Egypt to escape a dreadful famine in the ancient world. They lived there for hundreds of years, and the descendents of Israel became numerous.
They became so powerful that the ruler of Egypt was afraid they would help an enemy destroy the country. Because he was afraid of them, he made them slaves and forced them to work very hard. But even in those harsh conditions, the children of Israel still multiplied and the ruler of Egypt became even more afraid. He ordered that every male child of an Israelite be drowned. At this time, a baby was born to the Levite tribe. Though his parents tried to hide him from the Egyptians, he eventually got too big. They set him afloat in the river in a little basket, hoping that someone kind would find him. The daughter of the ruler of Egypt found him! But she treated him well and brought him up as her own son, a prince of Egypt, and she called him Moses.
When Moses grew up, he saw how badly the Egyptians were treating this Israelites. He saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite man one day and got so angry that he murdered the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. However, other people found out about the murder, and Moses was afraid that he would be arrested by the ruler. He fled Egypt into the desert, and became a sheepherder. For forty years, he stayed in the desert.
Then God set a bush on fire with a magical flame that did not consume the bush. Moses thought that was really weird, so he went to take a closer look. Then God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush and told him that He was fed up with how the Israelites were being treated. He told Moses that He was going to send him back to Egypt to set the slaves free, and that He (God) would give Moses the power to do this. Moses didn't want to. He tried and tried to get out of it, and God got very angry. But in the end, Moses agreed to do what God had told him to do. Moses believed God, and went back to Egypt.
The ruler of Egypt didn't want to let the Israelites go, but God made him do it! He sent ten plagues on the whole country, awful plagues that devasted the land. The last plague God sent was a special plague. He first warned everyone that He was going to send the plague, and that any house whose door was not covered with the blood would lose its firstborn. Then God sent the angel of Death through the whole land of Egypt, killing every firstborn of every family in the country, unless that family had put blood over the door of their house. Then the Egyptians let the Israelites go; actually, they drove them out!
God led the Israelites through the desert to Mount Sinai, where He gave them His law. That's where we get the Ten Commandments. All the people agreed to follow the law, and to teach it to their children. But they failed. They didn't trust God, and they complained constantly. It drove Moses (and God) crazy. The people simply would not obey God, even when they saw His miracles and power. A lot of people today say that they would believe in and follow God if only He showed Himself more clearly. The story of the children of Israel shows us that it just isn't true. People naturally rebel against God, even when they're faced to face with proof of His love and power. And don't look down on the Israelites! You and I also rebel against God. Our hearts are also turned against Him.
But God had made a promise to Abraham. He did not break it; he brought the Israelites back to Canaan and gave them the power to conquer the whole land! He fought for them so they were able to drive out and annihilate the people who were living there, although the Israelites were badly outnumbered. But even when God had brought them out of the desert and into the land He had promised, the people still wouldn't follow Him. They would follow Him for a while, maybe even for a whole generation! But then their children would rebel against God, and God would let them be conquered by some powerful country. Then they would repent and cry out for deliverance, and God would rescue them. Then the cycle would start again.
Finally, the people said that they wanted to be ruled by a king, instead of by God. And God gave them their wish. Their first king was a very tall, powerful, handsome man with great leadership abilities. When he was young, he followed God for the most part, and God gave him great success in fighting against Israel's enemies. But his heart was always more interested in serving himself than serving God, and God eventually abandoned him and chose another to be king. He promised a young shepherd named David that he would one day be king. It took a long time, but God eventually brought it about. David is a very special man - he is remembered as being a man after God's own heart. He wrote some of the most beautiful parts of the Bible, and he followed God carefully and well. He was the greatest king of Israel. His son, Solomon, was also a great king, the wisest who ever lived. However, his son did not follow in his father's footsteps and was drawn away from serving God wholeheartedly. The whole history just gets bad from that point on. Sometimes a good king would come to the throne and follow God and God would bless the country, but most of the kings were bad and a few were terrible. The nation spun deeper and deeper into sin, and God eventually destroyed the country and scattered the people throughout the ancient world.
But God never forgot His promise, and He regathered the people back into their land. He had shown that it would take more than miracles to save the sad world, that it would take more than a good man. He was about to show that it would take a sacrifice.
A little more than two thousand years ago, God sent an angel to a young woman in Israel named Mary. He told her that she would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit - that God himself would be the father of her child. Mary was amazed and didn't understand how it was possible, but she submitted to the will of God. Don't you see the pattern? These people who we remember, these people who make a difference for God, they are people who BELIEVE God and OBEY him. God did just what He said (He has a habit of doing that) - He made her pregnant through the Holy Spirit with a son. His Son. Jesus.
How I wish I could tell you more about Jesus' life! I only know what the Bible says, and it doesn't say everything that I want to know. I can't tell you what He looked like or how tall He was or much of the story of His childhood. When I see Him one day, you'd better believe I'll ask Him!
Mary was a common girl, and Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, a tiny town in Judea. God sent angels to tell shepherds about His birth, and set a star in the sky that guided wise men from the East to where Mary and her husband lived.
Jesus was a special boy from the beginning. When he was twelve years old and taken to the temple, he stayed behind after his parents left and talked for three days with the teachers of the law there! They were amazed that anyone that young could have the knowledge of God that Jesus did. When Joseph and Mary returned to find him and asked why he had left them and stayed behind without telling them. He answered that He had to be about His Father's business. He always knew who His Father really was.
When Jesus was thirty years old, he left his hometown and began preaching what we call the gospel - the good news. He preached the kingdom of God was near! He preached a whole new way of living - he said
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.Blessed are you when people say all kinds of evil against you on account of me ...
And those are just the ones I can easily remember! He said so many wonderful things, and I can't repeat them all!
Oh, and Jesus didn't just say amazing things! He did amazing things! He healed the sick and cast out demons and raised the dead! There wasn't any sickness He could not heal, not any suffering He could not alleviate.
But not everyone loved Jesus. His worst enemies were called the Pharisees. It seems odd that they would be his worst enemies, because they were the most religious people around! They hated Jesus for a lot of reasons. He broke their customs by healing people on the Sabbath. He challenged their beliefs by claiming to be the Son of God. He challenged their power when He claimed that serving God was more important that serving men. He challenged them by being so popular amongst the people, and they were afraid that He would start a rebellion against the Romans, who ruled their country at that time, and that the Romans would kill them all and take away their authority. But the most important reason they hated him wasn't found in reason - you see, Satan controlled them, as he does everyone who isn't a follower of Christ. They hated Jesus because they did not love God and they did not accept Jesus. He wasn't the God they expected.
They conspired against him and arrested him and piled false accusations on His head. When He continued to claim that He was the Son of God, they decided to kill Him. But because they couldn't put anyone to death on their own authority, they brought him to the Romans and accused Him of plotting to overthrow the Roman government. When the Romans questioned him closely, they couldn't find any cause for accusation against him. They wanted to release Jesus, but the enemies of Jesus stirred up the crowds against Him, to demand His death. The Romans, out of fear of the crowd, gave in and executed Jesus by crucifying Him. That means that they nailed his hands and feet to a cross and raised the cross upright and let him die.
But Jesus, even on the cross, said and did the most amazing things. He prayed to God, saying "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing." He was being crucified next to two thieves. While one of them mocked him, saying that if he were really God, he would come down from the cross, the other defended him, saying that although they deserved death for their crimes, Jesus was innocent. And then he looked at Jesus and said "Remember me when you come into Your kingdom." He, too, believed God. And Jesus replied "I tell you the truth, today You will be in paradise."
Then Jesus said the more horrible, frightening, awesome words for a Son of God to say - "Father! Why have You forsaken me?" A little while later, He said His last words: "Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit." Then he died.
Why did Jesus die? Why did He let Himself die, when He could have flung Himself off the cross, incinerated the mocking Pharisees and guards, and shown Himself to be truly miraculous? Why did Jesus die? Remember what I said earlier, that God hates sin and always punishes it ruthlessly? You and I, and every other human being, has committed sin worthy of eternal damnation and death. We have all preferred in our hearts eternal death apart from God rather than eternal life with God. When Jesus died, He was innocent. He had never sinned in His life. Because of that, His death was able to substitute for ours. We didn't have to die anymore. Our sin was paid for by His death. Because He paid the price for our sin, we have a choice now about where we spend eternity. God still leaves us free to choose life or death, but He has made a way for us to choose life.
Now for the best part of the story. Jesus was buried in a tomb. His enemies, afraid that His disciples would steal the body and claim He'd come back to life, set a strong watch on the tomb and rolled a huge stone over the door of the tomb, to keep anyone from going inside. Three days later, some women who loved Jesus came to the tomb to anoint his body with special perfumes. But when they got to the tomb, the stone had been rolled away and the tomb was empty! An angel sat on the stone and told them that Jesus had come back to life again, and that He would be seeing them again, soon.
Later, Jesus friends and disciples were gathered in a locked room, trying to decide what to do. Suddenly, there He was among them! He wasn't a ghost - some of the people were afraid of that and touched him to make sure he was real. He ate real food with them, to prove he was there, flesh and blood. Then he was gone.
Jesus made several appearances to His diciples and to others in the next few days and weeks. More than five hundred people saw Him. Some of his last words to his followers were these -
Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teach them everything I have taught you.
And, through the long years since, we Christians have told each other the wonderful story, and compiled the Bible together, which contains copies of the writings of the disciples and prophets of the old times before Christ. We've copied and copied and copied that book, and translated it into thousands of langauges ... including into English (several times). That's how I heard the story - from others and from the book. So I tell it again now, begging forgiveness of those who know the book and know all that I'm leaving out. Let me sum up - this is the story of Jesus - this is the gospel.
We are all sinners from birth and have turned away from God. God in His justice punished our sin by sacrificing His Son. God in His mercy raised His Son back to life again, just as He raises us to life again when we become a Christian. For now and for ever, anyone who believes God and trusts in Jesus Christ for his or her salvation will be saved from hell and begins a new life. A Christian is anyone who believes in Jesus Christ, meaning that one believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He came into the world and took away our sins throug His death, that He was raised from the dead, just as we are raised from death, and furthermore accepts the rightful lordship of God over his life. Any Christians, anywhere, anytime, are siblings in the family and church of God. Which makes me your brother, if you are one of us. Glad to have you in the family.
