One of my friends from seminary has the distinction of breaking my jaw (accidentally) and being one of the most effective preachers during that time in my life.
In case you are wondering, he was coming up with the ball in a basketball game, and I was reaching for it. The first thing to connect was his elbow with my jaw. As they say in the NBA, “No harm. No foul.” Two root canals, two sets of caps for my teeth, and a few thousand dollars later—that was the cost of a fun story.
While he was preaching at our mission church in Louisiana, a few of us went to a Mexican restaurant for breakfast. I don’t remember what he ordered, but it came with a special dose of fire. As he ate, sweat poured from his face, and he talked loud and long about how spicy the dish was.
The only other person in the restaurant was the Coca-Cola dealer, who watched us with interest and good humor. At one point, my friend stood on a chair in front of the air conditioner vent while the rest of us laughed hilariously at his antics.
The Coca-Cola dealer was not a church attender, but he found out who we were and came to church that night. My friend had broken the mold of what he believed preachers were supposed to be like, and he had to hear him for himself.
Under far more serious circumstances, Jesus broke the mold of expected behavior for the Messiah. Jesus’ actions were so different from those of John the Baptist that John had to ask Jesus a crucial question.
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:2-3).
Jesus’ Answer
A world-record powerlifter and personal trainer in a gym where I used to go had this on his t-shirt: “Shut Up and Show Me.” Rather than using words or making outlandish claims, Jesus pointed John the Baptist to His actions. In effect, He shut up and showed him.
Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Matthew 11:4-6).
We can only speculate about John’s motive in asking Jesus about the Messiah. What’s most important is that we take the time to investigate who Jesus is for ourselves.
For some, the words of the philosopher G.K. Chesterton need to be considered: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
In my lifetime, I’ve met many one-book wonders who believe they have Christianity figured out. They read one book or listened to one program on the History Channel and have decided that they don’t need a relationship with Jesus. An honest quest to know Jesus is well worth the effort, and we shouldn’t cheat ourselves out of knowing what He said and did.
For others, the words of C.S. Lewis are worth considering: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.
“That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.
“Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
The best choice we can make is to be fully informed about Jesus’ actions and attitudes, so our faith is firmly rooted in solid knowledge. Then, we can fully follow someone we know.
YouTube Discussion
If you want a video presentation on this passage, please join me on YouTube. Rudy Ross and Bruce Kirby will return to the videos soon.
Real Voices 