Who is this Man?
“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel. (Numbers 24:17 NIV)
Matthew 2:
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
“‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.”
Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. (Matthew 2:1-11 NIV)
Who is Jesus, exactly? A lot of people wrestle with that question.
Herod couldn’t figure it out.
The religious leaders couldn’t figure it out.
But Mary and Joseph knew.
The shepherds knew.
The wise men knew.
The angels knew.
Who does
the Bible say that Jesus is?
In the
book of Deuteronomy, God says:
Hear oh Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is
One. (Deuteronomy 6:4 NIV)
Jesus knew that verse, in fact, He
said it was the greatest commandment. (see Mark 12:29)
So Jesus
made it very clear that God is One, but He also said this:
I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30 NIV)
In John chapter 1, we read:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him
all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John
1:1-3 NIV)
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (John 1:14 NIV)
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son,
who is himself God … has made him known. (John 1:18 NIV)
Genesis
begins with the words, “In the beginning,” and John chose to open his book with
the same three little words. I love that. But then John paints a
picture for us that we hadn’t seen in Genesis. He tells us
exactly who was there, in the beginning.
God was there, and also the Word was there.
But
wait- actually, John says, the Word is God!
A few
verses later, John tells us that the Word became flesh and dwelt with us, so
now we know that the Word is Jesus… is John implying, then, that Jesus is God?
Yes, but
in case we didn’t catch it, in verse 18, John comes right out and says, “the
one and only Son… is Himself God.”
The Bible
is very clear that Jesus is God, but we humans – even many Christians –
struggle with that. We somehow feel more “comfortable” calling Jesus the
“Son of God.”
Yet when
Jesus called Himself the Son of God, the Jewish leaders tried to kill
him.
Jesus
said to them, “My
Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” For this reason they tried all the more to
kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling
God his own Father, making himself equal with God. (John 5:18 NIV)
Jewish
leaders believed that if Jesus was the Son of God, he
was equal with God… in other words, they knew that the Son of
God was actually God Himself.
Why did
the Jews believe that? Because the Old Testament tells us that the Son of
God is indeed also God:
For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given…
And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6 NIV)
… Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son,
and shall call His name Immanuel (In the Hebrew language, “Immanuel” means
God-with-us) (Isaiah 7:14 NIV)
So
Jesus is the Son of God, but that actually means that He is
also Mighty God and Everlasting Father.
We can’t
really understand God with our human reasoning, because He’s so different than
we are. I’m just one – just Andi. But
Jesus is God, the Father is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.
All we
can do is say, “I don’t really understand it, but this is what the Bible
says…” One of the most important things the Bible teaches us is that
Jesus is God.
A
handful of people got to see God while they were still alive, and they told us
what they saw. In Acts chapter 7, Stephen saw God:
But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw
the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said,
“I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of
God.” (Acts 7:55,56 NIV)
Stephen
was “full of the Holy Spirit,” and at the same time, he also saw the “Son”
(Jesus), and at the same time, he also saw the Father!!
In
Daniel 7, Daniel saw God:
As I looked, thrones were set
in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat…
… His throne was flaming with fire,
and its wheels were all ablaze. A river of fire was
flowing, coming out from before him…
and …. I looked, and there before
me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached
the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. (Daniel 7:9-14 NIV)
When
Daniel saw God, he saw the Father (Ancient of Days) and the
Son of man (Jesus) and the River of Fire (the Holy
Spirit)!
In Revelation 5, John
saw God:
Then I saw in the right hand of him
who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and
sealed with seven seals…
Then I saw a Lamb, looking as
if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, …The Lamb had seven
horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all
the earth. (Revelation 5:6 NIV)
When John saw God, he saw the
Father on the throne, the Lamb (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit.
Are you seeing a pattern here? In each of these visions of the One God,
we see the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit at the same time.
As I said earlier, God is different than we are. And this has caused a lot of confusion through the years – some churches teach one thing, others teach another. And this can be frustrating.
I used to wrestle with this question quite a bit until I realized that I might not ever fully understand who He is until I get to Heaven and see Him face to face. And that's okay. I might not fully understand Him, but still I know Him. He speaks to me, comforts me, guides me, and loves me. I've come to accept that the most beautiful and important thing in life is not understanding God, but knowing Him.
One of the quickest ways to get to know Jesus – and His love – is to read the Song of Songs, that beautiful allegory of a loving husband and His bride, (symbolizing Jesus and us), and find some verses where Solomon speaks to his bride.
For
example, SOS chapter 6:4:
You are beautiful, my darling, as Tirzah
Lovely as Jerusalem, majestic as troops with
banners. (NIV)
We see
so much more meaning when we look more closely at a few of the words:
Tirzah comes
from a root word that means, “delight, approve, accept, pardon, to be pleased
with…” (Strong 1983)
majestic means
“terrible,” (Strong 1983)
and SOS 2:4 says that “His banner over
me is love.” (NIV)
If we rewrite
it using these definitions, the verse could actually read like this:
You are beautiful, my darling, with my
blood I have pardoned you, and I delight in you, I approve of you, I accept
you, I am so pleased with you…
Lovely as Jerusalem, you terrify the
demonic enemy, because he sees My love all over you!!
As you read it, imagine Jesus saying these words to you, and allow His love to wash over you. And then you might want to read some of the bride's loving words back to him.
And on that day when you see Jesus face to face, if He smiles and says, "do you know who I am?"
That will be such an easy question for you. You’ll say… “You’re God, and so much more than that. You are the One who loves me.”
Strong, James. Strongs
Exhaustive Concordance: Showing Every Word of the Text of the Common English
Version of the Canonical Books, and Every Occurrence of Each Word in Regular
Order, Together with Dictionaries of the Hebrew and Greek Words of the
Original, with References to the English Words. Baker Book House, 1983.
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy
Bible, New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by
Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved
worldwide.www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are
trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by
Biblica, Inc.
Scripture quotations marked (TLB) are taken from The Living
Bible copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.,
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
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