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WHAT A SAVIOR! #9
THE PSYCHIC SAVIOR
If I could announce to you right now, ahead of time,
here on this Thursday, June 24, 2004, what the final score will be when
the Giants host the L.A. Dodgers this evening up in the Bay Area, what
would you think? You might be very interested in being my best friend
around World Series time, especially if you live near Las Vegas. But if
I had the ability, here on a Thursday, to know ahead of time what tomorrow’s
headlines are going to be when you log onto the Internet, or if I had
supernatural powers and could plainly read your mind right this very moment,
you would have to conclude that there is something truly unique about
Mr. Lonnie Melashenko. I imagine there are already people who have come
to that conclusion for other, less wonderful, reasons!
But here’s my point. We said yesterday that Jesus Christ, the Carpenter
from Nazareth, routinely permitted His friends to call Him things like
“Son of God.” “Messiah.” “Lord.” They gave Him “Deity” names, names implying
Godhood, and Jesus allowed them to do it.
Today, though, this question: what if we discover that Jesus routinely
displayed attributes, or skills, or powers, or abilities . . . that only
God Himself would have? What if He knew things that only God would know?
In the incredible World War II story, Flee the Captor, Christian underground
Resistance leader John Weidner helped more than a thousand Jewish refugees
and Allied pilots to escape from Nazi-occupied France and into the safety
of Switzerland. It’s a wonderfully written adventure penned by Herbert
Ford, and Weidner has some barbed-wire escapes and brushes with the Gestapo
that rival anything you’ll ever see on Schindler’s List. It’s that good.
One trouble the Dutch-Paris escape organization had, though, was this:
often German spies would infiltrate the team and request passage to freedom,
right along with the refugees or the Air Force fliers. For the purpose
of busting them, of course. Weidner and his cohorts already had to painstakingly
train American GIs how to blend in with their European counterparts: use
a piece of bread to push food onto your fork, smoke cigarettes clear down
to the filter, etc. Obviously, “don’t talk any more than you absolutely
have to.”
Unfortunately, the German spies who were trying to penetrate Weidner’s
group had the same ability to pose as Americans. They studied English
until they could speak it flawlessly; they knew the latest GI slang like
“twenty-three skiddoo” or whatever. All the newest movies. They knew the
proverbial “Babe Ruth’s batting average.”
So this haunted the loyal French and Dutch patriots who were trying to
save desperate people. How could they know they weren’t exposing their
entire operation to one of Hitler’s loyalists?
Well, they came across a very clever tactic. Two of their own team members
would pose as Gestapo themselves. As an escape leader was huddled in a
back room with an Allied airman, going over plans, these two fake gendarmes,
complete with all the Nazi markings, would come bursting in, machine guns
at the ready. “Achtung! You’re under arrest!” They would immediately take
the Dutch-Paris leader outside, and “execute” him. The would-be escapee
would hear a gunshot and a last bloody cry, then silence. Then the fake
Gestapo men would put a gun at this guy’s head too. “You’re trying to
escape,” they would bark. “We have orders to shoot all of your kind. We
are going to carry out those orders outside this very room. Come on now;
we’ll get this thing over quickly!”
And Weidner explains that if the escapee really was an Allied airman,
all he could do would be to protest the action, cite the Geneva Convention
policy, give his name, rank, and serial number . . . and hope for the
best. BUT – if the man actually was a Gestapo spy – he would immediately
drop his guard and say so. “Check it out with headquarters,” he would
protest. “I’m with the such-and-such spy unit; I’m a mole assigned to
break up this underground route.”
And the point is this. Here would be a man who would know certain things
that only a Gestapo agent would know. Possessing that hidden knowledge
would be instant proof that he was what he said he was.
How does this translate, then, into our study regarding the divinity of
Jesus? Now, Jesus is the very opposite thing from a Gestapo spy! But are
there abilities Jesus has, are there thing that He, and only He, knew
when He was here on earth?
Bible students always like to use the three “omni” words when talking
about God. What sort of holy being is God? Well, first of all, He is omnipotent.
He has all power. He IS all power. There’s nothing He can’t do. By a single
word, entire universes are created. He controls the wind and the waves,
the sun, moon, and stars. All the planets stay in their specified orbits
because He keeps them there. Recently Christians who have gotten into
the “Hillsong” contemporary music scene have enjoyed the great song, “All
Things Are Possible.” Because with our omnipotent God, all things ARE
possible!
What else? God in heaven is omniscient. He knows everything. I think the
classic soundbite on this comes from The Knowledge of the Holy, by A.
W. Tozer. Here’s just a bit of it:
“God knows . . . all that can be known. And this He
knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every
possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could
have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that
may exist in the centuries or ages yet unborn.”
Isn’t that something? And here’s the third “omni” for
us to ponder: omnipresence. Through the Holy Spirit, we find that God
is everywhere in His universe. No, we don’t believe in what they used
to call “pantheism,” meaning that God was an invisible and impersonal
force in the trees and the oceans. I mean, He IS there, but God is definitely
a Person with a personality. But the Bible plainly teaches that “there’s
not a place where we can flee, but God is present there.”
But now we find in the four Gospels that this cabinet-building Craftsman
born in Bethlehem is these three things: omnipotent, omniscience, and
omnipresent.
Did Jesus Christ work divine miracles while here on earth? Did He heal
the sick, cast out demons, cleanse lepers, and raise the dead? Well, you
either believe the Bible – and therefore believe THAT – or you reject
the entire premise. But if you believe the Word of God is truth, then
Jesus plainly had an attribute that only God would have. He could do things
that mortal men could not do. His disciples acknowledged this fact, and
often fell on their faces in worship. “Even the wind and the waves obey
Him,” they marveled on more than one occasion.
How about omniscience? I love a story found in Mark chapter two, where
a paralytic’s four friends dropped him down through a hole in the roof
to get some divine help from Jesus. You remember how the religious leaders
in the room gaped when Jesus made this amazing statement: “Son, your sins
are forgiven.”
Now, right there, that statement proves that Jesus is either divine or
an idiot. Why would a carpenter – never mind how quotable his quotes were
– have power to forgive ALL a man’s sins? There’s no way. But these Pharisees
and religious lawyers immediately think in their hearts: “Hey! We’ve got
him now! He’s claiming to be God! That’s blasphemy!”
Well, what does Jesus do? He turns to them and immediately confronts them
with the exact words that were running silently in their minds. “Why are
you thinking these things?” He asked.
On another occasion, He whirled right around and asked His enemies: “Why
are you trying to kill Me?” Ack! That’s precisely what they had been plotting
in the back room. He told Peter he would deny Jesus three times before
the rooster crowed. Amazingly, Jesus knew about the three times, and He
knew about the rooster. I don’t know if He would help us today by telling
us Dodger-Giant scores before the fact, but it is plain here from Scripture
that Jesus knew future events in full detail.
How about omnipresence? Now, it’s true that even with a glorified, heavenly
body, Jesus Christ is our brother and Redeemer in the flesh. He couldn’t
preach here in Simi Valley, California, and also be appearing at Madison
Square Garden at the same moment. Only the Holy Spirit could do that.
But I imagine you could finish this text, Matthew 18:20, for me . . .
and we would ascribe its fulfillment to the gift OF the Holy Spirit:
“For where two or three are gathered together in My
name . . . what?” You’re right. Jesus promises: “There am I in the midst
of them.”
So friend, here are three rock-solid reasons why you
and I can have confidence that Jesus Christ is uniquely the Son of God.
He has divine attributes. Heavenly abilities. He worked miracles that
only Deity could accomplish.
I want to say again: all for us. This isn’t just good news that teaches
us a doctrine – the omnipotence of Jesus is power wielded for our sakes.
Incredibly, Jesus knows our paltry pasts, our pathetic presents, and our
frail and fragile futures . . . and still loves us! What’s more, He knows
what our enemy Lucifer is up to, and has already moved ahead to triumph
over him with His unlimited power and presence.
Compared to just getting tonight’s Dodger score ahead of time, that’s
a grand slam.
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