Notes on Ravi's talk about Jesus
We listened to this at our meeting on Saturday, April 16
Ravi Zacharias
“Who is Jesus? Defending Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life”
Mormon Tabernacle
November 14, 2004
There are differences between what we believe and they are pretty deep, but we look for common ground, because conviction without love makes the conviction repulsive.
We are dealing with the embodiment of truth in the birth, life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The exclusivity and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.
Truth by definition is exclusive. Whenever you make an affirmation or assertion, you are excluding the opposite. Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life, he didn’t say, except in, and include a few other ideas.
Mark 14 – High priest asked him, Are you the Christ? Jesus said, I am, and you will see…
Then Jesus’ conversation with Pilate, where Pilate says, “What is truth?”
Our lord invariably questioned his questioner so that the questioner would have to open up into his own assumptions. Jesus reminds us that intent is prior to content, because to give truth to him who loves it not, is to give him even more reason for misinterpretation, according to George MacDonald.
“Those that are on the side of truth listen to me,” Jesus said.
Woman at the well – Jesus unmasks her one bit of a time, and she says to him, “You know, when the messiah comes he will explain all this,” and in his most gentle persuasion he says, “I who speak to you am he.”
The high priest, politician did not recognize him. A broken woman did.
W.H. Leckey – Jesus “exerted so deep an influence” in morality and example. F.F. Bruce called his judgment non-Christian.
James Stewart – He was the meekest and lowliest of sons of men, yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven….There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts in Jesus…The mystery of divine personality.
We come into contact with this personage in history. What made him so unique?
1. His description of the human condition, which conforms to reality as we know it.
-He tells us again and again that the heart of man is desperately wicked (John 2). Matthew 15 – out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder…These are what make a person unclean.
-Nowhere is the doctrine of sin so clearly enunciated as in the Christian faith. (Romans 1 – is there any more graphic portrayal of your heart and mine?)
-Its accuracy is seen in our time. Told the story of visiting Auschwitz. Saw 14,000 pounds of women’s hair, pictures of little boys castrated for experimentation; the words of Hitler “devoid of a conscience…and cruel,” 12,000 killed a day. This has happened in our day, and at that time by the most educated nation in the world.
-Flight in Asia, Dutch woman sitting next to him. She worked in rescuing children from sexual abuse. She told him the night before she had taken a 18-month old baby girl from the arms of a man who was sexually molesting her. “You tell me there’s no such thing as evil? You want to call it deviance? Jesus looked at it and called it for what it was—the heinousness of sin”
-In taking away that word, evil, we are taking away that which is systemically needed to identify what is real.
-American Psychological Association past president wrote, “Whatever became of sin?” He said to be free from sin is to be sick rather than sinful…We have cut the very roots of our being…We now find ourselves asking, Who am I…what does living really mean?” We have lost our sense of identity by removing evil—we don’t know what living really mean.
-Jesus came to “save his people from their sins.” Have you seen your own heart?
-The Bible says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Have you seen your heart before Jesus?
-Jacob wrestling with the angel. Why did God ask Jacob what his name was? Because he pretended to be Esau years before when he stole his father’s blessing. Jacob owned up to who he was before God and thus God made something great out of him. God cannot do that with us until we own up to who we are.
2. He provides uniquely for our malady.
-Calcutta: goddess of destruction. They still sacrifice animals there. He saw a family bringing their son to see an animal sacrificed—they were making a vow to ask for something. The goat had its throat cut by a priest uttering incantations and wearing a spotless white robe. “I noticed something happening…The man bringing the sacrifice puts his head in the same place and marks his shirt with the blood…Human kind has tried desperately to find a mediator, a sacrifice.
-We have the most precious truth in the world.
-Half of John’s gospel is given to the passion of Christ, and the other books give significant space. Read John Stott’s “The Cross of Christ.” Cicero said to crucify a Roman citizen defied language in its cruelty.
-Matthew 16: Peter told Jesus he was the Christ, the son of the blessed lord. From then on Jesus told them what manner of death he would die, and Peter said, “Never!” Jesus said, “Simon, get thee behind me Satan.”
-Excruciating comes from Latin excruciates, which means out of the cross.
-UN day of prayer in September, he talked about navigating with absolutes in a world or relativism. Talked about justice, love, forgiveness and evil. “You’re a body that wants justice, to deal with evil, and you long for forgiveness when wronged, and hunger for love.” All those things converge on the cross of Jesus Christ.
-The Christian faith is the unique faith that offers forgiveness. (Poem by teacher) What a glorious thing it is.
-Hospital in India. He was there when at 17 he tried to take his own life. Thought of Jesus calling him in his forgiving voice, saying, “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.”
-Meeting with Hamas leader in Jerusalem. Asked him about suicide bombing, and he gave an answer that was disingenuous. Ravi said, We have different faiths, but the story of Abraham offering Isaac his son as a sacrifice is common to both of us. God stopped his hand because he was going to provide a sacrifice. Ravi said, “Until we receive the son that god has provided we will be offering our own sons on the battlefields of this land and others. Because when they wrong you you want to wrong them…It goes on and on…When insolence was hurled on Christ, sin didn’t bounce back. Sin stopped.”
-If you’ve seen your own heart, have you seen what the cross has provided for you? For there is no other sacrifice under heaven for sin.
3. His engagement in history
-Whichever way you look at the world, we wonder which direction it is going in. We do not understand what history is all about. Traditionalist – past. Existentialist – current. Utopian – future. Jesus took a piece of bread and a cup and made the most profound statement on time: as often as you eat this bread and drink of this cup, now …..??? He said all of history is suffused with meaning.
-He reminds us time and again of his engagement in history.
4. His disclosure of reality
-How do you find unity in diversity? Academics, language, etc.
-Quintessence: the old Greek belief in diversity of earth, air, fire, ___. A student asked what the fifth essence is, the quintessence.
-America: E pluribus Unum – out of diversity, one.
-The greatest search is for unity in diversity. The heart hungers for this. We long for it even within, because we are diverse even within. Flesh vs. the spirit or the conscience.
-There is no other concept in the world as diverse and unified as the Trinity. God from the beginning is a being in relationship. Our hearts hunger for relationship, and all other relationships are secondary until you find relationship with Christ himself. You can know him by inviting him into your life as your Lord and redeemer. This God of history who defines the condition of the human heart and shows us what we need in forgiveness—he is not giving us a more ethical way by which to live but is giving us a life we could never live on our own by changing our hearts and hungers.
5. His embodiment of the ideal
-The Davinci Code – human skepticism trying to do away with the deity of Christ.
-He looked at his accusers and said which of you can find me guilty of sin? They walked away. You see the spotless lamb of God.
-Revelation – no one is pure enough to open that scroll, but all of a sudden an angel says wipe away your tears there is one. And a lion comes, becomes a lamb, and opens it.
-Paul knew what it was to be a hypocrite. He communicated to different cultures. He knew Hebrews idealized light. The Greeks idealized knowledge. The Romans idealized glory. He understood their metaphors. He’s writing to the most sensual of their cultures in Corinth, and says, “God who caused light to shine out off darkness has caused his light to shine in our hearts to give us knowledge…” What convergence of the abstract into embodiment. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
6. His triumph over the grave
-John 20: Mary is despondent b/c Jesus has been crucified. She goes to the grave. The angels ask her why she is crying. She turns away from the angelic messengers and asks the gardener where the body is. Only Jesus would have responded with, “Mary.” He who came from eternity knows you by name and affirms for you your individuality. He tells her to go and tell the others what this is all about.
-Billy Graham. His most moving day was when the chancellor of Germany and he were looking at a city, and the chancellor said, “Do you really believe Jesus rose from the dead?” Graham said, “If he didn’t, I would have no gospel left to preach.” The chancellor said, “Outside the resurrection of Christ I know of no other hope for mankind.”
-3 weeks ago speaking in Qatar to U.S. troops. They wanted prayer because they were facing death.
-When he buried his mother, his father had never hugged him before but did then and asked him to preach at the funeral. Ravi could only think of one word, “Gone.” His father said, “Get on your knees and ask him to complete the thought: Gone where?” As he prayed, he sensed God saying, “She’s gone home.” For 32 years I have spent most of my time away from home. It’s good to be home, how much more the place that Jesus has prepared for us. What hope.
Paul in Colossians 1 gives a glowing description of Christ. The image of the invisible God. In chapter 2 he says, you are complete in him. You are complete in him. We lack nothing when we know him—he interprets all of reality for us.
Two years ago he first spoke to the U.N. ambassadors. He spoke about the heart’s hunger for meaning, and its four components. In two minutes of a 25-minute talk, he could bring the gospel in. He told them the story, a parable, of the rich man with a huge art gallery with a terrific son. The son befriended a beggar, and told him of his father’s art gallery. But the young man died suddenly, and the beggar went and drew a portrait of the young man, and gave it to the rich man, the boy’s father. Years later the beggar heard the rich man had died and was going to auction his art gallery, and he went to buy the portrait he had drawn years before. The auctioneer said the portrait was to be sold first. The beggar was the only person to bid and bought it. The auctioneer said, “Whoever bids on the portrait of the son gets the whole art gallery.” When you get the son, you get all of the components of meaning in life.
When you get the son, you get all that you need to understand reality within and without, and that is why in a world skidding out of control, where the sounds of weapons are in many parts, deafening to the ears, in a world where sexuality is becoming desacredilized, where homes are being attacked, and we long for someone or something to provide answers, Jesus stands tall and says, come unto me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, for I when lifted up will draw all men unto me.
Malcolm Muggeridge – lived sensually for much of his own life. On his death bed, he said, We look back on history and what do we see—the rise and fall of great men and empires…Behind the debris of these solemn supermen…there stands the gigantic figure of one person, who through alone and in whom alone and because of whom alone, mankind may have peace.
Ravi Zacharias
“Who is Jesus? Defending Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life”
Mormon Tabernacle
November 14, 2004
There are differences between what we believe and they are pretty deep, but we look for common ground, because conviction without love makes the conviction repulsive.
We are dealing with the embodiment of truth in the birth, life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The exclusivity and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.
Truth by definition is exclusive. Whenever you make an affirmation or assertion, you are excluding the opposite. Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life, he didn’t say, except in, and include a few other ideas.
Mark 14 – High priest asked him, Are you the Christ? Jesus said, I am, and you will see…
Then Jesus’ conversation with Pilate, where Pilate says, “What is truth?”
Our lord invariably questioned his questioner so that the questioner would have to open up into his own assumptions. Jesus reminds us that intent is prior to content, because to give truth to him who loves it not, is to give him even more reason for misinterpretation, according to George MacDonald.
“Those that are on the side of truth listen to me,” Jesus said.
Woman at the well – Jesus unmasks her one bit of a time, and she says to him, “You know, when the messiah comes he will explain all this,” and in his most gentle persuasion he says, “I who speak to you am he.”
The high priest, politician did not recognize him. A broken woman did.
W.H. Leckey – Jesus “exerted so deep an influence” in morality and example. F.F. Bruce called his judgment non-Christian.
James Stewart – He was the meekest and lowliest of sons of men, yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven….There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts in Jesus…The mystery of divine personality.
We come into contact with this personage in history. What made him so unique?
1. His description of the human condition, which conforms to reality as we know it.
-He tells us again and again that the heart of man is desperately wicked (John 2). Matthew 15 – out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder…These are what make a person unclean.
-Nowhere is the doctrine of sin so clearly enunciated as in the Christian faith. (Romans 1 – is there any more graphic portrayal of your heart and mine?)
-Its accuracy is seen in our time. Told the story of visiting Auschwitz. Saw 14,000 pounds of women’s hair, pictures of little boys castrated for experimentation; the words of Hitler “devoid of a conscience…and cruel,” 12,000 killed a day. This has happened in our day, and at that time by the most educated nation in the world.
-Flight in Asia, Dutch woman sitting next to him. She worked in rescuing children from sexual abuse. She told him the night before she had taken a 18-month old baby girl from the arms of a man who was sexually molesting her. “You tell me there’s no such thing as evil? You want to call it deviance? Jesus looked at it and called it for what it was—the heinousness of sin”
-In taking away that word, evil, we are taking away that which is systemically needed to identify what is real.
-American Psychological Association past president wrote, “Whatever became of sin?” He said to be free from sin is to be sick rather than sinful…We have cut the very roots of our being…We now find ourselves asking, Who am I…what does living really mean?” We have lost our sense of identity by removing evil—we don’t know what living really mean.
-Jesus came to “save his people from their sins.” Have you seen your own heart?
-The Bible says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Have you seen your heart before Jesus?
-Jacob wrestling with the angel. Why did God ask Jacob what his name was? Because he pretended to be Esau years before when he stole his father’s blessing. Jacob owned up to who he was before God and thus God made something great out of him. God cannot do that with us until we own up to who we are.
2. He provides uniquely for our malady.
-Calcutta: goddess of destruction. They still sacrifice animals there. He saw a family bringing their son to see an animal sacrificed—they were making a vow to ask for something. The goat had its throat cut by a priest uttering incantations and wearing a spotless white robe. “I noticed something happening…The man bringing the sacrifice puts his head in the same place and marks his shirt with the blood…Human kind has tried desperately to find a mediator, a sacrifice.
-We have the most precious truth in the world.
-Half of John’s gospel is given to the passion of Christ, and the other books give significant space. Read John Stott’s “The Cross of Christ.” Cicero said to crucify a Roman citizen defied language in its cruelty.
-Matthew 16: Peter told Jesus he was the Christ, the son of the blessed lord. From then on Jesus told them what manner of death he would die, and Peter said, “Never!” Jesus said, “Simon, get thee behind me Satan.”
-Excruciating comes from Latin excruciates, which means out of the cross.
-UN day of prayer in September, he talked about navigating with absolutes in a world or relativism. Talked about justice, love, forgiveness and evil. “You’re a body that wants justice, to deal with evil, and you long for forgiveness when wronged, and hunger for love.” All those things converge on the cross of Jesus Christ.
-The Christian faith is the unique faith that offers forgiveness. (Poem by teacher) What a glorious thing it is.
-Hospital in India. He was there when at 17 he tried to take his own life. Thought of Jesus calling him in his forgiving voice, saying, “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.”
-Meeting with Hamas leader in Jerusalem. Asked him about suicide bombing, and he gave an answer that was disingenuous. Ravi said, We have different faiths, but the story of Abraham offering Isaac his son as a sacrifice is common to both of us. God stopped his hand because he was going to provide a sacrifice. Ravi said, “Until we receive the son that god has provided we will be offering our own sons on the battlefields of this land and others. Because when they wrong you you want to wrong them…It goes on and on…When insolence was hurled on Christ, sin didn’t bounce back. Sin stopped.”
-If you’ve seen your own heart, have you seen what the cross has provided for you? For there is no other sacrifice under heaven for sin.
3. His engagement in history
-Whichever way you look at the world, we wonder which direction it is going in. We do not understand what history is all about. Traditionalist – past. Existentialist – current. Utopian – future. Jesus took a piece of bread and a cup and made the most profound statement on time: as often as you eat this bread and drink of this cup, now …..??? He said all of history is suffused with meaning.
-He reminds us time and again of his engagement in history.
4. His disclosure of reality
-How do you find unity in diversity? Academics, language, etc.
-Quintessence: the old Greek belief in diversity of earth, air, fire, ___. A student asked what the fifth essence is, the quintessence.
-America: E pluribus Unum – out of diversity, one.
-The greatest search is for unity in diversity. The heart hungers for this. We long for it even within, because we are diverse even within. Flesh vs. the spirit or the conscience.
-There is no other concept in the world as diverse and unified as the Trinity. God from the beginning is a being in relationship. Our hearts hunger for relationship, and all other relationships are secondary until you find relationship with Christ himself. You can know him by inviting him into your life as your Lord and redeemer. This God of history who defines the condition of the human heart and shows us what we need in forgiveness—he is not giving us a more ethical way by which to live but is giving us a life we could never live on our own by changing our hearts and hungers.
5. His embodiment of the ideal
-The Davinci Code – human skepticism trying to do away with the deity of Christ.
-He looked at his accusers and said which of you can find me guilty of sin? They walked away. You see the spotless lamb of God.
-Revelation – no one is pure enough to open that scroll, but all of a sudden an angel says wipe away your tears there is one. And a lion comes, becomes a lamb, and opens it.
-Paul knew what it was to be a hypocrite. He communicated to different cultures. He knew Hebrews idealized light. The Greeks idealized knowledge. The Romans idealized glory. He understood their metaphors. He’s writing to the most sensual of their cultures in Corinth, and says, “God who caused light to shine out off darkness has caused his light to shine in our hearts to give us knowledge…” What convergence of the abstract into embodiment. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
6. His triumph over the grave
-John 20: Mary is despondent b/c Jesus has been crucified. She goes to the grave. The angels ask her why she is crying. She turns away from the angelic messengers and asks the gardener where the body is. Only Jesus would have responded with, “Mary.” He who came from eternity knows you by name and affirms for you your individuality. He tells her to go and tell the others what this is all about.
-Billy Graham. His most moving day was when the chancellor of Germany and he were looking at a city, and the chancellor said, “Do you really believe Jesus rose from the dead?” Graham said, “If he didn’t, I would have no gospel left to preach.” The chancellor said, “Outside the resurrection of Christ I know of no other hope for mankind.”
-3 weeks ago speaking in Qatar to U.S. troops. They wanted prayer because they were facing death.
-When he buried his mother, his father had never hugged him before but did then and asked him to preach at the funeral. Ravi could only think of one word, “Gone.” His father said, “Get on your knees and ask him to complete the thought: Gone where?” As he prayed, he sensed God saying, “She’s gone home.” For 32 years I have spent most of my time away from home. It’s good to be home, how much more the place that Jesus has prepared for us. What hope.
Paul in Colossians 1 gives a glowing description of Christ. The image of the invisible God. In chapter 2 he says, you are complete in him. You are complete in him. We lack nothing when we know him—he interprets all of reality for us.
Two years ago he first spoke to the U.N. ambassadors. He spoke about the heart’s hunger for meaning, and its four components. In two minutes of a 25-minute talk, he could bring the gospel in. He told them the story, a parable, of the rich man with a huge art gallery with a terrific son. The son befriended a beggar, and told him of his father’s art gallery. But the young man died suddenly, and the beggar went and drew a portrait of the young man, and gave it to the rich man, the boy’s father. Years later the beggar heard the rich man had died and was going to auction his art gallery, and he went to buy the portrait he had drawn years before. The auctioneer said the portrait was to be sold first. The beggar was the only person to bid and bought it. The auctioneer said, “Whoever bids on the portrait of the son gets the whole art gallery.” When you get the son, you get all of the components of meaning in life.
When you get the son, you get all that you need to understand reality within and without, and that is why in a world skidding out of control, where the sounds of weapons are in many parts, deafening to the ears, in a world where sexuality is becoming desacredilized, where homes are being attacked, and we long for someone or something to provide answers, Jesus stands tall and says, come unto me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, for I when lifted up will draw all men unto me.
Malcolm Muggeridge – lived sensually for much of his own life. On his death bed, he said, We look back on history and what do we see—the rise and fall of great men and empires…Behind the debris of these solemn supermen…there stands the gigantic figure of one person, who through alone and in whom alone and because of whom alone, mankind may have peace.
posted by stan at 12:45 AM
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