Remember Jesus Christ
Hey, I love that we can all be together as families this morning! And since it’s Christmas Day that means it’s the first day of a new season, and that means a new catechism. So kids in the room, listen up! Few questions for you:
1. What season are we [now] celebrating?
A: Christmas
2. What is Christmas?
A: Christmas is the season when we welcome Jesus in the world.
3. What kind of season is Christmas?
A: A season of joy!
4. Why are we joyful?
A: Because Jesus has come!
5. Who is Jesus?
A: Jesus is the Son of God, the Light of the World, Immanuel.
And there are three more questions, but we’re going to stop here for now, at question five: “Who is Jesus?”
That is actually the most important question in the entire world. If you’re going to know anything, know that.
Interested in Jesus
One of the things I love about this time of year is that this question about Jesus fascinates a lot of people. If you’ve been out and about I know you’ve seen the magazine covers that have a painting of Jesus on the cover. Several magazines do this around Christmas — LIFE magazine, Newsweek, National Geographic. But come to find out, this actually goes back to TIME magazine who first did it in 1938.
They’ve published a special “Jesus edition” of their magazine routinely over the last 80, and now other magazines do the same. Why?
Simple answer: because people buy those magazines.
And the reason they buy those magazines is because they’re interested in Jesus.
If you put a picture of Jesus on the cover with a short, provocative question, Americans eat that stuff up. That hasn’t changed about us in almost a century. We as a society are still very interested in Jesus — but, at the same time, apparently fewer and fewer Americans know who Jesus is.
Ignorant of Who He Is
Last year, Ligonier Ministries did a “State of Theology” survey and found that 52% of American adults agree that “Jesus was a great teacher, but not God.”
— which is wrong! To say that ‘Jesus is a great teacher but not God’ is a flat-out rejection of what the Bible says and what Jesus says about himself, and what Christians have always believed! Over half of Americans get this wrong.
And surveys are just surveys — they’re not perfect — but I think it’s safe to say that right now, current in our day, in this time where God has placed us, more people are interested in Jesus [left hand high] than who know the truth of who he is.
And it’s not always been this way, and it won’t stay this way, but we’re currently in a moment where many people “care” about Jesus but don’t know him. They’re interested in him but ignorant of him.
And that means we have an amazing opportunity, right? Go tell it on the mountain! We have good news to share! (like we talked about last night)
Beware a Deeper Problem
But also, there is potentially a deeper problem we face. Because what’s worse than being interested in Jesus but ignorant of him is to know Jesus but not be interested . . . what if we know Jesus but don’t really care? We should beware of that. And it goes for all of us in here.
Because we can get all the answers about Jesus right on paper. We could have the creeds and catechisms all memorized — I want us to — but at the end of the day, the question is if you love Jesus.
Do you really worship him?
How often is he on your mind?
How big is he in your day?
Does he matter to you?
I’m convinced, church, that what we need most is not to learn new knowledge about Jesus, but it’s to adore him whom we already know, and that’s why 2 Timothy Chapter 2, verse 8 is so helpful. Because here Paul simply tells Timothy to “Remember Jesus Christ.” …
Verse 8: Remember Jesus Christ — Jesus who is “risen from the dead, the offspring of David” — both of these facts about Jesus are facts that Timothy already knew! Paul’s not unveiling a hidden truth here. None of this is a surprise. He’s just telling Timothy to remember
And that’s my prayer for us on this Christmas Day, and that’s my dream for us as a church in the New Year and beyond. Would that God make us a people who remember Jesus! I want to us to be a church, to be a community, who are overcome by the glory and realness of Jesus in such a way that there’s never a moment we forget him.
Toward that end, looking at 2 Timothy 2:8, this morning I want to give you three reminders for remembering Jesus. This applies to today, and for the weeks and months (and years) to come.
#1. Remembering Jesus is a mental action.
Look at verse 8 again. The command is to “remember” and that is a straightforward Greek word. It means basically the thing we mean in English when we say remember. When we remember something we are calling it to mind. Imagine it like this:
We go about our days with a mental view. We all have a thinking zone. There’s a mental territory we each have in front of us — so hear view, zone, territory. Well when we remember something, whatever that thing is, it comes into that territory. Our remembering puts certain objects in our mental view so that we think about them.
So what about when we forget something?
Well when we forget something it means that whatever we forgot didn’t make it into our mental territory. Forgotten things are the things that never made it into view.
And that would happen to us a lot because we’re human and finite and we have weaknesses, so what do we do to help ourselves not forget things?
We station reminders all around us. We have alarms and calendars and to-do lists — and we have these things because they ensure us that the important stuff will make it into our mental territories. And I appreciate these things. I love a good “to-do list.”
Maybe this is just the way I’m wired, but man, at the start of every week I look forward writing out what I’ve got to do and putting a little box to the side — I typically do this on lined paper with a Pilot G-2 half point pen (what’s considered “Extra Fine”). (That’s because I prefer my list pen to have a slightly bigger point than my writing pen, which is .38 millimeters — what’s considered “Ultra Fine”).
I like building lists. But guess what? Those lists have never accomplished anything for me. The sole purpose of the list is to put those important things in my mental territory. They help me remember — which again, just brings these things into view. Remembering calls things to mind.
And remembering Jesus is not less than that.
If you’re going to remember Jesus it means that you need to get Jesus in your mental territory. Remembering is a mental action. And I realize this is super basic, but it’s worth saying.
At this point in history, in this world, before we can relate to Jesus in any other way, he first has to be on our minds. Remembering Jesus is a mental action.
#2. Remembering Jesus is Scripture-led.
Paul tells Timothy to “remember Jesus Christ” — to call to mind Jesus — that means, in more detail, that we should think about the truth of Jesus revealed to us in Scripture. In other words, we don’t make up what we think about Jesus. We don’t have the right to fashion together a Jesus of our own imagination … although that’s exactly what a lot of people do.
That’s the genius of that one scene in the classic movie Talladega Nights. This is 2006. Will Ferrell is the main character Rickey Bobby. Well Rickey and his family are having dinner, and they get into an argument about how to address Jesus when you pray. (And I think this scene is sacrilegious; I don’t like it; but it’s also profound because it exposes the silliness of a thin cultural Christianity syncretized with modern values.)
Rickey says that whoever is “saying grace” gets to choose how they want to refer to Jesus. He prefers “Baby Jesus” and if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll recall that then his best friend, Cal Naughton, Jr. speaks up and says, “I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo t-shirt…” And they all go around saying the different ways they like to remember Jesus, and the whole thing is sacrilege because nothing of what they say comes from the Bible. It’s all a parody of the different ways people make up their own Jesus according to their own ideas. So what keeps us from doing that?
Look how Paul exhorts Timothy (and us) in verse 8. He says “Remember Jesus Christ” and then he gives these two short descriptions. Jesus Christ who is [one] “risen from the dead, [and two] the offspring of David.” Now, of all the true things Paul could say here about Jesus, why does Paul say these two things?
The Person of Jesus
It’s interesting that both of these things emphasize the person of Jesus as the God-man. The first description, that Jesus is “risen from the dead,” highlights the deity of Jesus. The second description, that Jesus is “the offspring of David,” highlights the humanity of Jesus.
As for his deity, what makes that clearer about Jesus than when he conquered death?
Nobody gave Jesus his life and nobody can take it from him, but he willingly laid it down, and then he took it back up again — and Jesus can do that because he’s God! Paul tells us in the Book of Romans that the event of the resurrection was when Jesus was “declared to be Son of God in power” (Romans 1:4). This doesn’t mean that the resurrection ‘made’ him God, but that it was the great vindication that Jesus indeed is God just like he said. In accordance with the Scriptures, Jesus is risen from the dead as God incarnate. The Word made flesh. The fullness of deity dwelling bodily.
And he’s the offspring of David. This speaks to the humanity of Jesus, that when Jesus humbled himself to become a man, he didn’t just join the human race in general, but he joined a family tree. He subjected himself to a lineage of men and women with clay feet, and as God promised, that included King David. In the storyline of the Bible, God’s promise to David in 2 Samuel 7 becomes the central promise. God told David that the Messiah who would reign forever would come through David’s lineage. God made that promise in around 1000BC, and from that point, throughout the rest of redemptive history, it’s “all eyes” on the house of David. The Savior of the world would come through that door.
The Biblical Testimony
And he did, in the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman — fully God and fully man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we think about him, we think about that. We think about his person revealed to us in the Bible. We think about who he is as explained to us in the verses of the Bible or summarized for us in the great creeds from church history.
When we think about Jesus, we can think verses, like:
Colossians 1:15, “He is the image of the invisible God”
Hebrews 1:3, “He is the radiance of the glory of God”
John 1:14, “He is the word become flesh” … and …
He is the light of the world,
the door of the sheep,
the good shepherd,
the resurrection and the life,
the way, the truth, and life,
the true vine
… and on and on. The Bible tells us who Jesus is. Think about that.
And we have summaries of what the Bible tells us in creeds and catechisms.
Like our Christmas catechism. Kids, remember question five: “Who is Jesus?”
Answer: “Jesus is the Son of God, the Light of the World, Immanuel.”
Or more historically, there’s the Nicene Creed:
We believe … in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
begotten from the Father before all ages,
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made;
of the same essence of the Father. …
And the Athanasian Creed:
We believe and confess
that our Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son,
is both God and human, equally.
He is God from the essence of the Father,
begotten before time;
and he is human from the essence of his mother,
born in time;
completely God, completely human.
And there are more. The point is that when we remember Jesus we are Scripture-led. We think about him in light of what the Bible says about him, like the way Paul leads us here. Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David. Remembering Jesus brings the person of Jesus, shown to us in the Bible, into our mental view.
#3. Remembering Jesus is personal.
Now when I say personal, I’m saying that because I want to be clear that our remembering Jesus is not exclusively a mental exercise of subscribing to certain truth claims. Again, it includes that — when we remember Jesus we are calling to mind Jesus, guided by the Biblical testimony — BUT because of who Jesus is, because he is risen from the dead, the offspring of David, when we remember him we are remembering a real person who is alive and well at the exact moment that we remember him.
Jesus is not an idea. I’m gonna say this for the rest of my life. Jesus is a real person. So when I think about him, like I’m doing now — like we’re doing now — our thinking about Jesus is not a one-way street.
It’s not as if Jesus is merely distant data that we just bring into view, but rather, the truth, the content, the thoughts about Jesus that come into our mental view, are thoughts of a person who is alive in the exact moment we think them, and who knows what we’re thinking.
Get this: You’ve never had a thought about Jesus that he did not know about when you had the thought. And in fact, when we think about Jesus, he actually helps us think about him by his Spirit whom he has given to us. [two-way street] So there’s an actual relationship taking place.
And this is where we go deeper than our thinking to talk about the response of our hearts.
From Mind to Heart
So say Jesus comes into your mental territory. You remember him:
You see a verse hanging on your wall,
or printed on your coffee mug,
or your midday alarm goes off as a reminder to pray,
or you’re reading the Bible in the morning,
or you’re doing a family devotional at the dinner table,
or you’re listening to good music in the car
— whatever it is, Jesus comes to mind, you remember him, and almost simultaneously as you remember Jesus your heart is postured toward him a certain way.
And this is what matters. It’s really important. Because there’s no neutral ground here. Either you are indifferent to him (maybe ashamed of him … you know him, you think about him, but you’re just not interested). It’s either that or you adore him. Him. Him! The real person … who could be standing face-to-face with you right now, and one day he will be.
We remember him to worship him. We don’t think about him as one part of our lives alongside everything else, but see him as the center that pervades everything else. Jesus, the Son of God, the Light of the World, Immanuel.
6. What does Immanuel mean?
Answer: God is with us.
7. What do we do during Christmas?
A: We celebrate the birth of Jesus!
8. What do we confess during Christmas?
A: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
And so a weary world rejoices. Church, receive your King!
The Table
That’s what we do here at this Table. What a great gift that we get to have this meal together on Christmas Day! This morning, if you trust in Jesus, if you worship him, I invite you to come and receive him in this bread and cup. This Table is for all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
