John 10:22-42 - Who Is Jesus?

Main Idea: Choose to believe in Jesus, the Son of God and our Messiah.

• Jesus is God the Son. (vs. 22-30)

  • Jesus constantly told people He was the God of the OT.

  • The Father gave the Son His people, and He will save and protect every one of them.

• Jesus is the prophesied Divine Messiah. (vs. 31-42)

  • Jesus is the Spiritual Being (God), not simply a human Savior.

  • Lesser spiritual beings exist (“Elohim”, angels, seraphim, cherubim), but they are not like Yahweh (“God of Gods”).

  • Jesus proved His deity through His miracles.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

This series has been so helpful for me, because I often forget that the way of Jesus is not just a way of living. It's not just an alternate way of living. It is the way that God has outlined for us to live.

He has not given us a choice in whether or not we can kind of like ride the fence and have all of the niceties of this world and have everything that He has promised to us. Instead, He tells us, pick a side.

Jesus is either Lord and God and the only one to be followed, or He is not, and you can do whatever you want with your life. But those are the two options. There is no trying to determine, do I have Jesus and do whatever I want to do?

Do I have Jesus and worship money or possessions or family? Jesus calls us to pick a side. And in John 5 through 10, we saw how this manifested itself within the life of Jesus himself.

That as he was in Jerusalem, as he was in his hometown of Galilee, over and over again, he made it really clear to the people that were around him who he proclaimed himself to be, which was Lord and God.

And if they did not want that, then they could not have a relationship with God. Even as we heard last week in the sermon, Jesus says, I am the gate, I'm the door.

If anyone wants to come to the Father, but does not come through the gate, he is nothing but a thief and a robber. So we discovered together last week, Jesus is the good shepherd. He is the only way to God.

Today in John 22 through verse 42, we are going to see this central truth, who is Jesus. We know by the passage and what it said, we know he's a good shepherd. He's the way to God.

He's the gate. But what is his identity? And that's what's highlighted for us in these verses.

You see, for you and I, the most important thing about us is what we believe about Jesus. Your eternal soul, your day-to-day purpose, all of it is determined by the true identity of a Jewish carpenter from 2000 years ago.

You get the question, who is Jesus correct? It means everything for you today and for eternity. You get this question wrong.

It has an eternal impact, both in your day-to-day and forever. So what I'm going to call us today is to choose to believe in Jesus, the Son of God and our Messiah. Choose to believe in Jesus, the Son of God and our Messiah.

Now, I recognize the church body that I've got. Many of you are like, yeah, I know, I've been in church, I've been a Christian for like five, six, seven decades. This is not new information.

Looking at Jesus, Paul would tell us in 2 Corinthians, looking into the glory of who Christ is, is what transforms us to be like Jesus.

If you want to be more like Jesus, if you want to be, if you will, a real Christian, it means that you look at who Jesus is, and it transforms you into being more and more like Jesus.

And for your closest family members, for your friends, for your coworkers and your neighbors, for your grandkids or great grandkids, you need to be more like Jesus. I need to be more like Jesus.

So as we look today at who is Jesus, may we see his character, his love, his actions, and may we worship him as he truly is, the son of God and our Messiah. Let's pray together. We'll dive into the passage.

Lord, we love you. We thank you for today. God, we thank you for even those that have prepared food for us to be able to fellowship over and eat together after the service.

But Lord, as we spend this time in your word, may our attention be drawn to you. Lord, if there are people here today that do not know you as their savior, we ask that today they would choose to know and follow you.

Lord, we ask for those of us that are Christians that we would dial into what you say about yourself, that we would value who you are, and that we would embrace it. We love you, God, and we pray all of this. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Today, we've just got two points, and it's given to you in that very initial statement. Choose to believe in Jesus, the Son of God, and our Messiah. First today, we're going to look at in verses 22 through 30, Jesus is God, the Son.

Verse number 22 in the passage, Then the festival of dedication took place in Jerusalem, and it was winter. Jesus was walking in the temple in Solomon's Colonnade.

So this would be a time of year when many of the Jews would gather together in the temple at Jerusalem. They would be worshiping the Lord, and Jesus was doing that exact same thing as he did so often throughout his ministry.

And in verse 24, we read, the Jews surrounded him and asked, how long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.

Now, I hope for your sake and for mine, that today you are not surrounded by a group of religious people who are like, hey, are you really this? Shoot straight with us.

It seems like a rather fraught situation that Jesus is almost somewhat in danger, as we would read even in some of the later verses. So they ask him, if you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.

For those of you that maybe are new to Christianity or new to the Bible, you're like, what's a Messiah? The only thing I've heard about that is, you know, the Dune movies, Lisan al-Ghaib or whatever his name is. A Messiah is a Hebrew word, Mashiach.

It's the anointed one. It is the one that God has chosen as the leader of his people.

And there had been a Messiah, one that was promised to restore to Israel all of the glory that they had experienced during the reigns of David and Solomon at about the like 1000 AD marker, maybe a little closer to 900-800 BC or so.

So God had promised there is going to be one that will rule all of Israel. And so Israel had been looking for a Messiah. They'd been looking for someone to come and to free them from occupation.

Because for about the last 600 years or so, the people of Israel had been under constant oppression and domination by other world powers. So in the 6th century BC, you had Assyria that came in and totally demolished the northern kingdom of Israel.

And they tried to conquer the southern kingdom of Judah. But through God's intervention, they were not destroyed at that time.

Then in 602 BC, all the way through 586 BC, you had the southern kingdom of Judah was destroyed in pieces with people taken captive over the course of about 20, 25, 30 years by the Babylonian Empire, who ended up completely leveling Jerusalem in 586

BC. Then there was a long time where the children of Israel were not in the land of promise. And we learned about that with Abraham all the way back at the beginning of the year in Genesis 12.

But God had promised, I'm going to exile you from the land. Babylon is going to take you away as a result of your sin and your idolatry and your wickedness that you want to be just like the other nations.

So I will allow you to become a part of the other nations again. But after 70 years, I'm going to bring you back into the land. That happened under the reign of the Medo-Persian Empire.

And as the Medo-Persians were there, they were nicer to the Israelites than the Babylonians were. But it still was under oppression. They still had to pay taxes.

They were still under the rule of a foreign king. Then Alexander the Great came through. And once again, the land was completely taken over.

After Alexander the Great died, he had four generals that were over different areas of the former empire that he ruled. And some of them started fighting, and Israel was caught in the crossfire.

And so then after all of that, they finally got some freedom through a group called the Maccabees, which was one specific family that had fought against that late Greek rule of the land of Palestine. And they thought, okay, we're fine, we're safe.

We're finally able to have the land. And then can you guys tell me what was the next group that came in? Rome.

Rome came through, absolutely put Israel under an iron fist. And they even had some of the Israelite people that they said, you be a tax collector, you collect all of Rome's taxes for us, and you can add on whatever amount you want above Rome's tax.

And so Israel had been under heavy oppression for centuries. And they were hoping for someone that would come and demolish Rome, that would kick them out of the land of promise and would institute this wonderful kingdom.

So this is what the Jews are asking Jesus here. If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly. Jesus says, I did tell you, and you don't believe.

The works that I do in my Father's name testify about me. He says, I have told you that I am the Messiah, and you haven't listened, you haven't cared about it. He says, but if you don't believe me, look at the miracles that I am accomplishing.

Look at the lame that can now walk. Look at those that were blind, that can now see. Look at those that were demon possessed, that are now in their right mind.

He says, look at what I'm doing, and it proves to you that I am who I say I am. And then Jesus says this in verse 26, but you don't believe because you are not of my sheep. He says, my sheep hear my voice.

I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.

This is one of the precious promises of the word of God that anyone that comes to Jesus, that they believe in him, that they follow him, that they recognize their sinful state before a holy God, they recognize that there is a punishment, justice for

sin, but Jesus took that for us on the cross, dying in our place, so that we could be offered righteously, justly, we could be offered a relationship with God. Because Jesus didn't stay dead after he died on the cross.

No, three days later, he rose again from the dead. And for everyone that believes and calls on the name of Jesus, the promise is eternal life. It's not just the hope of eternal life.

It's not if you can keep your act together for long enough, you get eternal life. It is accomplished through the power and the work of Jesus. It is a gift from him, and Jesus doesn't do take backsies.

They will never perish. And he says, no one will snatch them out of my hand. I know some of you in this room, you've walked through some valleys of sin.

You have experienced what it is to walk away from God for a time. And aren't you glad that your heavenly father didn't allow even you to snatch you out of his hand? That he brought you back in, that he has loved and cared for you the whole time.

Let's be thankful that our salvation is not up to us, it's up to the Lord. Verse 29, my father who has given them to me is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

Jesus says, I've got you in my hand, and the father has me in his hand. And even if you think errantly, wrongly, that someone could take you away from Jesus, no one can take you, no one can take Jesus away from the father.

You have to get through the father to get to the son, to get to you. What wonderful security there is for the believer in Jesus.

That not height, nor depth, nor principalities, or powers, or any other creature will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. And then Jesus says in verse number 30, I and the father are one.

We're going to see in the following verses, this is really what gets people upset. They didn't like the other things. They really hated this truth, that Jesus and the father are one.

Now, we don't have time to go into a whole Trinity lesson, but we'll do the basis of it here. Deuteronomy 6.5, the Shema of Israel, something that the Jewish people say even to this day, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

They serve one God, especially in a pluralistic society.

There were many people in the Roman Empire that called the Jewish people and later the Christians, they called us atheists because we didn't believe in the full pantheon of gods that the Romans and Greeks and other cultures worshiped.

But scripture tells us there is one God. There's not three gods. There's one God.

Scripture tells us that God has expressed himself to us in three persons, not three gods, three persons, or if you will, to borrow the line from Holy, Holy, Holy, God in three persons, blessed Trinity, that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the

Holy Spirit is God. The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father. But Spirit is God, Father is God, Son is God. You go, man, I don't understand that.

That's okay. We just believe what Scripture tells us when it says that to us, and we believe it by faith. And one day, maybe when we get to heaven, we might begin to understand it in some way.

But Jesus here says, I am the Son of God. And here, this Son of God is not, as some people have put it, some lesser created being.

God the Son is named in relation to God the Father, that the love that they have for one another is that of a father and son, that God designed even parenthood to be a picture of his love and his care for his son, and of the son's love and care for

and obedience to the father. So he says, I and the father are one. So Jesus is God the Son. First there, if you have your outline for today, Jesus constantly told people he was the God of the Old Testament.

So we can see this when the Jews say, if you're the Messiah, tell us plainly. And he says, I did tell you and you didn't believe me. You might say, when did Jesus say that he is the Messiah?

When did he say that he was God? Well, just in John 10, he told them, I am the good shepherd. Well, that's a claim to the title of Psalm 23, the Lord, Yahweh, Jehovah is my shepherd.

And Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. Jesus said, I am the light of the world. And Psalm 27 tells us that God is the light of the world.

So Jesus says, I am God. Jesus called himself the Lamb of God.

Even as John the Baptist proclaimed to everyone, this was a claim to Isaiah 53, the Lamb of God who would die for the sins of the world, that all of our wickedness, our evil sins and thoughts and actions and words would all be placed onto Jesus.

And Jesus would die on our behalf. And he would be raised again from the dead. Jesus is the Lamb of God.

Jesus calls himself over and over again, the Son of Man. And we'll discover that as we go through Daniel 7 through 12, that this is a claim to deity. And so he calls himself the Son of Man.

I am the God-man that will rule over all the kingdoms of the earth right by the side of the Ancient of Days, God the Father. Jesus calls himself the fount of living water.

When he told the woman at the well, listen, I know you came here looking for the water from this well in Saikar in Samaria. He says, but if you asked me, I would give you living water.

He's quoting there from Jeremiah chapter 2, where God says that Israel had forsaken Yahweh, the fount of living water, and had gone to broken wells that held no water. And so Jesus says, I am Yahweh. I am the fount of life and of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says that he is the prophet, like Moses. He says, Moses was talking about me. And that's quoting from Deuteronomy 18.

Jesus, of course, calls himself the son of God. He calls himself the giver of life, which in 1 Samuel 2 is attributed only to God. Jesus called himself the judge of mankind, which in Judges 11 is a title reserved for God himself.

Jesus calls himself the water controller, the water walker. We heard about the storms that he calmed, and that he walked on the waves. And you could read about that in Psalm 65 and Psalm 18.

This is how God, Yahweh of the Old Testament, is described. Jesus calls himself the bread of life, the bread from heaven. When people are asking for the physical loaves and fishes, Jesus says it's not about the physical loaves.

It's about the loaf that came from heaven. I am the bread from heaven. And you can look at Psalm 78 or Isaiah 49.

This is how God described himself in the Old Testament. Jesus says that he is the holy one of God, even as we would read in Psalm 16, that God would not allow his holy one to decay in the grave, but that he would experience fullness of life.

Jesus says that is me. And Jesus called himself the joy of Abraham, from Genesis 22 and Genesis 12, that in Abraham, through his descendants, through his seed, his offspring, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

And Jesus says, hello, that's me. Over and over and over again in the Gospel of John, Jesus highlights for these people, I am God. You're expecting just some human ruler who will fight with a sword or a shield or a bow and arrow.

He says, but something so much better to you than a military warrior has come, God himself, Emmanuel, has come down to you. For you today, realize today that Jesus, God the Son, is the same God as the God of the Old Testament.

He's not a nicer, tamer God than the God of the flood, the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah or the God of the 10 plagues.

He is simply that God come down to earth to show us how much he loves us, despite the evil that we have inflicted on each other and on the good world that he created. Let that change how you think about God's judgment.

God's judgment was not given by some vindictive, prejudiced, malevolent deity, no matter what YouTube commenters might say.

God judged sin and evil to protect and clean his creation and sustain good life, all with an eye towards the day when he would place himself under judgment for every sin that humans would ever commit.

And if Jesus judged the world, if he judged Egypt, if he judged Sodom and Gomorrah, he judged Israel, and he even received all of the judgment on himself, why do you and I think that there will never be any consequences in our life for when we

disobey him? I'm thankful there's no condemnation, no shutting us out of the eternal life that God has given us. But scripture would tell us in Hebrews 12 that if we really belong to God, then God will discipline us.

He'll chase in us like a father disciplines his children. So let that motivate us to holiness. If Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, then it means that we ought to listen to him and realize that we have to obey him.

And then secondly, Jesus says that those that do not believe him do not belong to him. Let me bring this to a practical point for many of us.

We all have people in our lives that may have grown up in church, maybe that even said a prayer or were baptized. But today, they deny Jesus as Lord or refuse to follow him with their lives.

Can I encourage you from what Jesus says, his sheep hear his voice and follow him. Don't tell people that deny Jesus as Lord. Don't tell them you really are part of Jesus' flock, one of his sheep.

We should invite them to become a disciple, a follower of Jesus. Don't tell the people in your life that they cannot believe in and follow Jesus and expect to have a relationship with God or a home in heaven. Tell them that God loves them.

He died for their sins. He rose again and he's inviting them to turn away from their sin and their own direction to experience permanent forgiveness of sin and a lifelong relationship with Jesus as their Lord.

Salvation is found not in a prayer, not in the baptism, but in belief in Jesus Christ. So encourage people in that way. Secondly, the father gave the son his people and he will save and protect every one of them.

Jesus declares that God himself gives Jesus his sheep and that no one can ever take Jesus' sheep away from him. And that God himself protects and keeps Jesus' sheep and that Jesus and the father are one. All of that to say this, you're real secure.

If you can find someone stronger than God, smarter than Jesus, someone that can outwit them or rob them, then your salvation is in jeopardy.

Until you can find someone more powerful than God, your salvation for every person that believes in Jesus, it is absolutely secure because it is founded in the father and the son.

If you're saved today, it's not because you're smarter, holier or make better decisions than other people. If you're saved, you're saved because God the father gave you to God the son and he protects and keeps you in his flock. That's it.

For you are saved by grace through faith and this is not from yourselves. It is God's gift, not from works, so that no one can boast. This is good news because if you're not saved because of you, you can't be unsaved by you.

So first off today, Jesus is the son of God. He is God the son. Secondly, in verses 31 through 42, Jesus is the prophesied divine Messiah.

Jesus says, I am the father of one. Again, the Jews picked up rocks to stone him as they did in chapter five. Jesus replied, I've shown you many good works from the father.

For which of these works are you stoning me? We aren't stoning you for a good work, the Jews answered, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God. There's a definite pick-a-side.

Jesus says, I am God. They say, no, you're not. We don't believe you, and so you deserve to die.

Jesus answered them, isn't it written in your law? I said, you are God's. That's from Psalm 82.

We're gonna address that in a moment.

He says, if he called those to whom the word of God came, gods, and the scripture cannot be broken, basically, if scripture is true, and scripture called these people that this portion of scripture was written to, if it calls them gods, then when I

say that I'm the son of God, why are you mad at me? Do you say you're blaspheming to the one the father set apart and sent into the world because I said, I am the son of God? If I am not doing my father's works, don't believe me.

He says, if I am doing wickedness, if I am sinning, don't believe me. He says, but if I am doing them and you don't believe me, believe the works. This way you will know and understand that the father is in me and I am in the father.

Jesus says, listen, if you don't believe my words, believe the actions. Go check out the dude that was healed at the pool of Bethesda. Go check out the blind man that I rubbed the mud into his eyes.

And now he can see, he says, go look at that and realize that the only person that can do these miracles is God. And so when I tell you that I'm God, believe me, because of the works, if not for what I say.

Then they were trying again to seize him, but he escaped their grasp. So he departed again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there. Many came to him and said, John never did a sign.

John the Baptist didn't do any miracles. He says, but everything John said about this man was true, and many believed in him there. Jesus is the prophesied divine messiah.

This is what Jesus is communicating to these people. They ask, are you the messiah? He says, yes, but the messiah is not the military conqueror that you think he is.

The messiah is God himself come to die in your place. And so Jesus first is the spiritual being, God. He is not simply a human savior.

My slide is not sliding, so I'll have Jim, if you can keep on going through that. What was clear to the Jews in this passage that is often overlooked or excused away today by skeptics was that Jesus was specifically claiming divinity.

That he was not a human savior, but the very God of the Old Testament. This means, contrary to some belief systems, that Jesus was not just the best prophet, as Islam states.

Jesus was not a lesser created God, as in the Mormon belief system or in Jehovah's Witnesses beliefs. Jesus was not merely an example of sacrificial living for others, as Jordan Peterson has stated.

Jesus was not simply a good moral teacher, as most materialists or humanists would claim. Jesus is fully God, and everything that is true of the Father is true of the Son. Jesus knows everything he chooses to know.

He is powerful enough to do whatever he chooses to do. He is everywhere he chooses to be. He is holy.

He is perfect. He's loving. He's just.

He's eternal. He's transcendent. And any other good adjective you could place on him, he is that.

This God, Jesus, deserves to be praised by you and I. Can I encourage you, maybe for some of you that are on social media, to post or share a post one time this week about Jesus?

Or for those of you off the grid, can you intentionally put Jesus into one of your conversations with friends or neighbors or coworkers this week? He is worthy because he is God incarnate. God become human.

So Jesus is the prophesied divine messiah. He is the spiritual being God. He is not simply a human savior.

Then lesser spiritual beings exist. And you can see this on your sheet. Elohim, angels, Seraphim, cherubim.

But they are not like Yahweh, the God of gods. Okay. Here's where it gets fun.

Read more on your own. I've included one book in there, the book, The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser is there on your sheet. Strongly encourage you to read that fantastic read.

It will make you worship Jesus big time.

There's a whole like two-thirds of the book that just goes through looking at where Jesus was foreshadowed in the Old Testament where you can see kind of like peaks behind the curtain that then in the New Testament, it's totally thrown open.

And the whole time through, you're like, yes, Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming. And then it gets to the New Testament.

You're like, yes, he was here the whole time. We just didn't see it. So absolutely love that book.

Really encourage you to look at that. So lesser spiritual beings exist. If God exists, God has told us that there are angels and there are demons, that there's the devil.

I think we're all good on that. If you're a Bible believer, that's what scripture says. So that's what we believe.

The Bible gives some different names to these creatures. So one of the words that's used for this is the Hebrew word Elohim, which if you will, it's the spiritual beings. It's the beings that exist in the spiritual realm.

So this is sometimes used about the false gods of the nations, that they are called Elohim. It is those that inhabit the spiritual realm. Now, God, Yahweh of the Old Testament, is called Elohim.

That's anytime in the Old Testament, you read the word God, like we worship one God, that's the word Elohim as well. He is the supreme spiritual being.

But the word Elohim doesn't always only mean God, it can also mean sometimes the false gods, or even sometimes demons. We can also read about angels in the Old Testament.

These would be messengers that come from the spiritual realm, from heaven, to give messages. And you can read about Gabriel, who comes to Mary and says, you know, blessed are you, highly favored among women. And we can read about the angels.

There's the seraphim, which are in the throne room of God. These would be some of the ones that would be crying out, holy, holy, holy, around the throne of God.

And seraphim, this would be called the burning ones, often talked about kind of like snakes, would be the form that is talked about, that as snakes have fiery venom, it's kind of the burning ones. Again, this is spiritual, not physical.

And so part of it's trippy, so we won't spend a bunch of time on that.

So you have the seraphim, and then you have the cherubim, which is in Isaiah 6 and in Revelation 4 and 5, when you have the spiritual beings that are talked about, like, oh, it had the face of a lion, the hair of a woman, the body of an ox, the wings

of an eagle, and all of us are going, that doesn't look very pretty. This looks real freaky. That's the cherubim.

It's kind of the amalgamation of the best strengths of everything on earth being described to us in a physical way, even though it is a spiritual being. So, lesser spiritual beings exist, but they are not like Yahweh, the God of gods.

There are other, you know, there's angels, there's demons, but none of them are a rival to the one true God. You guys remember what happens when Jesus interacts with a person that's demon possessed in the New Testament.

They freak out, and they go, don't torture us, don't send us into the pit. God is one of a kind. There was no rival to him.

There is no one like him. Jesus reminds these people of Psalm 82. If you want, you can go to our church website or the Facebook or the YouTube and search for Tabernacle Talk Psalm 82.

And you can listen to like a full explanation and walk through of that passage. In essence, it's this. God gave command of specific locations, locales to spiritual beings.

And most of those spiritual beings fell along with Satan, and they followed pushing people towards immorality and idolatry and greed and violence. And so in Psalm 82, God is rebuking those unfaithful spiritual beings.

You can even read about some of this when we go through Daniel 7 through 12.

We're going to read about a specific example of this that God directly tells us when a spiritual being, helping protect Israel, is fighting against a spiritual being that is over the nation of Babylon.

So Jesus reminds these people of Psalm 82, and he says, you guys already knew that there were additional spiritual beings. And he says, look at my miracles. And it shows I'm not just a human.

When Moses did his miracles, he was calling on God to do the miracles. It was God accomplishing it. It wasn't Moses doing anything.

He says, when I'm doing the miracles, I am telling you that this is coming through and from and for me as a result of my relationship with the Father. So he says, you already knew there were other spiritual beings.

I'm just telling you that I am God, the Son. I am the one that you, if you will, you didn't know about me yet, but God has always had this in the plan. So I'm going to say for now, because it's way, way too deep of a topic, and I'm hungry.

I know you guys are hungry for the potluck too. So our last point for today is this. Jesus proved his deity through his miracles.

What sets Jesus apart from other religions? We're still talking about his miracles thousands of years later.

What is survived from Antiquity in the Gospel accounts, the writings of the Roman Tacitus, the Jewish historian Josephus, and ancient Jewish rabbis are tales of Jesus' miracle-working powers with Jews in the following centuries saying that Jesus

practiced sorcery. That's what we hear thousands of years later. Jesus proved who he was, yes, through speaking the Word of God, it was who he innately was.

If he didn't do a single miracle ever, he would still have been God the Son, but he proved to us his identity through his miracles. Can I end today's message by encouraging you with one truth?

The same God that worked miracles 2,000 years ago is still in the miracle-working business today. Most often, it's the miracle of changed hearts and lives. It's angry, bitter, skeptical people turned into lovers of God and other people.

It's addicts who leave behind addiction to pursue Jesus. It's depressed and anxious warriors who find peace and security in the king of kings. But it's also sometimes the cancer diagnosis that disappears at the next visit.

It's sometimes the miracle check in the mail when a person's at the absolute end of their rope. It's the bag of groceries given by someone unannounced right as you run out and will go a couple of days without eating.

God doesn't guarantee miracles to you and I every day, but if you were to talk to the people in this room, you would hear the stories of times that he has done miracles for them.

And the greatest, longest lasting miracle is his salvation, that he transforms sinners, condemned and unclean and on their way to sin and death and destruction.

He transforms us into children of God, beloved, accepted, heirs to everything that God has within eternity to spend with him.

Today, if you've never experienced the miracle of God's salvation, if you've never called on Jesus to be your Lord and your Savior, talk to me at the meal downstairs, talk to the person that came with you, talk to anyone, I promise you, anyone in

this building would love to pray with you and tell you about how you can know Jesus as your Savior. Today, who is Jesus? He's the Son of God, and he's our divinely promised Messiah.

He's the same God as the God of the Old Testament, the faithfulness and the characteristics that God had, he still has today.

He is the God who is worthy of our worship and our obedience, the God who deserves us to worship him as our Lord, our master, the one in charge of our life. He's also the Messiah. He's the God, the spiritual being who is above any and all else.

He is the only one worthy of our worship, and he's the only one truly worthy of us devoting our lives to. Things of this earth, possessions, and fun times, and kingdoms, and all of that, it'll come and go. But what remains is Jesus.

Today, will you choose to believe in Jesus, the Son of God, and the Messiah?