Becoming Like Jesus

By Pastor Samuel Chess

Grace Emmanuel Church

Port St. Lucie, Florida

 

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A REAL MAN?

 

 I have approached this subject a number of different ways over the years but never the way I am going to today. Often in discussing, manhood, fatherhood, husband hood, boyfriend hood. We go to Scripture and pull out examples of David, or Moses, or Timothy, or Peter and we look at their characteristics and decide what describes biblical manhood, fatherhood, husband hood, boyfriend hood. Is that a good way of doing it? Of course! That’s exactly why God gave us all those biblical narratives….so we could use them as examples…both good and bad.

However, something I have never done.. and I should have was to look directly at our chief model our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and compare his characteristics as a man with what we tend to think defines manhood today. Since I just happen to be preaching a series right now called “Becoming like Jesus” this seems like it would be a good time.

I. The Model of True Manhood

We tried a fun exercise on Wed. eve of trying to figure out what Jesus looked like on the outside and inside using what the Bible tells us and what we know of first century history. We basically don’t know what he looked like except that he was probably muscular like a carpenter tends to be, dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes, like a middle easterner. According to Isaiah there was nothing about his features that made him stand out in a crowd. Nothing outside him distinguished him…(except that little lighted halo on top his head you see in the pictures). Lots and lots of people were strangely drawn to him over the first couple years of his ministry and we concluded that it must have been what they saw on his inside that attracted them.

That ought to encourage many of us. If the gauge of our worth is what people see on the outside then some of us are in deep weeds. This last week I’ve noticed a couple of people’s faces and listened to them talk: they weren’t candidates for any magazine cover but there inner beauty was instantly striking to me. In contrast, sometimes I see a younger specimen of personhood who hasn’t started deeply in to the deterioration process yet and by this worlds standards they are together…..and then they open their mouth and you think, Oh my…..beauty is only skin deep.

God specifically did not create his own son to be physically attractive so that we would not waste time looking for what did not matter in him.

(Isaiah 53:2-4) He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. (NIV)

If you look closely at what the Bible tells us about Jesus you soon discover that he wasn’t just attractive on the inside…in a manly sort of way;

He was revolutionarily different on the inside; he projected a kind of manhood that was different than anyone around him was used to ever seeing

II. How does a Real Man act?

A) Network your way to the top!

I’ve been to several seminars where the teacher explained how important it was for the success-oriented person in this world to network with other people of influence. I’ve talked to other people and they’ve talked to me about riding coattails and those times in my life when I found myself working hand in hand with those that society considered the “elite” I felt my own sense of importance rising. If I can just meet the powerful people this world I can network that into real personal significance..

Can you see Jesus teaching that kind of concept on the side of a mountain somewhere. If you can you haven’t read the Gospels very closely! Strangely it was usually the unsavory types in society that found Jesus so attractive and most of the time he got his chilliest receptions form the respectable types in society.

He didn’t make any effort to reverse that trend; in fact, he built on it. The prostitute, the Samaritan social outcast, the officer of Herod, the tax collector crooks, the woman with seven demons. Jesus gave so much of himself to people who couldn’t possibly advance his career.

Don’t you think it’s kind of odd that in so many churches in America meeting right now there is such a joy over the presence of those in the congregation who can contribute and advance the church or it’s pastor and such a lack of joy over the presence of those who are outcasts of society. If an well dressed, professional walks into a church for the first time he is welcomed with balloons and a band. If a prostitute walks into a church in America we leave off the balloons and the band. Do you realize that is exactly the opposite of what Jesus emphasis was!

B) Eating with emphasis…

An old proverb says: You can know a person by the company he keeps… I’m sure the people in the first century believed that but when they tried to apply that principle to Jesus he just would slip into the mold. The gospels mention eight times when Jesus accepted an invitation to dinner…or invited himself. Three of them were normal social occasions with family and friends. The other five all break all of societies rules. Look at this one:

(Matthew 26:6-7) While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. (NIV)

Simon, the what????? Jesus.. if your life is going to have any impact you’re going to have to pick your meal companions better.

(Mark 14:3-10) While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste of perfume?… She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her." Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. (NIV)

Jesus lack of savvy seems to be indirectly what led to his death… Another meal…another man named Simon, another woman with a bottle of perfume…

(Luke 7:36-38) Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them….(44-47) Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven-- for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little." (NIV)

When he does get invited to the home of someone important he blow all his chances of promotion by telling off the host!…..The only other time he gets invited to a Pharisees house he heals a man on the Sabbath breaking the very laws this Pharisee had sworn to uphold. Then they got into this blowout discussion.

Jesus other two recorded meals were in the homes of publicans and tax collectors, people who were considered outright thieves; people who were so distrusted that their testimony was not accepted as evidence in a court of law.

It should be obvious that Jesus didn’t evaluate his worth as a person on who, in society, did or did not accept him. He was a man with a mission in life and his inner sense of value seemed to come from…and only from, his Father in heaven!

Jesus responses to those who questioned his behavior should give us all reason to pause:

(Luke 19:9-10) Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." (NIV)

(Matthew 9:9-13) As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick… For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Jesus loved sinners!

Sinners loved Jesus!

They were drawn to him not because he came down to their sinful level, but because he could show them the way to God and righteousness without making them feel personally rejected in the process. The religious leaders in their effort to reject sin, rejected the sinners as well. Jesus predictably had some thoughts on the subject:

(Luke 18:10-14) "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men-- robbers, evildoers, adulterers-- or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (NIV)

Jesus lived in a caste system, where there were the importants and the in-importants and he absolutely refused to be a part of it. The response of those low in the caste system was to love the man for what he represented; those high up in their society caste system deeply resented him for messing with “tradition”.

Jesus was changing the rules of life… Instead of the message:

No undesirables allowed in God’s kingdom… he was projecting a new message:

There are no undesirables in God’s kingdom!

People of greatness will not be those who climb from one class to another but will be those who are blind to class, race, level of sinfulness. The one who really follows Jesus example will be the one who sets out to use his/her life to bring God’s grace into the lives of others….all others.

By his very example Jesus challenged us to be (what the early church fathers called)

People with “grace-filled eyes”!

How does what’s in the heart of Jesus compare to what is in the heart of me?

How does what is in the heart of Jesus compare to what is in the heart of you?

Jesus “grace filled eyes” found him socializing with sinners, morally questionable, ethically questionable, racially unacceptable (in his case the Samaritans) He touched, or was touched by those who were unclean, the lepers, the woman with the hemorrhage, the lunatic, the demon possessed. Jewish law demanded that one could not touch a sick person or a dead person without becoming unclean. Jesus would wade into a group of sick touching them all and not give a second thought to any ill effects on himself. He played with children and even gave attention to women in a society where they were considered property.

In those days, at every synagogue service, every Jewish man prayed this prayer:

Blessed are you oh Lord. Who has not made me a woman!

Women were made to sit in a different place in the Temple, were rarely taught the Bible and were not allowed to ask questions. They could talk to no men except their husbands, and she could touch no man and no man could touch her.

Until Jesus came along and blew all that tradition our of the water. Jesus freely taught women just like the men. Some followed him throughout his ministry and were part of the larger group called “his disciples”. He tapped a Samaritan woman with five husbands to lead a revival in Samaria. He constantly used women in his parables and illustrations and did several miracles purely for the sake of a women. Walter Wink says he violated the traditions of his time with every single encounter with women found in the gospels. So much so that 30 years later the Apostle Paul would say:

(Galatians 3:28) There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (NIV)

The difference between Jesus and other men was that when a prostitute came to him he wasn’t defiled by her…she was transformed by him. No woman came to Jesus and left wondering whether he was more interested in her body or her soul. Touching him did not produce a flood of hormones….it produced a flood of grace.

What a character trait… men. When the leper touched Jesus… Jesus didn’t become leprous, he became healed. When the immoral woman washed Jesus feet she went away clean.

The contagiousness of uncleanness is overcome by the contagiousness of holiness!

What kind of person do you see here?

 

Oh Lord…make me like my model, my Savior, Jesus Christ!

Give me a passion and compassion like Him. Let my life be lived to bring grace into the lives of others. Let the contagiousness of my righteousness overcome the contagiousness of the sin around me! Let the effect of my life bring healing to those I touch or who touch me!