"Who Are the April Fools? How Do You View Jesus?" (Sermon for Palm Sunday, on 1 Cor. 1:18-25)
Here are a few paragraphs:
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Last week there was a ring at the door, and I answered it, and a man and woman were there, handing me a tract and inviting me to a special event coming up. I’ve given you a photocopy so you can see what it says. On the front you can see the questions: “How Do You View Jesus? As a Newborn Baby? A Dying Man? Or an Exalted King?” And there are pictures there to go with it: Jesus as a baby, Jesus as he is dying, and Jesus as a king. Then below the pictures is the invitation: “You Are Invited to Hear the Answer Thursday, April 5, 2012.” Then I opened up the tract, and it says: “Jesus is now reigning as an exalted King. But what does this mean for you? Many believe that Jesus died for them. Yet, how can one man’s death almost 2,000 years ago mean life for others today?” The people at my door, of course, were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the tract they gave me was from their Watchtower Society. So how do we respond to their questions? Think it through along with me.
“How Do You View Jesus? As a Newborn Baby? A Dying Man? Or an Exalted King?” My first reaction is, “What, is this a multiple-choice question? I only get to pick one?” Because my answer would be, “D. All of the above.” “Newborn Baby,” check. “Dying Man,” check. “Exalted King,” check. They’re all true. And you can’t have one without the other. You’ve got to have all of them right, and not pit one against the other, in order to have the Jesus of the Bible, the only Savior of sinners.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses do not get any of these views of Jesus right, and they do not keep them together. The implication of their tract is that you should not get hung up on Jesus as a newborn baby, like at Christmas, or on Jesus as a dying man, like during this Holy Week, but instead you should focus on Jesus as the exalted king.
Now, is Jesus the exalted king? Yes, he is! No doubt about that. And even the picture of Jesus they have on their tract does have some truth behind it. If you could see it in color, you’d see a Jesus with white hair and fiery eyes, wearing a white robe with a golden sash. And that image does resemble the description of our exalted Lord that John gives us in Revelation 1, as follows: “I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.”
Jesus as a glorious, exalted king. And so he is. But the Jehovah’s Witnesses conveniently leave out other images of Jesus that we find in the Book of Revelation, especially that of Jesus as “the Lamb who was slain,” who by his blood has redeemed us sinners. That part they leave out. But again, you can’t have one without the other.
No, you’ve got to keep all of these views together to have the real Jesus. Even the “newborn baby” the JWs get wrong. They do not believe that the Christ of Christmas is the incarnate Son of God, God in the flesh. The Jehovah’s Witnesses would not be able to confess what you just confessed in the Nicene Creed, namely, that the Lord Jesus Christ is “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.” The JWs have revived the old Arian heresy from the fourth century, that Jesus is just a created being--at most “a” god, small “g,” but not true God in his nature.
But most certainly he is. And there is no salvation, for you or for anyone else, without Jesus being precisely that, that is, the Son of God incarnate. Only God in the flesh could rescue us from our predicament, from the sin and death in which we were trapped.
But people do not want to believe that, that our situation was so bad--that I am so bad of a sinner that I cannot save myself by my own efforts, that it took the death of the very Son of God to save me and to give me life. This is insulting to our pride. We think we’re good enough on our own, that if we try hard enough and are good enough, we can work our way into heaven. That is what the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe, and that is what they try to do. But they are the real fools, from God’s perspective, because they are rejecting the one and only Savior that God has sent.
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This is the Jehovah's Witness tract I preach against in the sermon:
