DAD'S RAMBLINGS -- WHO IS THIS JESUS?

DAD'S RAMBLINGS – WHO IS THIS JESUS?

"Then the multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread.  But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, 'He is out of His mind.'  And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, 'He has Beelzebbub,' and 'By the ruler of the demons He casts out demons.' "  (Mark 3:20-22)

People didn't know what to do with Jesus.  To some, He was a great prophet.  To some He was perhaps the Messiah.  To others, He was crazy.  And to others, he was demon-possessed with an unclean spirit (vs. 30).  

So what do people think about Jesus? Was He just a great moral teacher?  Was He crazy or demon-possessed? Or is He God? He can't be all of these at the same time.  Here is the conundrum.  Jesus claimed to be God.  If He was not and knew that He wasn't, he was a deceiver, a liar.  If He claimed to be God and wasn't but really thought he was, then he was mentally unbalanced at the best and demon-possessed at the worst.  In any case, He would not be worthy of devotion.  There are only 2 options.  We can dismiss Him as a liar, a lunatic or a demon,or we can fall at His feet and acknowledge Him as ourGod.  

C.S. Lewis states it plainly in his book, Mere Christianity.  "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him:  'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.'  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit on Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to."

His life and miracles and His resurrection from the dead attest to the fact that He is God as He claimed to be, and what He said was true.  He is Lord and worthy of all my worship.  

Love, Dad