Who Do You Say That I Am?

I was in Peru, this was about twenty years ago, playing basketball with a good friend and we and we were traveling and playing all the national teams throughout South America.

And so we are in this bus, there is no one else on the road, we come to this checkpoint, and these guys have machine guns.

And so a guy gets out and then he comes back in, he goes, “We can’t leave the country.” We said, “What do you mean, ‘We can’t leave the country’?” He said, “We can’t leave the country. No one is leaving the country. They have orders.”

And we thought, we’ve got major games all the way down the coast. We have about a six hour drive down these mountains. All of us got together, put our arms around together, and we prayed. And then the director said, “Okay, guys, we’ve prayed. Now…” And he walked over there and we’re all over there. [Unintelligible speaking] And I’m talking some other language, Spanish. And they go before and the translator. And then all of a sudden, these guys look at us, turn like this, the thing goes up, and we go right through and the director gets on.

And we said, “Coach! What did you tell them?” He said, “I have never done this before. I told them we were royal ambassadors to the King of kings and the Lord of lords. We were on assignment, we’re here from Jesus Christ, and Jesus has sent us to tell these other people about Himself and they needed to let us through. And we didn’t have any discussion. They just walked in and pushed the button and the thing went up.”

Now, it’s amazing, when you make a bold proclamation about the truth and Jesus was toward the end of His ministry, and He wanted His disciples to understand His true identity. And so near the end of His ministry He wants to make sure these disciples really understand who He is.

And so toward the end, He takes them to this place, Caesarea Philippi, where there are multiple cults and Satanic worship. And in that backdrop, He asks them two penetrating questions. We pick it up in Mark chapter 8. “Jesus went out, along with His disciples to the village of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way He questioned His disciples,” penetrating question number one, “Who do people say that I am?”

And their answer was, “Well, some think John the Baptist; others Elijah; others, one of the prophets.” Now He is going to zero in. It’s not what they think, He looks at them and He’s going to say, “Okay, who do you say that I am?”

And Peter made a bold proclamation. “You are the Christ.” The other gospel writers say, “You are the Christos, You are the Messiah, You’re the Anointed One, You’re the Deliverer of Israel, You’re the Hope that we have been waiting for, You’re the One who has prophesied about hundreds of years, You are the One who is going to take the shackles off of our country, You will save us from our sin, You are the Christ, You’re the Answer.”

And Jesus would say to Peter, “You didn’t get that one on your own. The Father has revealed it.” And then He warns them not to tell anyone.

And I got thinking about this because the issue, both then and now, is: Who is this Jesus? Peter’s confession was based on, think of this, less than three years of observation, teaching, and living with Jesus.

He grew up like every other little Jewish boy. And he knew the social pressures and he understood the implications. If you would, at this point in Jesus’ ministry say He’s the Messiah, you were kicked out of the synagogue.

He understood the implications for his family, for his future, for his business. And when Jesus looked him in the eye and asked him, “Who do you think I am,” bam! Bold proclamation.

After this proclamation, Jesus would soon be put to death, He would rise from the dead. Then for forty-days in a resurrected body, resurrected but recognizable, a body that could go through walls, a body that would eat regular food, a body that was not bound by time or space, He would appear to over five hundred eyewitnesses over a period of forty days, and talk to them about the coming kingdom and the coming rule.

And then He would ascend. And after He would ascend, this commission was given, before He ascended, to go into all the world and tell people there is good news! Don’t go convince people, you don’t have to make people feel guilty, tell them there is good news. The Messiah, the Savior of the world has come, the sins of all men of all time have been forgiven, and tell them the happy or the good news that Christ has come. The Messiah came.

And if you will receive the free gift of eternal life, it’s free, He paid for it. Now go into all the world and tell everyone. And after they hear, then make sure that you baptize them. Not just simply getting wet, of course that, but allow them to move from that community into this new supernatural community called “the Church.”

And don’t have them just make decisions, but make sure then you teach them everything that I taught you so the way they think and the way they drive and the way they live and the way they spend their money and the way they parent and the way they love their kids and the way they respond to their neighbors will be just like Me, because a student, when he is fully trained will be just like his teacher. So teach them all the things that I have told you, and I am going to be with you.

And now imagine that, they get that, and now we have sixty more years, plus or minus. And in these sixty years, the Church is exponentially multiplied like crazy. We have, literally, at this point in time, millions of Christians. In the first, probably, six weeks of the Church, maybe eight weeks; three, four months, there was over one hundred thousand believers in Jerusalem alone.

By Acts chapter 8, they are persecuted and they spread throughout the world. It is multiplying at such a rate, almost like cancer, if you were in the Roman establishment, that they begin to persecute it and persecute it and persecute it and they said, “These are the people who are turning the world upside down. These are the people who put a stop sign in history and all of history is moving in a new direction around that itinerant preacher, and they claim He came back from the dead.”

And now, sixty-some years later, an emperor called Domitian is doing everything he can to eradicate these people. And he is killing them and persecuting them and making it illegal to even be a Christ follower, as it is in many parts of the world.

And he persecutes them and he kills them, and here’s the question I thought. Sixty years later, you, John the apostle, were there and you heard Peter when Jesus said, “Who do you say that I am?” And you heard Peter’s confession.

And now sixty years later, all of your buddies are dead, they have all been martyred, you have watched the Church go from twelve men minus one to this revolutionary movement around the empire, and now Jesus is being attacked, His identity; His Church is being attacked; it’s seeking to be eradicated; and the question would be, “Hey, John, who do you say Jesus is now? Who do you think He is? What’s He really like? What information, what unveiling? We get the general picture, we know He’s the Messiah, but, John, who do you say that He is?”

The answer is in Revelation chapter 1, verses 4 to 8. He’s on the island of Patmos. This is the revelation of John. Revelation is apocalypse. Remember? It means to unveil something.

See, they had a picture of Jesus, but it was black and white, if you will. Accurate, like a polaroid picture. You can see who it is, but with a little bit of time, you know how it gets clearer and clearer and clearer and clearer? Now, over the last sixty years, as the Church is growing, God is going to give a much clearer picture.

John’s job is to unveil or uncover or take the lid off of who Jesus really is in more fullness.

And so John writes, and the author John writes to whom? The seven churches in the province of Asia. These are actual churches. If you study it carefully, you find that, John, why he chose these seven churches, we’re not sure. But they were on a common trade route. And he addresses, in chapter 2 and chapter 3, each one of these specific, known churches as though he were traveling on that trade route.

And what’s the message? The message is pretty simple. “Grace and peace to you.” He takes this word of Greek: Charis. Unmerited favor, the blessing of God, the goodness of God, the love of God, grace.

And then he takes this Hebrew, the shalom, and he puts them together and he says, “The goodness and the love and the grace of God, the unmerited favor towards you, and His blessing.” Shalom means “peace.” But it’s more than just peace, it means “wholeness.” It has the idea that all would be well with you. It’s living under the face of God, and in His pleasure and His protection.

And so imagine what this would mean if you were running for your life and hiding in caves and your mom or your dad or one of your brothers, they wrapped animal skins around him, last week, and he went into the Coliseum. Or you heard about what happened to your cousin, Larry, when he was put on one of those poles and they put tar on him and he was a human torch for one of Domitian’s cocktail parties.

And now you need to know, who is Jesus? And the Gnostic movement has just started. It comes from the Greek word for Gnōscō. It means a higher learning or a higher knowing. And they were saying that Jesus never came in the flesh and they were saying that there was this higher experience that you can have. It was a New Age type thinking.

And John wrote his gospel five or six years earlier to tell the Gnostics, in one of his little epistles, that, “No, no, no, no, no! Jesus came in the flesh! He was real! He was flesh and bone.”

And so you have all these questions and God’s message, now through John, is grace and peace.

Well, who is this message from? Notice it’s from, “Him who is and who was and who is to come.” Who could that be? Remember when God visited Moses and He says, “I AM that I AM,” the “to be” verb: Yahweh?

This is what he is saying. “I have no beginning; I have no end.” The One who is, who was, and who is to come. The I AM that I AM is sending this message through John.

And not only Him, but it’s also from the seven spirits before His throne. And as you study this passage, a little later, you find that there are seven lampstands, which represent the seven churches. And in Isaiah, this idea of seven spirits has the idea of completion. It’s a reference to the Holy Spirit.

And here is the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit operating in each of these churches. And so this is a message from God the Father, this is a message from the Holy Spirit. And then, third, it’s from Jesus Christ.

And so this is a pretty heavy message. The Trinity is laid out here. And now, how does it describe? Well, who is Jesus? Notice the three descriptive phrases: “He is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”

See, John is going to reach back, and after these sixty years and after all that he has learned and his growth in grace, Jesus is now speaking and, remember? This came from God the Father. It came to Jesus, to an angel, to John to give to them and to us. Who is Jesus? One, He is the faithful witness. He is the truth teller.

Remember? The Old Testament promised there would be a prophet. The prophet would come. A prophet and a priest. This is the role of Jesus here. He tells the truth about God, He tells the truth about the world, He tells the truth about us, He tells the truth about the future, He’s a witness. The word is martyr. A prophet speaks the truth from God to us and a priest takes the truth and the needs of the people and brings it to God. He is the ultimate truth teller.

See, these people are living in a world that is bombarded like ours. How do you know this is true or that is true or this group says that or that group says that? And John says, in the midst of this persecution, Jesus is the faithful witness. He is the truth teller about all things.

Second, he says he is the firstborn from the dead. He’s not just a truth teller; He is a trailblazer. He’s the very first one who rose from the dead and rose with a resurrected body. Other people were raised from the dead. Jesus raised some people from the dead.

But this is the first-fruits. Jot in your notes: I Corinthians chapter 15, verses 20 to 26. We’ll look at it in just a second. But He is the firstborn from the dead. It’s a picture that I’m thinking, What’s going to happen to me if I go into the lion’s den? How do I hang on to my faith in Christ? Who is He, really?

He is pictured as the pioneer who has the machete who is cutting through the jungle of adversity and pain and sorrow and sickness and all that you’re going through. And He has blazed the trail and He suffered and He was obedient and He died and He was raised from the dead in a resurrected body and He is the first-fruit. That means He is the first one and all who die in Christ will be like Him.

All who die in Christ will have His hope. All who die in Christ will have a resurrected body like He has a resurrected body. That you will have eternal life. And so He is the trailblazing Redeemer. He is the forgiver of our sins. He is the One who is the firstborn who has overcome – what? Death and Satan. You get that in the next line.

He says, “The ruler of the kings of the earth.” He is the ruler of both past and present. Colossians chapter 2, what do we learn? When Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, is says He defeated Satan. We learn from Ephesians 4 He rendered sin’s power powerless in our lives. He gave us the power to overcome. And He obliterated death. The kings of the earth, the spiritual kings of the earth, the one who is the prince of the power of the air has been defeated.

And then, in present, as you read on through the book, you find the day will come, He will also be the ruler and the king of every earthly king who says, “Hey, I’m the one, I’m going to say the way the world is going to go.”

And so isn’t it interesting? You have the truth teller, does this sound familiar? He’s the way, isn’t He? He paves the path; He’s the way. And then the ruler of the kings of the earth – He is death’s defeater. So guess what He is? He is the life.

John 14:6, isn’t it? Isn’t that exactly what Jesus told His disciples? He gave it in a different order because they were saying, remember Thomas in John 14? “Lord, where are you going? We don’t know the way!” And Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” And here, John reaches back and no expands. What did that really mean?

Sixty years ago, it meant, “Here’s the big statement and what you can understand.” After sixty years, now John, in a fuller, color, vivid detail says, “You know what? I am the truth. You want to know what’s real about life, what’s real about the future, what’s true about you, what’s true about God, what’s true about Me? I’m the faithful witness. I have blazed the trail. All you’ve got to do is follow Me. Follow Me to the cross, endure and don’t give up, and as I have been raised you will be raised. There is always hope.”

And finally, He says, “I am the life. I am the ruler of the kings of the earth. Satan has been defeated. Death has been defeated. Sin has been defeated. And by the way, you know what? Domitian is no match for Me. Saddam Hussein is no match for me. Stalin and Hitler were no match for me. I am the King and the Ruler of the earth. However, you can know this as a reality, but you will not experience it fully until I return.” And so John is answering in pretty vivid form who Jesus is.

Then notice, after he says, “This is the message – it’s grace and peace. It’s from the Trinity. Who is Jesus? The faithful witness, firstborn from the dead, He’s the ruler.” Then he gives us three verbs of action. The last section told us who He is. This section lets us in on who He is by seeing what He has done, what He is doing, and what He will do.

Notice what it says. It says, “To Him,” reference back to Jesus, “who loves us.” And in your notes, write: present tense. It’s the only time this verb, used of Jesus, in the New Testament, is used in the present tense. It’s almost always, you know, “He loved us; He died for us.” This is now.

John wanted them to know, in the midst of their pain and their persecution and their suffering like he wants you to know in the midst of your rocky marriage and a struggle with your finances and your job that you don’t know how it’s going to come out, and terrorist and 9/11 and what might happen. He wants you to know, not, “He loved you.” He loves you. Present tense. Right now. The Faithful Witness loves you. The Life-giver loves you. The Pioneer who, like a machete cut out all the debris to pave a path for you, He loves you. He is for you.

Second, it says, “And has freed us from our sin,” – how? “by His blood.” And that’s in an interesting tense. It’s called aoristic in the Greek, and it has to do with something that happens in the past – punctiliar point in time – that happens in the past, that has ongoing implications in the future.

Literally, the word is He loosed you. You were bound by sin. You used to not be able to choose to do what was right. You were bound by sin. And when Christ, as that forerunner died on the cross and paid for your sin, He broke the power of sin and you were loosed from its power.

Now, you’re like me. You have the ability to choose righteousness, but sometimes you present your members as slaves to sin and you still do a lot of old, rotten, nasty stuff, just like I do.

You still think a lot of old, rotten, nasty thoughts. But you know what? You have been freed from its power and as we learn to love God and allow our minds to be renewed and you’re in community around His Word, little, by little, by little we begin to experience, in every day practice, the freedom that He has given us.
Notice we have the Father’s signature.  He says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come.” Does that ring a bell? Have we seen that any place else? The Almighty.

It is the Father, speaking, four different, strong phrases about His authority. “I am the beginning; I am the end. I am the Almighty, Yahweh, the Lord God of hosts, Sabaoth. I am the Ever-Existing One.” And this last phrase, “the Almighty,” literally, “I am the One who has His hand on everything,” that’s literally what that means.

And, basically, what he says is, “Everything you have just heard about Jesus is absolutely true. And I don’t know what you’re struggling with, and I don’t know what you’re going through, but I can tell you this: look to Him. Trust Him. Turn to Him. Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Don’t get a substitute Jesus, don’t get a plastic Jesus, don’t get a self-help Jesus. Don’t get a Jesus who will make you healthy, wealthy, and wise Jesus. Get the Jesus of Scripture – the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth, who loves you today, who freed you.

And this Jesus, who by His great power, has made you in a kingdom that can never end, and has made you a priest and has given you a job until He comes back, to serve His God and His Father.”

Well, with that, I have some application for us. Jesus turns to Peter at a pivotal time in his life and says, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter boldly says, “You’re the Christ.”

Sixty years later, with the Church undergoing all kind of pain and problems and persecution, John, literally answers the question, if Jesus said, “John, who do you think I am?” John would say, “I used to think you were this, and it was accurate. And then as I have grown in my faith, I used to think You were this, and it was accurate. And now it’s, whooo! It’s blazing! Now I see who You are! Now I understand what it means, ‘The Christ; the Alpha, the Omega; the One who loves; the One who is all-powerful.’ Now I get that all of time and history culminate in You, when You come in the clouds and every eye will see and those who pierced You, and the Father signs on the bottom of the line and says, ‘The Lord Almighty who is and will be, ever and ever and ever.’ The One who holds all things in His hands. This is the Jesus who you worship. He is worth it.”

Then finally, I think then the question that begs to be asked is, “Who do you say I am?” You. Me. And not, “Who do you say that I am, intellectually,” okay? Some of you have grown up in the Church, Oh, who do you say? I think You’re the living Christ, the Son of the living God. No, no. “Not, Who do you think I am, emotionally?” I feel ooey-gooey, close to Jesus. “No, that’s not what I mean either.”

I mean, who do you say He is, as evidenced by your life, your heart, your priorities, your relationships, your time, your money, your marriage, your singleness, your kids, your concern for others?

And so what I have done is I have taken all that I have learned and a little liberty with the text, but not really much. I believe, if Jesus would come here in the flesh, in light of what He just told us, there are five questions He could ask us, right out of that text, that He would ask you, that He would ask me. And how you answer these five questions will reveal exactly, not who you think you think He is, but who you really think He is.

So if you have a pencil, pull it out, let me walk through these by way of application.

Question number one Jesus would ask, in fact, let’s not use “would.” Question number one, Jesus, since He is the Living One, since He is real, since He is resurrected, and since He loves us in the present tense, Jesus is asking you, “Have you received My grace and are you enjoying My peace?”

Not anybody else, but you. Are you enjoying the peace of God? Do you have the shalom of God? Do you have a sense of just acceptance and love and approval? And have you received His grace? Ephesians 2:8 and 9 says, “For by grace we are saved through faith, and that’s not of ourselves. It’s a gift of God. It’s not a result of any works…”  or church attendance or being a good person or trying hard. But it’s a gift from God.

Have you ever, I don’t mean, Have you gone to church? I don’t mean, Have you prayed a prayer? I mean: have you ever received the work of Christ on the cross, His death to cover and pay for your sin, and turn from your sin and said, “Jesus, I want You in my life to forgive me,” the One that’s coming back, “when You come in the clouds, I want to be in the kingdom of light, not in the kingdom of darkness. I don’t want to be one of those people who mourn, who pierced You. I want to be on the part of Your team that says, ‘I don’t deserve this, but thank You for loving me.’ I have taken advantage.” Have you ever done that?

The second question Jesus is asking is, “Do you believe My testimony about My Word, My Father, Myself, and My love for you?” If He is the faithful witness, then He’s got a testimony, right? Listen to His testimony in John chapter 1. His testimony about His Word. What do you really think about the Bible? The latest Barna reports and reports that are done by Gallup. Evangelical, born again believers say, “I don’t,” like, forty percent, “I don’t believe there is absolute truth.”

How can you not believe in an absolute truth if what God says about what His Word is true? He says, “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory of the One and only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John testifies concerning this. He cries out saying, ‘This is He who surpassed me, because He was before me.’) From the fullness of His grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the Law came through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time but God, the One and only,” speaking of Jesus, “who is at the Father’s side, has,” literally, “explained Him,” or, “made Him known.”

In John 14, he goes on to say, remember, to Thomas. He says to Thomas, “How long have you been with Me? If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” Later, in John 3:16, He says, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” Do you believe that? Do you really believe that this is His Word? Do you believe Jesus is the Word made flesh? Do you believe that the Jesus who walked on the earth in space/time history, if you saw Him, you see the Father, He explains Him.

Do you believe that He really loves you? Or somehow, do you spend most of your energy playing all the religious games and performing and trying to do certain things so that maybe God will bless you? See, John has unveiled Jesus and he wants you to know that He cares for you.

The third question is, “Will you follow Me, even when it means death of your agenda, selfish desires, and physical life?” See, if He is the ruler, if all the kings of the earth, if all of those invisible kings of Satan and sin and all the rest has been broken and He has blazed the trail, He says, “I have blazed the trail; will you follow Me? Will you follow Me when it’s politically incorrect? Will you follow Me in the marriage when you want to get out of it? Will you follow Me and be a courageous parent and give your kids what they need instead of what they want? Will you follow Me when all the other students are going out to get high or have sex and you know that’s not right, but the peer pressure is unbelievable? Will you follow Me?

“Will you follow Me when I ask you to change careers, change jobs, change homes? Will you follow Me when you read something in the morning and you have this inkling in your heart that you need to be kind and generous and forgive someone and you hate their guts because they ripped you off, financially? Or you’re paying child support. Or they went off and had an affair with someone else.

“Will you follow Me and do what I have done? Love your enemies; bless those who persecute you. Will you follow Me?”

John 12:24 says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself, alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.”

I believe the Church today, the pivotal question of those, in your heart of hearts, as best you know, you have really come to know Christ and you really do want to please Him, we have somehow separated Him being your Savior and somehow thinking that, I can intellectually believe He is my Savior, and then selectively decide which of the verses and which of the passages, a part of His will that I am going to obey. And somehow think that God is offering a salad bar. “Would you like to obey in this area? Oh, yeah, I realize that one is too tough right now. Ooh, financial, that would be really, really difficult. Sexual purity? The peer pressure is too high. I don’t really expect you to do that.”

See, that’s not the Jesus of the Bible. Are you willing to follow Him when it confronts your selfish desires? Just like the ones I have. Are you willing to follow, even when it means you die to your agenda, because you believe that He really is the God who came to the planet and that He has your best in mind? And that, as you would read later, I Corinthians 15:20, He’s the firstfruits.”

And one day He has reserved for you a body like His. And one day, the rewards that He is receiving now, because of the price that He paid, you can receive.

I remember being in Aspen last summer and they were doing a big consortium, it’s very intellectual, and they had all the intellectuals from New York and Washington and they had this, the first time ever, they invited an evangelical to make a presentation. It was Rick Warren - the Purpose Driven book had gone crazy. I don’t know, twenty million copies. And it was a super hostile crowd.

And so he made a presentation and then the very first person, a lady stood up, they could ask questions and you had to be a somebody, somebody, somebody, somebody to get in this room. And I had a pastor who knew a friend of a friend who got him in and he said it was like, the Secretary of State was over here and this senator was over here and the owner of that big paper and Time-Warner. He said it was just like the who’s who of the who’s who of the elite in America.

And this lady got up and said, “Do you really mean to tell me, did I read your book right, that Jesus is the only way and you’re telling me I’m going to hell?” How would you like that one as your first question?

Well, Rick really is an evangelist and he said, “No, I’m not saying that at all.” He said, “Who am I to tell you anything about your life? What I am saying is that’s what Jesus said. Now, you can agree or disagree, but that’s what He said.

“And I’ve just got a lot of historical documents and eyewitnesses and what I want you to know is that’s just a part of what He said. What He said is He loves you. What He said is He came and forgave your sins. But what He did say is that He was the way, not a way. And I do understand that in this arena that I’m in, that’s very politically incorrect.”

And then he had this great line. He said, “Lady,” he said, “I love you and God loves you,” he said, “but Jesus said He is the only way. And all of us bet our lives on something or someone. We all just take all the chips of our life and push them to the middle of the table and you believe either some systematic thinking about humanism or you think about some this religion or that religion.”

He said, “I’m just telling you, I’m here, I’m betting my life on Jesus. You’re betting on something. You prove to me why you’re right and what’s true. I just have someone who came to a planet, lived a perfect life, no one could dispute His perfect life, changed the course of history, died, and for forty days had five hundred eyewitnesses. And I’ve got historical documents, some that were written seven hundred years earlier and seven hundred later than the Dead Sea Scrolls that align with everything that He said. I’m just thinking this is my best bet. We all live by faith. So who are you betting on?”

And so I think the day has to come when we need to be very sensitive in our culture, but we have gotten politically correct up the wazoo. And we are afraid to be bold about, No, I don’t believe that’s right about abortion. No, I don’t believe that is correct. No, I think killing people at this stage of their life, when they have full faculties, because they don’t want to suffer any longer, violates what God says. No, I really respect and understand that there are lots of different religious views and lots of people that think different ways but, no, to be honest with you, maybe I’m narrow minded, but actually I think it’s very grace oriented. I believe Jesus is the only way and He is the hope of the world. And I want you to know He loves you.

When was the last time you heard Christians communicate that to people? Man, we are so worried about what everyone thinks. I’ve got news. He is coming in the clouds. And you’re going to give an account and I’m going to give an account of what He thinks. And we either live under the fear of men, or we live under the fear of God.

And, “The fear of man,” Proverbs says, “is a snare, but blessed is he who trusts in the Lord.”

The fourth question Jesus is asking is, “Are you serving My God and My Father in your heart and your life, 24/7, three hundred and sixty-five days a year?” If you’re really a priest, if you’re a part of the kingdom, are you serving Him? See, that tells you a lot, you know? Or, is it a consumer mentality? Do you feel good about yourself when, I got up early. I came to church. I read a little bit of the Bible. I’m trying to be a good person. Bless you! Bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you. That’s nice. That’s not the question Jesus is asking.

“Are you serving as a priest My God and My Father?” Yes or no? Are you extending the mercy and the grace and the truth and the love of God to people who need it? And are you taking the hurts and the pains of people and bringing them to the Father? That’s what priests do. And are you doing it according to your giftedness? And are you doing it as a priority, rather than just something passing, here and there, when it happens to fit your agenda?

The fifth question Jesus asks us is, “Are you ready to stand before Me and give an account of your life, when I have returned?” It says every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. It’s going to happen. Of those on the earth and in heaven and under the earth, in the sea.

And every, single person in all the world is going to bow the knee and say, “Jesus is Lord,” and some people it will be, “Jesus is Lord!” Praise. And other people it will be, “Jesus is Lord,” and they will mourn. And they will mourn because they heard what you are hearing right now, but they just decided that they would wait until later. And they would live their lives their way, believing a different set of testimony, a testimony that says: “Now is all there is.”

If you can find the right, pretty person and the right kind of house with the right kind of job and your kids go to certain colleges and you have enough money and wear certain clothes and have enough money when you get older to get certain surgeries that will help you look a little bit younger. It’s a testimony, isn’t it?

There is a whole world that is just shooting us day, by day, by day, and we actually are taking it intravenously, as we have set TVs up and video games in our kids’ rooms and say, “We really want you to think this way! So if you keep playing this and watching hours and hours of that and get on the computer for hours and hours and hours, there is a whole worldview of thinking, that can indoctrinate, that is the antithesis to what God says.”

But heaven forbid we say, “We’re really not going to go that direction, and we are going to monitor what goes into your mind and your heart.” Gosh, they might get mad. Yeah, they might. And you might save their life and save their soul. And you might make them the kind of person that someone would really want to marry, because they are selfless and love people, instead of fixated on themselves and their own needs.

It will be a radical thing to be a Christian in our day. It will be a radical thing to be the kind of Christian who changes the world, not who just buys the party line.