Scripture: Mark 2:1-12, Mark 4:35-41, Mark 6:30-44, Ezekiel 34:11-15
Structure:
- Introduction
- Mark 2:1-12 – Saviour (Christology from below & above)
- Mark 4:35-41 – Creator (A pathway to faith in Christ)
- Mark 6:30-44 – Shepherd (Functionally and ontologically divine)
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
There is a phrase used in law known as prima facie. It means ‘at first sight’ or ‘on the face of it’. Sometimes things seem quite simple and straight forward, based on first appearances, but when we dig a little deeper and look beneath the surface we find there is more to the picture than meets the eye.
Today we continue our ‘Anthems’ series. In this series we are looking at the lyrics of one hymn or Christian worship song each week to see how that song informs our thinking about God and how it connects with Scripture and the heritage of our faith.
The song we are looking at this morning is called He Must Be God. Many of you will recognise this song by the chorus, where we sing ‘How cool is that’. The lyrics were written by Bryson Smith, while Philip Percival wrote the music. It was published by Emu Music Australia in 2003.
I’ve chosen He Must Be God for this week’s message because it is Ascension Sunday, a day in the church calendar when we give special attention to Jesus’ exaltation (his ascension) to heaven. Prima facie, or at first sight, He Must Be God seems like a simple kids’ song. But, when we dig a little deeper, we find there’s quite a bit going on beneath the surface.
He Must Be God presents three stories about Jesus from the gospel of Mark and uses these to make the case that Jesus wasn’t just a man, he was also God.
Mark 2:1-12 – Salvation
The song’s first verse and chorus reads…
Jesus healed a paralysed man who was brought to him.
Jesus healed him, so he could show: He forgives our sin.
How cool is that! How cool is that! He told the man to pick up his mat.
He must be God ‘cause he did that, How cool is that!
This recalls Mark 2, verses 1-12, where Jesus heals a man who was paralysed. This man was carried to Jesus, on a mat, by his friends. When they arrived at the house where Jesus was staying they couldn’t get in because of the crowd. So they climbed on the roof, dug a hole and lowered their friend down to Jesus.
The friends wanted Jesus to heal the man, so he could walk again but Jesus had a broader more comprehensive plan of salvation in mind. Jesus wants to heal the whole person, body & soul. From verse 5 of Mark 2 we read…
5 Seeing how much faith they had, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”
6 Some teachers of the Law who were sitting there thought to themselves, 7 “How does he dare talk like this? This is blasphemy! God is the only one who can forgive sins!”
8 At once Jesus knew what they were thinking, so he said to them, “Why do you think such things? 9 Is it easier to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, pick up your mat, and walk’? 10 I will prove to you, then, that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, 11 “I tell you, get up, pick up your mat, and go home!”
12 While they all watched, the man got up, picked up his mat, and hurried away. They were all completely amazed and praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
What we notice in this passage is that Jesus does some things that only God can do and each of these things is an act of salvation.
Firstly, Jesus says to the man, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ We don’t know what this man had done wrong. But we do know that any sin is an offence to God and only God can grant a pardon. As human beings we can forgive people. We can release them from a debt they may owe us. This means we stop reminding ourselves and them of what they have done wrong. But that is not the same thing as divine forgiveness. God’s forgiveness carries more weight, more authority, more mana. God forgives in the way a judge or a king pardons a criminal.
Imagine someone steals your car, takes it for a drunken joy ride and smashes it into a power pole, before getting caught. You can forgive them. You can say, I’m not going to hold this against you. I’m not going to require you to repay me for wreaking my car. But your forgiveness doesn’t erase their guilt under the law. They may still need to face a court hearing and possibly go to jail. In that situation only the judge can pardon them under the law.
When Jesus told the man his sins were forgiven he was doing something only God had the authority to do – he was pardoning the man, giving him a get out of jail free card. To the teachers of the law, who were essentially lawyers, it appeared (prima facie) that Jesus had overstepped his jurisdiction and they thought to themselves, 7 “How does he dare talk like this? This is blasphemy! God is the only one who can forgive sins!”
Blasphemy was a big deal for the Jews at that time in their history. Blasphemy means to show contempt or disrespect for God and was punishable by death.
Of course there have been many people in human history who thought they were God. So Jesus proved he had divine authority by healing the man, physically. When the man picked up his mat and walked off everyone praised God because they knew only God could pull off a miracle like that.
I said before that the song, He Must Be God, appears quite simple, prima facie. But when we dig a little deeper we find there is more going on. The technical word, that experts use, to describe what this song is doing is Christology. Christology is the study of the identity and mission of Jesus Christ.
Throughout the past 2000 years there have been (broadly speaking) two main approaches to doing Christology. That is, ‘Christology from below’ and ‘Christology from above’. [1]
Christology from below has its basis in human history. It says that statements of faith about Jesus the Messiah find their proper foundation in actual events in history. In other words, if we want to know who Jesus is and what he came to do we have to start with the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and work.
The song He Must Be God clearly uses a Christology from below approach. It looks at three historical accounts from the gospels and works out who Jesus is from that. Jesus saved a man from both his sins and his paralysis. Only God could do that, therefore Jesus must be God.
The other approach to understanding Jesus is Christology from above. This approach says that we know who Christ is by our personal experience of him now, in the present. For example, the Holy Spirit descends from above and causes us to realise the truth about Jesus.
Now it’s not a case of either/or. With Christ it is a case of both/and. We need both history and personal experience to know Jesus. If you can imagine your faith in Jesus as a sailing ship, then history is the hull and deck of the boat on which you stand and personal experience is the sail, which the wind of God’s Spirit fills. Without the deck of history your faith sinks. Without the sail of personal experience your faith is stagnant, going nowhere.
I like what Stanley Grenz says. “Unless it is true on historical grounds that Jesus came forth from the grave, we have no certainty that there is a living Christ who encounters us in the present.” [2] In other words, the historical basis for Jesus’ identity is essential for a claim to experience the presence of Christ now.
Mark 4:35-41 – Creation
Returning to the song He Must Be God. The first verse presents Jesus as Saviour, while the second verse shows us Jesus in the role of Creator. Salvation and creation are God’s business. Verse 2 of the song reads…
Jesus calmed a terrible storm while he was at sea.
Jesus calmed it, so he could say “Fear not, trust in me.”
How cool is that! How cool is that! He spoke a word – the waves went dead flat
He must be God ‘cause he did that, How cool is that!
This recalls Mark chapter 4, where Jesus tells his disciples to go across to the other side of the lake in a boat. In this passage we notice some signs of Jesus’ divinity.
From verse 37 of Mark 4 we read…
37 Suddenly a strong wind blew up, and the waves began to spill over into the boat, so that it was about to fill with water. 38 Jesus was in the back of the boat, sleeping with his head on a pillow. The disciples woke him up and said, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to die?”
39 Jesus stood up and commanded the wind, “Be quiet!” and he said to the waves, “Be still!” The wind died down, and there was a great calm. 40 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Why are you frightened? Do you still have no faith?” 41 But they were terribly afraid and began to say to one another, “Who is this man? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
Mark’s account of Jesus calming the waters reminds us of the creation account in Genesis 1, where God brings order to the chaos. In Genesis 1 God makes the world functional for human beings and other creatures simply by speaking. He utters the divine word and it is done. Let there be light. Let there be sky. Let there be land and so on.
We see Jesus doing a similar thing in Mark 4 when he tells the wind to be quiet and the waves to be still. What we notice here is that Jesus speaks directly to the wind and waves as one who knew them personally. Jesus doesn’t ask God to calm the storm, rather Jesus rebukes the wind and waves and they obey him. This is something only God can do.
In Psalm 104 we read, “But at your rebuke [O Lord] the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took flight”.
And in Psalm 107, “The Lord stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves and the sea were hushed.”
Interestingly the disciples are more afraid after Jesus has calmed the storm. It is natural for human beings to be terrified in the presence of God. Jesus had just demonstrated divine power over the forces of nature and yet the disciples hadn’t quite made the connection, that Jesus is God.
About 500 years ago the church went through a great reformation in thinking and practice. One of the ideas to come out of this Reformation was a threefold concept of faith. [3]
Faith begins with a knowledge of the history of Jesus – hearing the gospel in other words. That’s phase 1.
This historical knowledge then brings assent or agreement that Jesus is divine. That’s phase 2.
But knowledge and agreement must translate to practical trust in Jesus, otherwise what’s the point. Trust is phase 3.
Implicit to all three phases is the work of the Holy Spirit. Faith is a gift of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who puts us in the right place at the right time to hear the gospel and receive the knowledge about Jesus. Likewise, it is the Spirit who helps us to make the logical connection from knowledge to agreement that Jesus is divine. And it is the Spirit who helps us to trust Jesus day by day.
While the Reformation’s three step process to faith in Jesus is helpful, it is not the only way to faith in Jesus. Not everyone comes to faith through the mind. The Holy Spirit is not limited to just one pathway to the human soul. The Holy Spirit can create faith in a variety of ways. So if your pathway to faith in Jesus looks different to the Reformation pathway then that’s okay. Whatever pathway the Spirit leads you on, the goal is to trust Jesus.
In verse 40 of Mark 4, after Jesus has calmed the storm, he says to his disciples, “Why are you frightened? Do you still have no faith?”
The disciples had knowledge about Jesus. They had seen many of the miraculous God stuff that Jesus had done but that knowledge had not yet translated to an agreement, in their minds, that Jesus is God.
The risk with the Reformation’s three step process to faith through the mind is that people may think their faith is whole when in fact they have only completed one or two steps. As we read in the book of James chapter 2: What good is it if a person claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? …You believe there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that and shudder. …As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
The song He Must Be God describes the first two steps of faith through the pathway of the mind. That is, knowledge and agreement. Jesus calmed the storm therefore, based on that knowledge, we can agree he must be God. But the next step of trusting Jesus (which is normally the hardest part) has to be worked out when we are in the storms of daily life.
Mark 6:30-44 – Shepherd
The first verse of the song He Must Be God presents Jesus as Saviour. The second verse reveals Jesus as Creator and the third verse shows us Jesus as the divine Shepherd. Verse 3 of the song reads…
Jesus fed a very big crowd who’d no food to eat.
Jesus fed them, so he could show He’s all that we need.
How cool is that! How cool is that! From all the bread you’d almost get fat.
He must be God ‘cause he did that, How cool is that!
This verse of the song recalls Mark chapter 6 where Jesus multiples the loaves and fishes to feed more than 5,000 people in the wilderness. From Mark 6, verse 39 we read…
39 Jesus told his disciples to make all the people divide into groups and sit down on the green grass… 41 Then Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven, and gave thanks to God. He broke the loaves and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. 42 Everyone ate and had enough. 43 Then the disciples took up twelve baskets full of what was left of the bread and the fish. 44 The number of men who were fed was five thousand.
In some ways this story reminds us of God feeding the people of Israel in the wilderness, with mana and quail from heaven. The key connection though, between the oneness of God and Jesus, is found in Mark 6, verse 34, where we read: When Jesus got out of the boat, he saw the large crowd and his heart was filled with compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began to teach them many things…
This verse sounds clear echoes of Ezekiel 34:11-15 where God says:
11 “I, the Sovereign Lord, tell you that I myself will look for my sheep and take care of them 12 in the same way as shepherds take care of their sheep that were scattered and are brought together again. … 14 I will let them graze in safety in the mountain meadows and the valleys and in all the green pastures of the land of Israel. 15 I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will find them a place to rest. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken.
By feeding the people in the wilderness, both with his teaching and with carbs and protein, Jesus was acting as the divine shepherd of Israel who has compassion on his people.
For about the first 300 years or so of church history, Christians wrestled with this idea of whether we could say that Jesus is in fact God and if so in what sense was he God. There were basically two approaches to this question, the functional approach and the ontological approach.
The functional approach said that Jesus was divine in the sense that he functioned in a divine manner. That is, Jesus did things that only God could do, therefore this proves he is God. Clearly, the song He Must Be God, uses a functional approach. As we’ve heard, Jesus saved people, he demonstrated power over creation and he shepherded people in a divine way.
But is this the only sense in which Jesus is divine? Can we say that Jesus is one with God ontologically speaking? Ontology is just a fancy word which means being or essence or substance. Function has to do with purpose whereas ontology has to do with identity, who you are on the inside.
To help understand the difference between the functional and ontological approaches I want you to think of a cake. Any kind of cake you like. The function (or purpose) of a cake is to feed people, to comfort people and to help people celebrate special occasions like birthdays. But the ontology of a cake (the substance of it) is flour, eggs, butter, sugar and things like that. In a word, we could say the essence of a cake is sweetness. If it’s not sweet, then to my mind, it doesn’t really have the ontology of a cake.
Or take a bag of chips as another example. The function of a bag of chips is to feed people but the ontology (the essence or substance) is potatoes and salt.
While it is relatively easy to see from reading the gospels that Jesus is God in a functional sense, can we say he is God in an ontological sense? By way of metaphor, if God had DNA would Jesus’ DNA be the same as God’s DNA?
The matter came to a head in the Fourth Century AD/CE at the Council of Nicea. From this Council we got the Nicene Creed, part of which reads:
“We believe… in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father as only begotten, that is, from the essence of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father.”
The Nicene Creed tells us, yes, Jesus does share the same essence as God.
Translating this to the image of Jesus as the good shepherd, Jesus fulfils both the function of a shepherd and the essence of a shepherd. The function of a shepherd is to protect and feed the sheep. The essence of a shepherd is comprised of things like presence, care, patience and compassion.
In the account of Jesus feeding the 5000 (from Mark 6) we notice at least two specific signs of God’s essence – namely the compassion Jesus had on the crowds (in verse 34) who were like sheep without a shepherd and also the abundance with which Jesus fed the crowds. Everyone had more than enough; there were 12 basketfuls left over. ‘From all the bread you’d almost get fat.’ Compassion and abundance are signs of God’s presence. The Lord doesn’t do things by halves.
Thinking more broadly, the primary essence of God is love. Divine love is qualitatively different from human love. There are no words to do justice to God’s love. We see the quality of divine love in the way Jesus made a choice to go to the cross to die for us, while we were still sinners.
Jesus saw himself as one with God the Father, sharing the same essence. In John 14 Philip asks Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father; that is all we need.” And Jesus replies, “…Whoever has seen me has seen the Father… Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. If not, believe because of the things I do.”
As I understand it, this is another way of Jesus saying he is both ontologically and functionally one with God and therefore he reveals God to us.
Jesus’ claim to be one with God was proved true when God raised Jesus from the dead on the third day.
Conclusion:
This morning we have heard how Jesus is Saviour, Creator and divine Shepherd. In these ways Jesus demonstrates he is God both in function and in essence. Jesus isn’t just God prima facie – Jesus is God through and through.
Where are you at in your journey of knowing, accepting and trusting Jesus?
Let’s stand and sing, He Must Be God…
Jesus healed a paralysed man who was brought to him.
Jesus healed him, so he could show: He forgives our sin.
How cool is that! How cool is that! He told the man to pick up his mat.
He must be God ‘cause he did that, How cool is that!
Jesus calmed a terrible storm while he was at sea.
Jesus calmed it, so he could say “Fear not, trust in me.”
How cool is that! How cool is that! He spoke a word – the waves went dead flat
He must be God ‘cause he did that, How cool is that!
Jesus fed a very big crowd who’d no food to eat.
Jesus fed them, so he could show He’s all that we need.
How cool is that! How cool is that! From all the bread you’d almost get fat.
He must be God ‘cause he did that, How cool is that!
CCLI No. PCL112980
Questions for discussion or reflection:
Listen to the song ‘He Must Be God’. What was your prima facie impression of this song the first time you heard it?
In what ways does Mark 2:1-12 indicate that Jesus must be God?
How is divine forgiveness different from human forgiveness?
Why do we need both history and personal experience to know Jesus?
In what ways does Mark 4:35-41 indicate that Jesus must be God?
Where are you at on your journey of knowing, accepting and trusting Jesus? What is your pathway to faith in Jesus?
In what ways does Mark 6:30-44 indicate that Jesus must be God?
What evidence do we find in the Scriptures that Jesus shares the same essence as God?
Outtakes
In verse 8 of Mark 2 we read: At once Jesus knew what they were thinking, so he said to them, “Why do you think such things? Only God can know what is in someone’s heart and mind. Jesus wasn’t showing off by telling the teachers of the law that he knew what they were thinking. He was acting to save them from committing blasphemy themselves. By disrespecting Jesus, the lawyers were in danger of disrespecting God (because Jesus is one with God).
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When we think about the apostles, they knew Jesus from below and above. They bore witness to both the historical reality of Jesus and their personal experience of God’s Spirit.
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Some of Jesus’ disciples were fishermen and were accustomed to a bit of rough weather. The Sea of Galilee was prone to sudden storms. But this particular storm must have been especially severe because these veteran fishermen were scared for their lives. In contrast, Jesus is so completely relaxed that he is asleep in the boat. Jesus is at home in the storm. He has no fear. Why is Jesus unafraid in the storm? Because he is more powerful than the storm. And what could be more powerful than the storm? Well, that would be God.
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God’s love reaches out to care for and save those who are different from him. The apostle Paul explains how the essence of God’s love and Jesus’ love is the same in Romans 5. From verse 8 we read…
8 But God has shown us how much he loves us—it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us! 9 By his bloodwe are now put right with God; how much more, then, will we be saved by him from God’s anger! 10 We were God’s enemies, but he made us his friends through the death of his Son. Now that we are God’s friends, how much more will we be saved by Christ’s life!
[1] Refer Stanley Grenz’ book, ‘Theology for the Community of God’, pages 249-251.
[2] Grenz, page 261.
[3] Grenz, pages 261-262.
Tawa Baptist 