"Christianity 101: Christ the Son"

I know that it’s a little late, but Happy Groundhog Day!  That groundhog may have predicted an early Spring, but it’s more like late Spring already here at the beginning of February in Illinois, as I ran around outside in shirtsleeves in nearly 60-degree weather today -- although tomorrow the temperature is supposed to drop back into the 30s again.

So basically, the weather is confused.

But we still had a beautiful day in worship this Sunday, and a fun evening watching the Super Bowl together on our giant-screen TV (i.e.; projected against the wall of the Narthex), lounging around as a church family on the comfy couches that we scavenged from the Youth House.  Well -- full disclosure -- I was home watching the game alone because I had to take care of my dog (it’s a long story), but it was still a lot of fun.  After 54 minutes of game play, the Kansas City Chiefs had only scored 10 points -- but then they scored another 21 points in the last six minutes of the game to win the whole thing while the San Francisco 49ers scratched their heads and wondered what just happened.

So basically, the Super Bowl was confused.

But the thing is, God is never confused.  He’s never caught flat-footed, He’s never surprised, and He’s never scrambling to catch up with what just happened or what needs to happen next -- meaning, by definition, that He knows what you really should do next.

We talked about that in the message this week as we continued with our new series looking at “Christianity 101” -- an overview of the foundations of what we believe as Christians.  I know that might seem... overly basic... for us to be studying, but I really don’t think so.

See, a frightening number of the people around us don’t really know what Christians believe.  All they know is what they’ve heard from pundits, or on TV shows, or from what they remember hearing as children from their parents regarding what their parents vaguely remember hearing when they themselves were children and had been dragged to services against their wills by their own parents.  In short, it’s helpful to get back to what Scripture actually says about stuff rather than to just assume that we know it all.

And that goes for Christians, too.  I find myself trying to generate deep studies, only to find that sometimes we all can still trip over shallow misunderstandings about what’s Biblical versus what’s merely familiar.  Or even if we truly do understand the deep truths of God, we can too often find ourselves becoming so familiar with them that we are no longer enraptured by the wonder of it all. 

For instance, God created everything through His Word, and that Word then took on our flesh and nature alongside His own nature in order to become our Saviour.  So our Sculptor -- who knows absolutely how consistently and foolishly we all break and befoul His beloved sculptures -- nonetheless took on the nature of a sculpture Himself because He loves us broken and befouled sculpture-breakers and befoulers so much that He’d let us break Him as well... so that He could save us by never being befouled. 

If that doesn’t blow our minds to contemplate, then perhaps we’ve gotten too familiar with our own doctrines and have lost the wonder of it.