Born of the Virgin Mary...Continued from page 6

Thank God that Jesus Christ identifies with everyone. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, He has been hammered by temptation in the desert with Satan. He knows what it is to be beaten up by life and, in his humanity, even to feel forsaken by the Father.

I have been fascinated by the life of Johnny Cash. I read many of the obituaries written about him with avid interest. No man had lived harder, failed more often, been more beaten up by life and could have ended up a broken person with no hope. I loved reading the story about when his life was playing itself out that way and he met June Carter. She told him about her relationship with Jesus Christ and urged him to get God's help in kicking his addiction to prescription drugs. She urged him to join her in attending services at First Baptist Church of Hendersonville, Tennessee. This rugged, beaten-by-life hulk of a man had his life turned around by the Incarnate God whose name is Jesus Christ, who empathized with Cash and the dead end at which he found himself.

Second: This combination of human and divine, the incarnate God, makes Jesus the authoritative teacher of how to live the smart way.

When you come to realize the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, you are able to learn from Him, not as just another human religious teacher but as the preexistent God, now in human form, fully God, fully man.

If you have not yet discovered the profound writings of Dallas Willard, I urge you to get a copy of his book The Divine Conspiracy. It is the kind of book I love to read a few pages at a time. In it, he declares that Jesus is the smartest man in the world. Commenting on His life and teachings, he writes:

All these things show Jesus' cognitive and practical mastery of every phase of reality: physical, moral, and spiritual. He is Master only because he is Maestro. "Jesus is Lord" can mean little in practice for anyone who has to hesitate before saying, "Jesus is smart."

He is not just nice, he is brilliant. He is the smartest man who ever lived. He is now supervising the entire course of world history (Rev. 1:5) while simultaneously preparing the rest of the universe for our future role in it (John 14:2). He always has the best information on everything and certainly also on the things that matter most in human life. Let us now hear his teachings on who has the good life, on who is among the truly blessed.

This is what biblical preaching is all about, opening the Word of God, not just telling cute little human interest stories about a boy and his dog. You and I have access through this One conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, God in human form, teaching us all we need to know to live creatively, and all we need to know to die triumphantly.

That is why I urge you to take advantage of Wednesday evenings when Jim Birchfield is opening the Bible for us to those wonderful teachings of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount. This is radical, life-transforming teaching. Take advantage of it. Open your own Bible, finding God's Word for you for each day!