Jesus as the Messiah of God: Personal experience of Jesus in our lives

Luke 9:18-20

1. Introduction: The theme that I selected for this morning is Jesus as the
Messiah of God, which is basing on the text St. Luke 9:18-20. During our
summer vacation, one evening we had TKP executive committee meeting
there in Chaltlang Baptist Church. Before we started our committee we had
a mass spoken prayer and in that prayer one of the contributed prayer
points was that about the conversion of some Mizo young people into
Hinduism. When I heard that incident, it really touched my heart and
immediately the questions came into my mind was why this happened
among the Christians? And why did they convert? Who do they say that
Jesus is or who is Jesus Christ in their lives? I think all these questions are
very important for our contemporary world in this time.

2. The Background of the text and exegesis: As we see Peter’s

confession of Christ in Luke 9:18-20. Matthew and Mark also recorded this
Peter’s confession of Christ and located this incident in the dominion of
Caesarea Philippi, near the foot of Mount Harmon. This was heathen
territory and a Pagan city. The Jews were less in number and there were 14
temples of Baal in this city. The worship of Pan was being especially
prominent. People used to worship Pan, a Greek nature of god. Not only
that there was a big cave near by, people believed that the nature of god,
Pan was born in that cave and all the Greek gods were often gathered
together in this cave. In that very place and situation Jesus and his disciples
were journeying and he asked his disciples “Who do people say I am?” If
we read 9:9 Herod also asked, ‘who is Jesus’. This is a very important
question for his disciples in that context as well as everyone on earth for
today, no more important question for this. Then they give the answers
described in vs. 7 and 8. From this it is very clear that the people know
Jesus thoroughly but not deeply and they conscious that Jesus was an
exceptional, not an ordinary person but they were unable to see the true
Christ in Him. This shows that the only knowledge of Jesus without
personal experience is not enough and the knowledge of Jesus from the
sharing of other people experience is not sufficient at all. After knowing
that answer Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am”. Peter
answered, “You are the Messiah of God, the Christ, the Son of living God”.
Here Peter’s knowledge of Jesus is not only the knowledge, it is more than
that but also he expresses his feeling on Jesus from his personal experience
before. If we read the previous Chapters we see Jesus’ healing ministry and
his different miracle works. Peter is one of the eyewitnesses for all these
incidents and also he, himself personally experienced Jesus’ Messianic
power in his life when his first encounter with Jesus in the Sea of Galilee.
So, personal experience of Jesus in our lives is very important for all of us
in order to stand firm in our faith and to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah of
God in our contemporary world

3. The Condition of Our Contemporary World: From the birth of

Christianity in the world one of the controversial subjects which is still
going on till today is who Jesus is? Most of the people tried to explain who
Jesus is from their own understanding and also from the wisdom and the
skill of human being. In the Muslim scripture named ‘Quran’, it mention
Jesus’ name more than 30 times, but Jesus is regarded as one of the
prophets and the story is that while they were trying to crucify Jesus on the
Cross, the angel, Gabriel came to rescued him. This shows that people of
other faith also have a little wrong information of Jesus. Recently, Dan
Brown also tried to explain who Jesus is in his Book ‘The DaVinci Code’
with a lot of researches that he had. As we all know how did he find Who
Jesus is. The foundation of our Christian faith is shaking by this book.
Above all as we know that even in Mizoram at present some young people
are converted into Hinduism. That is our present situation where we are
living. Do we ever think why all these things happened in this time? How
will we response as a theological student or a Christian who committed our
lives to God and following Jesus just like Jesus and his disciples were
traveling in the city of Caesarean Philippi and asking a very important
question in that very context.

4. As we said that only the knowledge of God without personal experience

is not enough for today’s context. When we talk about Personal experience
of Jesus, it means personal encounter. If we look at our Christianity in
Mizoram, we see that most of us are a Christians in name and we know
Jesus from the sharing of our Christian forefather without personal
experience.