Unlocking the Da Vinci Code - "Who is Jesus"

This week and last week we are tackling two very important issues brought up in the new movie ‘The Da Vinci Code’.
They are:
1. Can we trust the Bible?
2. Who is Jesus?

Last week we addressed whether or not we could trust the Bible and we investigated some history and archeology to demonstrate the accuracy of the Bible. Based off of what we learned last week, I think it is clear that the Bible is truly God’s un-compromised Word to humankind. Having this understanding, today we are going to address who Jesus was/is according to what we find in the Bible. We are going to have somewhat of a history lesson. I am going to give you information you’ve probably never heard about two stories you may have heard many times. Let’s dive right in.

The Bible refers to a city by the name of Caesarea Philippi. see map

Caesarea Philippi stood only twenty-five miles from the religious communities of Galilee, but the city’s religious practices were vastly different from those of the nearby Jewish towns. The city stood in a lush area near the foot of Mount Hermon. and was the religious center of worship of the Greek god,
Pan. Pan was a fertility God. Originally, the city was actually named Panias in Pan’s honor. In the city there was tall cliff where local people built shrines and temples to Pan.

These shrines, as you see, are still present in the hillside to this day. If you were to travel in this region you could tour the area and actually visit this particular location.
Prior to the time of Christ, the Romans conquered this Greek territory, Pan. The city was quite damaged during it’s capture by the Romans and consequently needed rebuilding. Herod Philip, son to Herod the Great, actually oversaw the rebuilding of the city and at that time named it after himself, which is where we got Caesarea Philippi. Even though the city was then ruled by the Romans, it continued to focus on worship of the Greek gods.
Caesarea Philippi’s location was especially unique because it stood at the base of a cliff where spring water flowed.

Now that is important because at one time, the water ran directly from the mouth of a cave set in the bottom of the cliff. The spring has since stopped flowing, but again, if you tour the cliffside, you can actually explore the cave where the river once flowed from.

The pagans of Jesus’ day commonly believed that their fertility gods lived in the underworld during the winter and returned to earth each spring. They saw water as a symbol of the underworld and thought that their gods traveled to and from that world through caves.
To the pagan mind, then, the cave and spring water at Caesarea Philippi created a gate to the underworld. They believed that their city was literally at the gates of the underworld—the gates of hell. In order to entice the return of their god, Pan, each year, the people of Caesarea Philippi engaged in horrible deeds, including prostitution and sexual interaction between humans and goats.
Interestingly, Jesus chose to take His disciples to this pagan setting. It was toward the end of His time, not long before His arrest when He took his disciples on a trip to Caesarea Philippi. You have to imagine that his disciples were probably pretty shocked that Jesus was taking them to such a place. Any good Jew didn’t travel to this region if at all possible. And here they were, with their Rabbi, following him to a despicable place. Jesus, however, chose this location to challenge His disciples to answer the very question we are asking today.


Matthew 16:13-14
 13When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"
 14They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."

The disciples were up on societies ‘buzz’ about Jesus. They were able to answer his question about what people were saying about him. The ‘Da Vinci Code’ has a lot to say about Jesus.

pg 232 - Nothing in Christianity is original
pg 233 - referring to the council of Nicea, the character Teabing states: Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet....a great powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.
pg 233 - It’s all about power, Teabing continued. Christ as Messiah was critical to the functioning of the Church and state. Many scholars claim that the early church literally stole Jesus from his early followers, hijacking his human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power.
pg 234 - The twist is this, Teabing sais, talking faster now. “....Constantine upgraded Jesus’ status almost four centuries after his death.
pg 235 - ‘What I mean’, Teabing countered, ‘is that almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false.’



So with this book and movie having so much to say about Christ, the question remains the same as it was when Christ himself uttered it. It is a two part question:

1. Who do people say that I am?
You must be familiar with what current culture says about Christ if you want to be a voice of truth to that culture.
2. (and most important) Who do you say that I am?

Matthew 16:15-16
15"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
 16Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ,[a] the Son of the living God."

Based on Peter’s confession, Jesus’ responded with a statement that has great significance. He said ‘on this rock I will build my church’. That has always been understood as on the rock or foundation of Peter’s confession. On his faith and proclamation of Christ as Messiah, on that foundation, Christ would build his church. But look at where they were as Christ spoke these words. They were at a place known for it’s shrines, cut into the rock wall at the side of the cliff.

There is great significance in the fact that they were at Caesarea Phillipi when Jesus made this statement. Ray Vander Laan, a Christian Jewish Historian, contends that Jesus was also saying, ‘on this rock, the place that reveres all sorts of evil, even at this place, where humanity is at it’s worst, I won’t turn my back, instead I will build my church and the gates of hell (where the pagan mind believed they were standing) will not prevail against it.’ See Christ didn’t come just for those hanging out in the synagogues and following the appropriate codes of conduct, Christ came for the sinners.

Mark 2:16-18 (The Message)
 15-16 ...Jesus and his disciples were at home having supper with a collection of disreputable guests. Unlikely as it seems, more than a few of them had become followers. The religion scholars and Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company and lit into his disciples: "What kind of example is this, acting cozy with the riffraff?"
 17Jesus, overhearing, shot back, "Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I'm here inviting the sin-sick, not the spiritually-fit."

Jesus came for those represented at the rock and proclaimed, ‘on this rock I will build my church.’
So, in response to the question, ‘who is Jesus?’ I must answer he is the lover of my soul, the One who loves my just as I am. But there is more to that answer. The correct response demands that we have one more quick history lesson.
Just before Jesus’ crucifixion, he rode into Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. This trip into Jerusalem is referred to as his triumphal entry. People laid their own clothes and palm branches on the ground and shouted,

Matthew 21:9  
   "Hosanna[a] to the Son of David!" 
   "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"[b] 
   "Hosanna[c] in the highest!

Hosanna simply meaning highest adoration. Also, Jesus rode in on a donkey, a symbol at that time, of royalty. So already, symbolically, the stage is being set to receive Jesus as the Messiah/Savior to the Jews during the Feast of the Passover. What you may not know about the timing of his triumphal entry is that he actually rode into town on the traditional day that the priests were choosing the lamb (picture of lamb) to be sacrificed for the atonement of their sins during passover. Lastly, this very lamb was to be sacrificed at the appointed hour, which for more than a millennium, had been at exactly three in the afternoon. Scripture tells us that Jesus hung on his cross for 6 hours before he finally died. His time of death is noted in three of the four Gospels as being three in the afternoon. So at the same moment that the priests were sacrificing the lamb for the forgiveness of sins of the people, Christ was being sacrificed for the forgiveness of the sins of the world. Coincidence? Not a chance. God did not want there to be a doubt who Jesus was. So now, in response to the question, who is Jesus? I must answer he is the lover of my soul, the One who loves me just as I am, the forgiver of my sins. He is my redeemer, my hope, my joy, my eternal God who grants me the opportunity of eternal life with Him. He is my everything.

John 1:3-5 (The Message)

Everything was created through him; 
      nothing—not one thing!— 
      came into being without him. 
   What came into existence was Life, 
      and the Life was Light to live by. 
   The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; 
      the darkness couldn't put it out.

He is life to me. Absolute life. Who is he to you? Is this Jesus the Jesus that you know? The Jesus who is your all, your very source of life itself? It’s who he wants to be for you. It’s who he died to be for you. Your everything. Your answers, your peace, your purpose, your greatest love. That’s who Jesus is to me.

Matthew 16:15-16
15"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"

Unlocking the Da Vinci Code - "Can We Trust the Bible"

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In case you haven’t noticed, the Bible is under attack.
• The ACLU is applying continual pressure to have the Ten Commandments removed from courtrooms across the nation.

Teenagers in some public high schools are being told they can’t bring their Bibles to school because of the “separation of church and state.”
• One Florida school is being sued because it dared to teach the Bible as history, not as religious myth.
To:  U.S SUPREME COURT
This petition is being written is sorrow due to the crumbling of the foundation of the United States. Because one individual is offended by a symbol that represents the foundation of this country the rest must suffer. One woman in Houston Texas has spent taxpayer’s money on destroying a monument that represents what this county was founded on. GOD. For those who are unaware a Bible was removed from a monument displayed in front of the Harris County Civil Courts Building, 301 Fannin, in Houston Texas. This open Bible was part of a 48-year-old monument erected by the Star of Hope to honor one of its benefactors William S. Mosher. A U.S. District Judge ruled on Aug 10 2004 that displaying the Bible on county property represented an unconstitutional promotion of Christianity by the county and ordered it removed within 10 business days. The woman who sued stated that the display offended non-Christians. The 5th Circuit issued a temporary stay, however on Monday, January 10.2005, the 5th Circuit lifted the stay and the Bible was removed.

It goes without saying that the Bible is ever and always under attack. No other book has been so burned and banned and outlawed.  From Roman emperors to communist leaders to college professors, people seem to take it upon themselves to attack God’s book. The most recent example of the validity of the Bible being attacked is found in the best seller and new movie ‘The DaVinci Code’. Now I must say that as a fictional novel I really enjoyed reading this book. It is quite a page turner and from the very beginning it sucks you in. You are on edge to see what could possibly happen next. It’s fascinating, entertaining reading! But here’s the problem. It is a blatant attack on the Word of God. Now I do want to say that there is no way for me to make any kind of assumptions about Dan Brown, the author of the Da Vinci code, and his intentions as he wrote this book. I don’t know his heart. I don’t know that his underlying thoughts while he was writing the book was to cast doubt on the Bible. But I know this, whether Dan Brown intended for this book to be a stumbling block to the faith of countless people or not, Christ’s ultimate enemy, Satan, certainly did. His intentions are clearly stated in

1 Peter 5:8 ‘Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.’

The enemy knows exactly what he’s doing! He is planting seeds of doubt, because if we doubt the validity of the Bible then we doubt it’s message and by default eventually doubt Christ. I’ll tell you where the confusion comes in as you read the book. It’s right in the beginning, just after the acknowledgments, before the book itself even begins. It says this
Read from book
I read the DaVinci code 2 1/2 years ago. I actually hadn’t heard of the book. I had someone bring it to me and say, I read this and it’s a little confusing. Read it and tell me what you think. I’ll tell you what I thought as I read it, I thought I can’t put this thing down, I wonder what will happen next. My next thought was, ‘man this book is going to mess some folks up.’ Fast forward 2 1/2 years and look at the fallout the book has created. Amazing! I found no less than 88 different books that have been written to debunk the contents of this one book. Many wonder what the big deal is all about but as you read the book or watch the movie, as I did this weekend, you realize that The DaVinci Code challenges the most fundamental basic teaching of the entire New Testament. So the issue becomes deciding what you can or cannot believe about the validity of the Bible.
Despite all of the attacks over the centuries, the Bible has been supernaturally preserved.  Just one illustration of this will suffice.  You may have heard of Voltaire, the noted Frenchman who died in 1778.  He was quoted as saying that one hundred years from his lifetime Christianity would be swept from existence and pass into history.  But what has happened?  Voltaire has passed into history while the circulation of the Bible continues to increase in almost all parts of the world. In fact, fifty years after his death, Voltaire’s house was purchased by the Geneva Bible Society.  The house of this man who predicted an end to the Christian faith became a printing press where thousands of Bibles were produced and distributed. Now that is irony!
The Bible has been uniquely preserved because Almighty God wrote it and is taking care of it. 

Isaiah 40:8 says “The grass withers and the flower fades away, but the word of our God shall stand forever.”

Anyone who sets out to destroy the Bible is not going against man; he’s going against God, and that is why such attacks will always fail. 

Sir William Ramsey, a gentleman regarded as one of the greatest archeologists in history, set out to disprove the Bible by doing research in Asia Minor to show that the book of Acts was not written by Luke, but by someone in the second century as he had been taught. He studied the topography, antiquities, and society of that culture and what did he find? "Luke's history is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness." and "...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians." What is truly amazing is that once the Bible was used as a guide to find other insights into the life of this community, much more was learned through minute details that never would have been found without it!
Another example is found in the book of Daniel. Daniel speaks of a king named Belshazzar of Babylon. Because of this reference, the book was dismissed as fictional due to the fact that there was no mention of a king with that name in existence other than Daniel's account. It was later discovered that the reigning king at that time, Nabonidus, had appointed Belshazzar as his co-regent while at war away from Babylon. Daniel was accurate, and the historicity of the Bible was proven once again.
One more, the name of Pontius Pilate (the man who eventually sentenced Jesus to death) was unheard of outside of the Biblical record, to historians this obviously cast a major shadow of doubt on the validity of the account of the crucifixion. However, in 1961 two Italian archeologists discovered a record of his service as the Prefect of Judea in the region of Caesarea...the Roman capital of Palestine, exactly when and where he should have been to line up with scripture!
Archeology plays an amazing role in proving the Bible accurate.
In validating any archeological writing there are two key questions that must be answered:

1) How close to the original writing are the earliest copies?
2) How many copies are there?

By those who have actually set out to investigate it, the bible has proven overwhelmingly accurate.

The Bible stands uncontested as the number one book of all time with the greatest number of ancient manuscripts. For comparison purposes, before I give you the stats on the Bible, let me tell you about the number 2 book of all time it’s number of ancient manuscripts. It is “The Iliad” by Homer.

There are 643 copies that we have in our possession. The time frame between the original manuscript and the earliest copy is 500 years.

That’s actually very good because we also have Plato’s “Republic”, which is considered to be very valid in it’s content with just 7 copies. There are 900 years between original and manuscript.

Listen to this, the New Testament has over 24,000 copies or partial copies that we have found. The earliest copy we have is 50 years from original manuscript.

So think of this, if you really let it set in, it is truly mind boggling: when you hold the Bible in your hands, you hold a personal message from the loving and living God.
Close:
So if you’re still wondering what the Bible is good for, read what David wrote in Psalm 19:7-9:

"The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether."

Would you like your soul restored?  Do you need wisdom?  How would you like to have a deep, abiding joy in your heart?  All of these things are found in God’s Word.  It is sufficient; it is accurate; it has everything you need to be truly happy.

Billy Graham:
If the Bible is true, then nothing else matters
And if the Bible is false, then nothing else matters

Mother's Day - 'Life as a Princess' by Cathleen Parks

Nicole Johnson video, "Princess in Pajamas"

Your a princess. You are. Depending on how you view being a princess that can two completely different things. Princesses, as we are familiar with them, seem to live a very charmed life. Their hair and clothes are always perfect. Their children are clean and well behaved. They have more money than they can spend. They live with their prince in their castle and life is good.
A charmed life.

The way we perceive a princesses life is not altogether realistic, but unfortunately, it is what they are taught they must present to their public. Many of us have been taught that too. Ever heard the saying ‘don’t air your dirty laundry in public’? How often do we hide the parts of our lives that don’t seem quite presentable? God forbid that others should know that I’ve ever made a mistake, sinned, or lived in fear. What our own nature tells us is to keep these parts of our lives quiet. Let them be our own little secret. But look, here’s the cool thing. God, in typical God form, tells us to do the very opposite of what the we or our culture would tell us to do.

James 5:16 (The Message)
16 Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed.

Now that blows the doors off of conventional wisdom doesn’t it? The Bible tells us to actually TELL each other when we’ve messed up or when we’re struggling. It goes further to say - if you tell each other - you’ll have wholeness and healing. Incredible!

Why? Because secrets are dark places and God purposes to bring light into dark places. When you talk about the struggles in your life you are taking these struggles out of the dark and bringing them into light - exposing them. It takes courage and guts be transparent with yourself and with others.
So often we would rather not address our problems. Maybe it’s easier for us.
*Head in the sand
*Shame, embarrassment

Maybe we want everyone to see us a princess in our own right - as someone who has it all together. Really - don’t we all want to have it all together? Don’t we all want to be our own little princess of our own little kingdom?

But reality says that we don’t have everything exactly right all the time. Or most of the time. If fact the Bible compares us to clay pots. The thing with clay pots is that they are actually pretty fragile. They crack very easily. They are famously IMPERFECT. I can relate to that. If the Bible is going to compare me to a clay pot I would imagine I’m pretty cracked up. In fact, I may even have a chunk or two missing. I’ve been damaged by sin, hurt, rejection. I’ve been disillusioned, lied to. I’ve had high hopes come crashing down. Crack after crack after crack in my pot. But consider this. Picture a heavily cracked pot. Now in your minds eye begin to fill it with something. Water, wine, grain, whatever. If you put just about anything in a cracked pot, what will happen? You’ll loose it. It will run out of the cracks and eventually just run out. What is the only thing you can fill a pot with that won’t run out? That’s right - light. The only thing that you can put into a cracked pot that would never run out, is light. In fact, the more cracks that are in the pot, the more apparent the light is and useful for illumination. So if I’m a cracked pot, but I allow God’s light to shine on, and through, my imperfections by exposing them, not only will I find healing and wholeness but God will be able to use my struggles to impact the lives of those around me.
Look at Matthew 5:14-16 (The Message)

14 "Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. 15 If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. 16 Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand--shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

Today God wants to offer you freedom. Freedom from the things that you hold secret. If the church can’t be a safe place for us, where will be? We have to commit today to be transparent with one another. Take advantage of the small groups, develop transparent relationships with one another, talk with myself or Joe. But whatever you do, don’t keep your troubles, be it sin or struggle, to yourself. Transparency with one another strengthens and encourages each other. I want to be a princess. But I want to be the princess that God intends for me to be. You see I am a princess because He is my King. My daddy God is a King. Because he granted me daughtership, I am His princess. And only this King can take all of my imperfections and through his awesome glory make even the imperfections in my life beautiful.
LIGHT VISUAL.
God I thank you for my life. All of my life. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I realize it is through every part of my life that you shine in great glory!

A Day of Worship

Today we spent the majority of our time in worship and prayer.

SELAH