"I Already Know Jesus"

My four-year-old daughter recently asked me what I was going to preach about. I told her, “Jesus.” She responded, “Well, I already know about Jesus.” I thought, “Oh really?!” She knows so little about Jesus. But because we have talked with her about Jesus, her Sunday school class teaches her about Jesus, she thinks she has it down pat. Has she really understood the mystery of the hypostatic union?

But we do the same thing, don’t we? When someone starts, “For God so loved the world…” we finish it in our minds, think, “That’s a great verse…a little overused if you ask me,” and continue in our boredom of the reality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:12 says that the angels stoop down to longingly look at the Gospel. But we, the church in America, we are bored of the Gospel. Angels stoop. We droop.

I wonder if we can’t begin to stoop down, under all our pride and knowledge of the Gospel, and begin to wonder at the majestic mystery of it.

Have we really taken the time to understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Have we reflected enough, studied thoroughly and worshipped sufficiently over the fact that a holy, righteous and loving God would leave His heavenly perch to come and save sinful humanity through suffering and death? Have we really pondered our salvation and the unimaginable benefits which Scripture promises to us who believe?

The author of Hebrews speaks to this problem: “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it. For…how will we escape [judgment] if we neglect so great a salvation?” (2:1).

Our boredom with the Gospel comes, not from our familiarity with it, but rather our lack of familiarity with it. For in the Gospel are the greatest riches the world has ever treasured, and the greatest hope it has ever been offered.