Jesus and Mateship
If you were to visit the massive Shrine of Remembrance honouring the Anzac war dead in Melbourne and view the statues and memorials surrounding it, what do they present as being important to Australian servicemen and women?
“The Driver,” the soldier at “Wipers,” “The Widow and Children,” and the statue of Simpson and his donkey all honour ordinary men and women. We would see images that honour the ordinary people, not those honouring generals, admirals or air marshals.
The memorial captures what’s important in Australian culture—mateship, “cobbers” and true-blue blokes. It’s what is captured in these concepts that makes the country’s pseudo national anthem “Waltzing Matilda” a song about an ordinary bloke. This is why Ned Kelly and his gang have such a high reputation. What is important in this part of the world is the common man battling and winning over a harsh land, a land historically remote from the comforts of Europe.
Some years ago a sage writer penned these words to describe just such a person: “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.”
The author was the ancient prophet Isaiah (53:2, 3) and the words describe Jesus Christ, the Messiah who was to come many years later. But they so well describe what we New Zealanders and Aussies desire: a best mate.
predicted uniqueness
Isaiah lived 700 years before Christ. He made other predictions about the Messiah. Scattered through Isaiah 53 are predictions that the Messiah (Jesus) would:
- be oppressed and afflicted, yet He would not for a moment protest
- be judged
- have no descendants
- have His grave with the wicked
- and also the rich
- be numbered with sinners
- after suffering and dying (“cut off”), live again
- be “pierced” for our errors and
- His punishment would bring
- peace and healing.
All of Isaiah’s predictions concerning the coming Messiah came true.
stunning predictions
When Daniel wrote his book, he was a prisoner of war in Babylon. His home city, Jerusalem, had been destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC. Daniel wrote (see chapter 9:25-26) that the Messiah would come 483 years after a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem.
The prediction also stated that the Messiah would then be “cut off,” that is, He would die, and that after that Jerusalem would be destroyed again.
The graphic at the bottom of this page shows how this amazing prophecy was historically fulfilled.
Calculation proves even this precise prediction to be true.
Jesus claimed to be anointed (the word means Messiah-ed or made Christ) because the “Spirit of the Lord” (Luke 4:18) was on Him. Luke, a physician, recorded that the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus and anointed him when he was baptised by John the Baptist (Luke 3:21, 22; Acts 10:37, 38). Luke pinpoints the date as being 27 AD, the “fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar” (Luke 3:1).
This in a remarkable way demonstrates the validity of this incredible prophecy. Titus, the son of Vespasian the Roman Emperor, destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, after Jesus was crucified, just as Daniel had predicted. Only supernatural insight could have predicted the future with such amazing accuracy. The accuracy of such a prediction should give us confidence that what the Bible says about the future will come to pass.
unique in history
The book The Essential Jesus, an anthology of Christ by various authors, describes the amazing person of Jesus: Who has inspired more art, music, architecture and literature? it asks. Who has given the world such a high moral tone to family, purity, justice, truth, and honesty? Who has given such dignity to the individual—to women and children? Who is there like Jesus who has been the root cause for the origin of hospitals, hospices, the university, the Red Cross and the greatest human relief agencies that help the needy of this planet? It is He who inspires hope. It is His sacrifice that motivates ours.
Yet He never wrote a book, never married, never built a building, never assembled an army, made no scientific discovery, never paid anyone a salary and He died the shameful death of a despised criminal when He had scarcely reached His prime.
Every day the newspapers of the world readjust their date to the time of His arrival. As each New Year arrives, it is baptised with His name, AD [Latin: anno Domini], calendars, Acts of Parliament, business, politics, literature and our emails all adjust unconsciously to the chronology of His life. To believe that an “impostor, in a forgotten province of a perished empire, stamped Himself so deeply on Time as to compel all the centuries to bear His name, is to believe that a child, with its box of colours, could change the tint of all the oceans!”
Jesus, on Jesus
Why is there no-one like Jesus? Because no-one else has ever made such outlandish claims about themselves.
Jesus’ audacious claims about Himself pose the dividing point between Christianity and other religions. “No Muslim can imagine Mohammed claiming to be Allah any more than a Jew can imagine Moses claiming to be Yahweh.
“Likewise, Hindus believe in many incarnations but not one Incarnation, while Buddhists have no categories in which to conceive of a sovereign God becoming a human being.” This is what makes Christianity unique: Jesus, its founder, claims to being God (see John 8:58). Yet despite such elevation, He also claims to be your best Mate.
admired by the famous
Through the multitude of His followers who have enriched humanity, Albert Schweitzer shines. With doctorates in theology, philosophy and medicine, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Schweitzer gave up a glowing career to found a mission hospital in French Equatorial Africa.
Of Jesus, he wrote: “He speaks to us the same word, ‘Follow me!’ . . . And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and . . . they shall learn in their own experience who He is.”
Today there are many people of such prominence for whom Jesus is the motivating force: Afro-American Dr Ben Carson, who came from ghetto poverty to become a world-renowned neurosurgeon and was rated by Time magazine as “among the best,” is a believer. To him add Dr Leonard Bailey, infant heart-transplant surgeon at Loma Linda University, California, Herbert Blomstedt, acclaimed conductor of symphony orchestras, Lord of the Rings author Tolkien and C S Lewis. To such men, the claims Jesus made about Himself are not only valid, but an inspiration.
for the common bloke
For all of us, without Jesus, this present life, with its joy and sorrow, is all there is. When we eventually die, we die like a worm and perish. But if Jesus is alive, and I’m convinced He is, then that makes humanity special.
We have dignity because we belong to Him. In spite of frustrations, life throbs with purpose as we follow in His footsteps, aiming to carry on His mission of hope, healing, forgiveness and new life.
The stark challenge of Christ is found in 1 John 5:9-12. It ends with this: “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
It’s a challenge—and a promise—from the best Mate you’ll ever have.
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