Boom, here comes the boom!
Last Sunday night at ‘Redefine‘ we played a new game called ‘2 Rooms and a Boom‘. It’s a really fun game to play. I’ll let this video explain the basics of how to play.
We played three rounds of the game; twice the blue team won and the president’s life was saved and one time the red team won and there was a boom in the room and no more president.
It was kind of funny to play such a game and it really helped the young people to mingle and relax at the start of the night.
We then went on with the next night in our teaching series on ‘Jesus is..‘ and we looked at the fact that Jesus is God.
Again there were lots of ‘booms‘ in the room as we explored what the Bible had to say about Jesus being God, and it figuratively blowing our minds with how awesome and staggering that fact is.
It’s easy to believe that Jesus is human, but to come to the realisation that he is God is sometimes a lot harder for people to believe. Indeed, it was for the very fact that Jesus made such claims that the Jewish leaders that heard him wanted to kill him. “‘Very truly I tell you,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’ At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.” – John 8:58-59. The ‘I am‘ that Jesus said here is ‘ego eimi‘ in the original Greek. Jesus’ listeners would have recognised what he meant when he said this. When Moses is being sent by God to deliver the Israelites from captivity in Egypt, he asks God who he should tell the Israelites has sent him? Essentially Moses is asking God for His name. God’s response to Moses is this “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I am has sent me to you.”’”- Exodus 3:14
That is why they wanted to stone him. Jesus was calling himself by the same name that God had called himself when he spoke with Moses. After healing a man on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders asked Jesus why he had done this and in their eyes broken the sabbath by working. “So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defence Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.’ For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” – John 5:17-18
In other places Jesus is worshipped and does not stop the disciples from doing this, or from calling him God.
We then broke into groups to look at Hebrew 10 and look at why, if Jesus is God, and is perfect and eternal, why he would come to die for you and for me.
“For by one sacrifice he (Jesus) has made perfect for ever those who are being made holy.” – Hebrews 10:14
Last week we saw how, only a human could pay the price for the sins humanity had committed, but this week we saw how only God could offer a perfect and eternal sacrifice for our sins. That is why Jesus is both fully human and fully God. “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” – Colossians 2:9
Boom!
We finished the night with some time prayer journalling and sang Bebo Norman’s ‘Born to Die‘. One lyric in particular stood out for me from this song ‘And all fell silent for the cry of an infant, The voice of God Was dividing history for those with eyes to see The Son would shine from earth that night.‘ God coming to earth as a baby was truly a ‘boom‘ moment.
As you contemplate the truth that Jesus is God, may you too have a ‘boom‘ moment as you marvel at how great God’s love is, and may it lead you to worship him.
Be blessed!
Apologies in advance from an English language pedant, but “literally blowing our minds” would have been very messy:. a room full of exploded skulls and splattered brains, not my idea of fun. If you’re going to use long words it’s a good idea to know what they mean. The word “literally” has been sadly devalued in recent years, mostly by football managers and the like, who use it as you just have, to mean exactly what it doesn’t mean.
Dear Sue, I could joke and say that it was quite messy and took us several hours to clean up all of the cerebral detritus; however you are indeed correct and I misused the term ‘literally’. I was intending on using the term of ‘figuratively’; but had mixed it up in my brain and put its antonym into the text by accident.
That you for notifying me of my linguistic error. I have subsequently amended the text blog, in order that the appropriate word is utilised.
I do not watch copious amounts of football and so am perplexed as to how this textual error occurred. All I can say is that I was perhaps overexcited whilst writing about the amazing truth that Jesus was God with us, our Emmanuel, and thus I did not take as much due care or attention to my linguistic accuracy as I should have.
Once again thank you for highlighting my error. I trust that the text now reads better and I pray that you have a great rest of November in anticipation of Advent and the preparation to celebrate the amazing miracle of Christ’s birth.
Be blessed!