God's Not Dead

Recently, I saw the movie “God’s Not Dead.”  It’s a great movie!  A friend of mine who also saw the movie was so inspired by it, she texted her entire contact list and said “God’s not dead!”  One person replied, “Really, what’s his address?”  It’s a fair question, and there is a great answer.  In a world of over 7 billion people, there are certain identifiers that pinpoint each of us.  It’s called our address.  For example:  You are identified by the country you live in and that gets narrowed down to the state, followed by the city, zip code and then house address.  Within the house address, you are identified by name.  That address identifies you and picks you out from among everyone else in the world.  

Jesus has an address that points to him as the Son of God.  Actually, Jesus has many more identifiers that point to him than our simple address.  Let’s start with Noah. Noah had three sons, Shem, Japeth, and Ham.  Today all the nations of the world can be traced back to these three men.  The Bible says that the Messiah will come through the linage of Shem, eliminating the other two.  Continuing down to the year 2000 B.C., we find a man named Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees.  With Abraham, God gets even more specific in identifying Jesus as the Messiah.  God tells Abraham that all the nations of the world will be blessed through him.  Abraham had two sons—Isaac and Jacob.  God chose the line of Jacob.  Jacob had twelve sons, out of whom developed the twelve tribes of Israel.  God singled out the tribe of Judah for the Messiah and eliminated the other eleven.  And of all the family lines within the tribe of Judah, the line of Jesse was the divine choice.  God is narrowing it down for us.  Watch this…Jesse has eight children.  The Bible says that God chose the house of David and that He would be born of a virgin. 

Like all addresses, it begins broad and gets more and more narrow—even the house.  But what about the name?  An angel speaks to Joseph, as it is recorded in Matthew 1:21:  “You are to give Him the name Jesus.”  Step by step, the Bible clearly identifies Jesus as the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

Jesus was furthered identified as the Messiah, the Savior of the world, in 1012 BC through a prophecy that stated that His hands and feet would be pierced (describing the crucifixion).  What’s interesting about that is that this description was written 800 years before crucifixion was even put into effect by the Romans. 

God’s not dead and we even have an address that pinpoints who he is.  There is no mistaking that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the world.  God’s not dead--He’s surely alive!

Learn more at www.newlifeonline.com or follow Steve Lingenfelter on Twitter, @stevOLL.

*reprinted from the Peoria Times