McCracken Sermon, 1962-12-16, The Fact Of Christ

the text is taken from the episode to the hebrews the thirteenth chapter the eighth verse jesus christ is the same yesterday and today and whatever that is to say he is not on the faa get all antiquity age does not with a poem he will never be i did issue i spent force he will neither be some cost nor so proceeded he is the constant the ultimate fact that in christianity he is the perennial source all an uplifting and

transforming power which for every individual and for the widowed a lot ok the promise overlays at its highest is this this is a stupendous plea nineteenth centuries of pasco and it is still being made here at riverside we you know an esteemed doctor tom delay he breached several times from bespoke it and his appearance and address at our annual meeting in nineteen fifty six remain a vivid memory on one occasion he was asked why jesus should be called more len of slain man

he said in reply that he found the final secret of existence the key and to innovate in most top of reactor in the life all the redeeming and suffering allow that was lived out in palestine nearly two thousand years ago by jesus the son of mary and above or when the death that he died on the cross he said that as he looked on that life and that death he phoned me and we reviewed there as nowhere else the ultimate mystery of the universe the ultimate meaning all wanted companies and

not least the ultimate meaning of human life he said that in jesus images and then and deeds of luck in his freshman and in his crucifixion he had fallen log arb challenging memos all the genes rebuking his sin and then going out to meet him even in his sinfulness and reconciling him to himself now that is a twentieth century events all this first century claim jesus christ the same yesterday and today and forever isn't it also the substance of what was still profess some call ourselves christians believe brass jesus christ

is constant we cannot proceed of him being superseded or so cost we draw from a belief in god and in maine we draw from him our belief in life's its significance its value it's essential goodness and we face death i'm afraid in him we fighting the war of all our dreams in him our ideals are made visible and actually in him we see all that we have ever wanted to be he is the word made flesh the cruise seemed mediated through the senses if he is not the group of teenagers

is the puzzle all the ages if he is not the god given so you some of humanity's problems he is an insoluble enigma if humanity turns its back on him there will be grossed doc fix where we desperately need a great light and a north pole silence where we desperately need to hear a voice well i'm clear this is our faith are plenty we say about jesus christ what no more amazon would think of say about one amateur what noble just can't say about border if he had he has to the teacher in the border what the average communist holds an inversion that christ not only talked the truth about that he is the proof but

he is a long time that there's nowhere else once sam for oh garb was in christ or reconciling the world and to himself the plane was always been resistant in the first century it was a stumbling block to jews it was sheer folly to bleach water omens writing themselves on their tolerance broad mindedness it was preposterous that jesus of nazareth passages couldn't even spent his name properly she'll be supposed to have stolen a final four and about god the difficulty is perhaps greater today than at any time in the past that finality came

into the world with jesus christ that's right across so many of our assumptions weise at cairo's about the christ child in the manger and the wise men following a star the question is what we actually believe about the christ child become a man no easy matter for the waves omar sophisticated were you it's ethical ideas in a staple for ups its dress on relativity practically universal defying us thought that david steps to the prophet or made such claims such absolute tomatoes and was awarded the league on i get it the

towering question is whether he and his way of life then be accepted as supreme ultimate final on our minds today is shaped by science and scientific categories we have been schooled ordaz in the belief that an evolutionary principle is at work in history we assume that what comes liter must be better than what has preceded it but the news it's a period to the o and the idea of problems peers to rule out the idea of finality within the hispanic process how can there be anything and to know the finality i don't always when that will be so inclined to

be skeptical about actual view is anthony got everything as a relative relative to our changing experience to our social needs them are going to be no more are exempt from the law all season is seen as perpetual foreigners than the physical world we have made a demo one of jr will support arms and ensure that we often saying you know patients teach fugitives trying makes ancient paint on whose they must up for the stereo and all who would keep abreast of proof has made progress but he is the same yesterday today and fireman is a troublesome

concept for mines which have brought her activities in the place of the old absolutes here we are in active going back to something that happened long long ago that all roman world and the space age are radically different that's prize speech the old situation today is he had a light of the way around only one among many top for parents professor david is muzzy of columbia university and stated the case that's imagine mr madsen what it demonstrates a elaborate having to begin with a prayer to estimate the us and

then calm fighting is exposition to our commentary on beale i'm trying to show fellow the ideas of greek physicians to millennials ago are still and will always be true because they're going to be you yet there is what goes on in many approved it today professor muzzio bill despite possibly but and this is surprising and so distinguished by historian he overlooked something i don't know about that that the pulpit but to say he made of any great deal of the laboratory and said nothing about the studio in the natural sciences the latest finding may displace the ante each man stops from where these pre disaster

left off and each new discovery may make an older one and debate why a fresh in his first outing study of physics graham's slings and guess by newton many of the writings of galileo and copernicus and as obsolete as those of the theologians who has sought to refute lost steam engine is a museum piece parents take their children on religion is nowadays let the guilt used it it just a matter of months ago anticipating that dying when automobiles buses jet planes will have completely molded passenger transportation by rail but in the case of failures

east ethic and baptist moral and spiritual somehow tie in is altogether and then i think of beauty is a joy forever gray mosque the pieces of painting music sculpture or architecture literature ethics religion and i'm not content for in terms of the evolutionary process that empty seat moons do not explain them they survive subsequent tv ads of decline they have never outgrow so far from being rendered obsolete by a new mosque the beaches they have the inspiration all those masterpieces and we cannot go back to them or something staff take something that hampers progress something that

binds the future by the shackles of the past so all the other way around from beirut was an influence which inspires insight and release his creative impulses professor marcy may disappoint by the ferry do is to lay pierce and galen he would've liked to state his body differently if he had taken its course and sophocles socrates and plato into account or are done the modern spot that said about abs no actors will evans ask him a great distance is he will remain forever without it no it is a far greater acclaim that we made for jesus christ

being voiced it when when iraq beyond jesus of nazareth the moral spectrum of humanity cannot go there's no limit to the inventive genius so old age but janet cds may be maintained that anyone has ever appeared to my actions or sales price this study is known leaders in idea who have said that to be saviors of the well but doesn't he talk about them all personally yes they were there with questioning mind up properly questioning mind may say the name was a clash of money was talking to his briefs he was to say that yes ma'am with your beliefs i've come forward with similar testimonies data for example

let intellectual and spiritual go progress and the human mind expand as much as it will go beyond a grand fir and more renovation of christianity as it's awesome shines in the price of the gospels the human mind will not advance and rate on he's still in the front rank overbearing family of the sons of god what are the surprises of history jesus will never be surpassed and the losses were they invited the life of christ as the decisiveness all the supreme ideal and this is why the history of that will be the lights at this

point of time on the front page of the church calendar for today we offer an unknown consequently his orthodoxy are better about say an old nine seeing white sand theories of calm and garden and today he is the centerpiece of the human race and the leader of problems i am i within the map when i say that all the army's anam ah all the navy's that were ever built all the things that have ever read together not affected the lights of man upon this earth as possible as a solitary life the centerpiece of the human race the lead out of all

problems do notice that the find that out do we blame for christ is not something's that it is not something that employers problems it doesn't anchor asked about past christianity's bone the ages and in the past it doesnt make as indifferent to the future the editor of local canadian newspaper once asked me to write an article on the need to get in that to jesus i began the article by cleaning that way of stating the case christ is not on me a figure of antiquity he's not behind us he is far ahead of us in moral and spiritual stature and what details visit god and man and life and death an oath to do to ourselves and our families is as the pope although there says he is a

pioneer the paris attacks are vastly the air to shoot he the bubbles of the good some arts and the prodigal son the sectarian last year and essentially if at all that a valid prominently and yet i think it is extremely important to emphasize that he didn't come to lay down a cold that he didn't risk right in minute detail as the top hat don how we ought to act irrespective of changing social situations if jesus had no legislative the legislation wouldn't be a long long ago the program claims to be fine in that sense and it is a moral and

social anachronism on the other hand the new testament presents as not with the flow but without living person it confronts us with one who is the way that the truth the light it challenges us want to have the mining devastate of the price all of our behavior by reference to a compendium of moral mexicans to be applied to every conceivable calm tensions in the teaching of jesus lives on because he lives and that he's not an ancient say he is the eternal temporary of every century and then the lead role given the mock truth the modern life we hear releases in this new

creative impulses he evolves from us new possibilities of fact that anne and many of us all through this congregation a lot of personal experience and state the last salmon man i think all of the nothing is so impossible as that vote today as they did i feel no limit italy now or never grow its toll from the last century is old last year is an obsolete faster now i'm not also think i have never come up with the modern as i gather

there's a christmas approaches this is a faith we share it it is set for a good new lows that we celebrate it in and it's far off him but don't you think we should do more than sing about it and listen to others singing about we should share it well how much do you go for the spread of the gospel of christ in asia and africa in areas where this good news has not been happy we have to do something that maybe fat and supporting the propagation of the gospel of

christ we should talk about this isn't something to be kept yourself talk about christ this christmas in your whole husbands and wives parents and children talk about well you know business associates and friends people are very happy to have to know how to make up their minds about light and the hope that proposition of this sermon is that if people ought to make up their minds about life they must make up their minds about jesus christ and if we are christians we are in the world to

bear witness that he is the light of the world and that those who follow him do not walk in the documents that have the light of life let us pray in our hearts grant us so to know the that we may love the sort of lovely that we may grow more likely so that others may know the adam avery their leader then or their savior ms

bee oh