Sermon Tone Analysis

The “THIS IS” series

Vince Lombardi was an NFL coach and each year when he started training with his team he would start by explaining to professional seasoned players that “this is a football”.

He wanted his players grounded in the basics because he knew that the basics were essential to winning.

We want you to win in your spiritual life and so we are going to ingrain the most fundamental principles of our faith deeply into our hearts and minds.

It was July of 1961 and the 38 members of the Green Bay Packers football team were gathered together for the first day of training camp.

The previous season had ended with a heartbreaking defeat when the Packers squandered a lead late in the 4th quarter and lost the NFL Championship to the Philadelphia Eagles.

This is JESUS!

The Green Bay players had been thinking about this brutal loss for the entire off-season and now, finally, training camp had arrived and it was time to get to work.

The players were eager to advance their game to the next level and start working on the details that would help them win a championship.

Their coach, Vince Lombardi, had a different idea.

“This is a football.”

In his best-selling book, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life Of Vince Lombardi, author David Maraniss explains what happened when Lombardi walked into training camp in the summer of 1961.

He took nothing for granted.

He began a tradition of starting from scratch, assuming that the players were blank slates who carried over no knowledge from the year before… He began with the most elemental statement of all.

“Gentlemen,” he said, holding a pigskin in his right hand, “this is a football.”

Lombardi was coaching a group of three dozen professional athletes who, just months prior, had come within minutes of winning the biggest prize their sport could offer.

And yet, he started from the very beginning.

Lombardi's methodical coverage of the fundamentals continued throughout training camp.

Each player reviewed how to block and tackle.

They opened up the playbook and started from page one.

At some point, Max McGee, the Packers’ Pro Bowl wide receiver, joked, “Uh, Coach, could you slow down a little?

You're going too fast for us.”

Lombardi reportedly cracked a smile, but continued his obsession with the basics all the same.

His team would become the best in the league at the tasks everyone else took for granted.

Six months later, the Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants 37-0 to win the NFL Championship.

Over the next 4 weeks we are going to meet right here every week and talk about Jesus.

My hope is to help you increase your understanding of who Jesus is.

We will be looking at 4 very important facts about Jesus. 4 Rs.

“This is Jesus”

I want to start today by getting a better idea of your questions.

I want to know where you are in your journey with Christ so that I can do my very best of guiding all of us down this journey of learning together.

Commitments

Here is what I would like for each of you to commit to:

This is a safe place for even dumb questions.

I’ve asked dumb questions before and I will ask more in the future.

But we aren’t going to make anyone feel small or less than for asking one.

I will make a commitment to be here each week with exceptions only in great emergency.

I expect participation but I won’t put anyone on the spot.

I will give others opportunity to interject and participate.

Speak but strive to listen more than to speak.

Seek to understand and then to be understood.

Pray for one another.

Here is my commitment to you:

I will do my best to bring you useful information that meets you where you are in your journey.

I am committed to be here for you.

When I don’t know the answer I will do everything I can to look for it with you.

I will prayerfully and carefully guide you to additional resources that will help you continue on in your journey at your pace.

I will pray for each of you.

This is JESUS!

We will be looking at 4 very important facts about Jesus. 4 Rs.

We will be looking at 4 very important facts about Jesus. 4 Rs.

I want to start today by getting a better idea of your questions.

I want to know where you are in your journey with Christ so that I can do my very best of guiding all of us down this journey of learning together.

First I would like to get some ideas from you.

You have some blank cards on your table.

What would make this commitment worth the time you are investing?

What do you hope to learn about Jesus over the next 4 weeks?

So as I said before, over these next four weeks we are going to be looking at 4 important facts about Jesus. 4 R’s if you will.

Today I want us to dive right into the first of these 4 R’s.

Jesus Christ was REALLY a man

How do we know Jesus was really a man?

By his own claims

See also

In statements made by others

Statements found in scripture

27 And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”

mark

In Paul’s Letters

rom

Genealogies in scripture

1tim

Compare the genealogies in Mat.

1:1–17 and Luke 3:23–38, the former of which proves Jesus to be in the royal line, and the latter of which proves him to be in the natural line, of succession from David; the former tracing back his lineage to Abraham, and the latter to Adam.

Christ is therefore the son of David, and of the stock of Israel.

Compare also the phrase “Son of man,” e. g., in Mat.

20:28, which, however much it may mean in addition, certainly indicates the veritable humanity of Jesus.

Compare, finally, the term “flesh” (=human nature), applied to him in John 1:14—“And the Word became flesh,” and in 1 John 4:2—“every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.”

John 8:40—“ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth”; Acts.

2:22—“Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto you”; Rom.

5:15—“the one man, Jesus Christ”; 1 Cor.

15:21—“by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead”; 1 Tim.

2:5—“one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”

Compare the genealogies in Mat.

1:1–17 and Luke 3:23–38, the former of which proves Jesus to be in the royal line, and the latter of which proves him to be in the natural line, of succession from David; the former tracing back his lineage to Abraham, and the latter to Adam.

Christ is therefore the son of David, and of the stock of Israel.

Compare also the phrase “Son of man,” e. g., in Mat.

20:28, which, however much it may mean in addition, certainly indicates the veritable humanity of Jesus.

Compare, finally, the term “flesh” (=human nature), applied to him in John 1:14—“And the Word became flesh,” and in 1 John 4:2—“every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.”

Other passages

See also the Pharisees and teachers of the law; ;

If we want to go further we can look these up too ; ; ; some Jews; ; ; ;

Extra-biblical statements

Look up what is in logos or online.

Antiquities 20, 9, 1 by Josephus

In Books 18 and 20 of Antiquities of the Jews, written around AD 93 to 94, Jewish historian Josephus twice refers to the biblical Jesus.

The general scholarly view holds that the longer passage, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, most likely consists of an authentic nucleus that was subjected to later Christian interpolation or forgery.[39][40]

On the other hand, Louis H. Feldman states that "few have doubted the genuineness" of the reference found in Antiquities 20, 9, 1 to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James".[41][42][43][44]

The Roman historian Tacitus, in his Annals (written ca.

AD 115), book 15, chapter 44,[45] describes Nero's scapegoating of the Christians following the Fire of Rome.

He writes that founder of the sect was named Christus (the Christian title for Jesus); that he was executed under Pontius Pilate; and that the movement, initially checked, broke out again in Judea and even in Rome itself.[46]