Yesterday on Things Unseen we started talking about knowing Christ and I was saying at

the end that our access to that knowledge is really through the pages of the New Testament.

Well we can't handle the whole New Testament in a week, we need a focus.

So here's a focus that our Lord Himself used to help His disciples.

Remember His questions at Caesarea Philippi?

Here's the way Luke puts it.

Who do the crowds say that I am?

And the disciples answered John or Elijah are one of the prophets and then Jesus asked

them a more direct question, but who do you say I am?

I think it's interesting isn't it that the crowds didn't say simply, well he's Jesus,

he's Jesus of Nazareth, that would have been true and they knew it.

But there was something about Jesus that made people look for a different category of answer.

It seems that everyone Jesus encountered during His public ministry felt that, His name

was Jesus, but there was something bigger about His identity.

His opponents wished He could have just been described as Jesus, Pontius Pilate probably

thought that, but remember He felt compelled to ask, tell me who you really are.

Everyone who met Him sensed they needed to reach beyond their ordinary ways of describing

someone if they were to discover who Jesus really was.

They were intrigued by Him.

He was like one of His own parables, there was a mystery about Him, a puzzle about Him

that many of them were trying to solve but couldn't.

But back to Jesus' question to the disciples, who do you say that I am?

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