Jesus of Nazareth — David Guzik

What I want to talk to you about regarding Jesus today is a title that's given to Jesus. You're aware of this, right? That the Bible in both the Old Testament and the New Testament is filled with wonderful, with deep, with important titles for Jesus, right?

I mean, if I were to ask you to raise your hand and call one out, you probably could. Somebody would probably say, well, Lion of the tribe of Judah, right? The Lamb of God, the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last.

The Unexpected Significance of Jesus of Nazareth

You could go down a list, make quite a list of all these wonderful titles for Jesus. Now, I want to talk to you this morning about a title for Jesus that you know. But if you're anything like me, you haven't really understood the title that well.

When I say this title for Jesus, you can say, oh yeah, sure, big deal. What's so big about that? And that's what I thought. But a couple months ago, I ran across this title and I started digging into it, and I was amazed to find how important this title is.

And then it took me a couple months of thinking about it to sort of kind of glean out the significance of this title. Now, you can tell I'm sort of avoiding telling you what the title is, right? It's a speaker's trick.

I'm trying to build up suspense, right? So that when I name it, there's going to be like a whoo, you know? But look, again, I think you're going to be unimpressed here. I'm going to say it and you're going to be like, so?

All right, so turn to Matthew chapter 2, all right? Matthew chapter 2. And here's the title that I want to talk to you about. It's the simple title, Jesus of Nazareth. Now, see, I told you it would be flat, right?

Nothing there. Just another... Right? Big deal. Well, stay with me with this. Now, I came across the depth of this title, Jesus of Nazareth, as I was teaching through the Gospel of Matthew towards the end part of chapter 2, where it talks about he shall be called a Nazarene.

And I'm going to get into those verses in just a minute, verses 22 and 23. But what I want you to notice now is I started digging into the title and said, okay, how is this title used in the New Testament?

I found that that title, Jesus of Nazareth, is used about 17 times in the New Testament. But then I saw the tremendous variety and significance of the use of that title. For example, it was a title that was on the lips of other people.

Do you remember the little servant girl who tried to associate Peter with Jesus, right? When Peter denied Jesus three times? This is what the servant girl said. She said, this fellow also was with Jesus of Nazareth.

A little servant girl. Not educated, not important background. But who does she know this man from Galilee by? By that title, Jesus of Nazareth. Then I saw another place, Mark chapter one. Jesus is confronting a demon-possessed man and the demon cries out out of the man and names Jesus.

How does he name him? You guessed it. Let us alone. What do we have to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? What kind of title could be on the lips of a little servant girl and a demon from hell? I'll go more.

When Jesus rose from the dead and the women came to the tomb on Sunday morning and discovered the empty tomb, the angel told the women, hey, he's not here. And what did she what did the angel say? You seek Jesus of Nazareth and he's not here.

He's risen. Angels, demon, servant girl. His disciples knew him by this name. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus, remember that when they walked with Jesus on the way and after his resurrection, they didn't know it was Jesus at first.

But this is what they said about Jesus. They said the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty indeed, and word before God and all the people. Another guy who just met Jesus. His name was Philip.

He just met Jesus. And then he ran off to tell his brother Nathaniel about Jesus. And when Philip introduced Jesus to Nathaniel, spoke about him. This is what he said. He said, I have found him of whom Moses in the law and also all the prophets wrote Jesus of Nazareth.

And then I saw this is in John, chapter 18. When the soldiers came on that night to arrest Jesus and take him off to be crucified. When they came to the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus, who do you think they asked for?

They said, we are looking for Jesus of Nazareth. And then I saw. Peter Day of Pentecost preaching to thousands for the first time, he's confronting the Jewish people with the gospel of Jesus Christ in such a public, amazing way.

The first time he mentions Jesus to that crowd, he says, Jesus of Nazareth. And then later, when Peter once again is preaching the gospel for the first time to the Gentiles, he preaches it to the household of Cornelius, and he's very careful to describe Jesus in that message as Jesus of Nazareth.

And then. The two ones that blew my mind the most. These two uses. When Jesus was crucified, Pilate, the Roman governor who sentenced him to death, commanded that his crime be written out above his head and nailed to the cross, as was the custom in that day.

And this is what Pilate commanded be written over the protests of the Jews. He commanded that this be written. It's written above his head, Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. And it was written in three languages.

That title was literally nailed to the cross. Then this to me is the most amazing one. Jesus ascends into heaven, right? Many years after his ascension, he's enthroned at the right hand of God, the father.

He's there in his glory in heaven. And then and then one day he interrupts eternity. To confront a man named Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. And when he confronts Saul of Tarsus, Saul falls down to the ground.

He cries out, Who are you, Lord? And this is what Jesus says. He says, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting. Now, are you going to feel for why this title interested me so much? Why I felt there's something here that I'm not getting.

What is it? I mean, this is what I saw. I saw that this was a title that was used by angels and it was used by demons. This was a title for Jesus that was heard in the temple courts and on the common streets.

It was a title for Jesus used by hostile Romans and by sympathetic gospel writers. It was a title for Jesus that was used by those who arrested him and by those who loved him. It was used by those who just started following him, and it was used by those who had followed him for years.

It was used by little servant girls, and it was used by dignified Roman governors. It was used by those who crucified him, and it was used by those who preached him as the savior of the world. This title was used to describe him to the Jews.

It was used to describe him to the Gentiles. This title was used to describe him in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. And most importantly, the risen, glorified, ascended, enthroned Jesus used it to describe himself.

Is it too much of a stretch for me to say that Jesus in heaven right now considers himself Jesus of Nazareth? Right? That's how he introduced himself to Saul of Tarsus. So two things I want to talk to you about.

Number one, how did Jesus ever become associated with such a title, right? What's the connection between Jesus and Nazareth? And then number two, what possible significance does it have? What does it mean?

Why is it so important? All right. First things first, how did Jesus become associated with Nazareth? Now, chronologically, the first mention of Nazareth in the Bible is found in Luke chapter 1, where it describes that the angel Gabriel came to Mary.

Remember that whole situation? Mary and Joseph were from Nazareth. Nazareth was where Mary and Joseph met. It's where they fell in love. It's where they became engaged to marriage, which actually in those days was something called betrothal.

It was more binding than an engagement in our day, right? It's a big thing to break an engagement in our day, right? Oh, you've sent out all the save a date cards. You can't break the engagement or whatever.

And those days with a betrothal, you needed a legal divorce to break a betrothal. So they've got this very binding engagement. They've fallen in love. They're going to be married. This all happened in Nazareth.

Then one day, what happens in Nazareth? The angel Gabriel appears to Mary and he says to Mary, God's favor is with you. You have been chosen to be the woman, the chosen woman across all ages to bear the Messiah.

He will be miraculously conceived in your womb without you ever knowing a man sexually. You are going to become pregnant by this miraculous conception that happens in your womb. And that's what happened.

It was in Nazareth that the Holy Spirit, again, we're just given this one word in the New Testament overshadowed Mary. We don't know what that means. He overshadowed Mary and as a virgin, she conceived Jesus in her womb.

And then it was in Nazareth where Joseph found out that his engaged wife, fiancee, I guess you would say, right, was pregnant. Joseph knew that he didn't do it. And Joseph felt, look, for propriety's sake, I got to divorce her.

I got to put her away. And then it was in Nazareth that the angel came to Joseph and said, don't you put her away because she has never known a man sexually that which is conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit.

Now, again, how would anybody know that? Right. How would Joseph know that? Unless the angel came to visit him, none of the people in her youth group believed it. Right. And it was in Nazareth that Joseph and Mary had the very quick, the very rushed wedding.

Right. Didn't wasn't supposed to happen that way. Right. It was, if you will, a shotgun wedding. Right. Whoa. All of a sudden, well, they got to get married. And it was in Nazareth where the whispering tongues talked all the time.

You know how these little towns are, right? I don't have to tell you about little town life, right? Everybody talks about everybody else's business. Right. And I also don't have to tell you how long the memory is in these little towns.

Right. For the rest of their lives, Joseph and Mary would be known as that couple where she got unexpectedly pregnant and they got quickly married. Right. Everybody would know it. The scandal would follow them for the rest of their lives.

That's our introduction to Nazareth. Now, a lot of stuff having to do with our salvation happened in Nazareth. Right. And for all of that, you might think Nazareth must be a very special place. And it was indeed special.

You want to know what was special about Nazareth? Its absolute unspecialness. I know that's not a word, but you know what I mean, right? It was completely unspecial. You see, it's in the general region of Galilee, the beautiful Sea of Galilee.

Have any of you seen the Sea of Galilee? Beautiful, right? It's 15 miles from the beautiful Sea of Galilee. It's six miles from the closest major road. It has no good water supply. It only has one fairly weak well in the center of the village.

It was an unwalled town. And you know what that means? Had no defense. In other words, nothing valuable could ever really be there. Because if it was, bandits would come and take it away. It's not mentioned once in the Old Testament.

It's not mentioned once in the Apocrypha that comes in between the Testament. And it's not even mentioned once by the Jewish historian Josephus. Never. There aren't even really any interesting archaeological finds in Nazareth.

About the only interesting archaeological thing that was found in Nazareth was a marble slab with writing on it that described very interesting events from ancient history that happened somewhere else.

They didn't happen in Nazareth. Again, this is what's remarkable about it. As I said before, the special thing about Nazareth was its unspecialness. It wasn't a bad place. It wasn't Sodom or Gomorrah or Babylon, right?

It's not a bad place. It's not a good place. It's no place. Uninteresting, unamazing, insignificant, and if anything, it was something of a joke. Now, every region has a place like that, right? I bet if I questioned you guys, I could figure out what it was.

Somebody suggested first service, and again, I'm an outsider, I have no knowledge of this. I'll just give you the name that somebody said first service. Somebody said Bulton first service. I don't know.

I'm completely neutral on this, but look, even those of you from Bulton, you've got a place that you make fun of the people from, right? Doesn't everybody have a place like that? Nazareth was that place.

Nazareth and the Messiah’s Obscure Origin

Listen, do you remember the reaction of Daniel when Philip came to him and said, hey, I found the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. What did Nathaniel say? He said, there's no way that guy can be the Messiah.

He comes from Nazareth, and can any good thing come from Nazareth? That place is such a joke, it's nowheresville, no way the Messiah would come from there. That's the idea. Yet Jesus identified himself with Nazareth.

Do you get the picture here? Okay, Mary, Joseph, Angel Gabriel, all that stuff happens in Nazareth. The wedding that happens in a hurry, right? All happens in Nazareth. Then what do they hear? They hear the news.

Caesar has decreed that the whole world should be taxed. Everybody has to go home to their ancestral hometown. So Joseph takes Mary, his young bride, who's still pregnant. And where do they go to? They go to Bethlehem, right?

They go to Bethlehem. Jesus is born. They stay there probably for a couple of years. The wise men come and visit. The wise men visit them. They warn them, hey, we've been warned by God in a dream that Herod is going to kill this little child.

You guys have to flee to Egypt. They go to Egypt. We don't know for how long, maybe a year. Finally, they hear from Egypt that Herod is dead, and they feel like they can go back to Israel, to Judea, because now Herod is dead.

And they start to go back, and they would go to Judea. Why not go back to Bethlehem, right? Why not go back to Jerusalem? If you were the father or the mother of the Messiah, wouldn't you raise that Messiah in Jerusalem?

Shouldn't he be close to the temple? Shouldn't he be close to those institutions of Judaism that are so important? But no, out of fear for the life of Jesus, because Herod's son was even more psychotic than Herod was, they take him, being divinely warned in a dream, to Galilee.

And out of all the villages they chose in Galilee, they chose Nazareth to live in. Part of that, to me, makes sense, right? That's where their family is. That's where their connections are. Part of it makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Because if you had a choice, would you move back to the city of whispering tongues? Would you move back to the place where your name and your family was associated with scandal? Would you want your little boy to grow up in the village where everybody who's passed him by would say, oh, he's illegitimate.

He was conceived before they were married. That's what they went back to, and they went back to that voluntarily. Now, Matthew tells us this very interesting... Look at here, verse 22. But when he... Now, the he there in verse 22 is Joseph, okay?

When he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside to the region of Galilee. And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene.

That's very interesting, right? Matthew says he moved to Nazareth. He grew up there, and this is in fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy that says he shall be called a Nazarene. Now, I have to say, honestly speaking, there's a little bit of a problem with that quotation that Matthew gives there.

Do you want to know what the quotation is? There is no Old Testament passage that says he shall be called a Nazarene. Look all you want through the Old Testament, you're not going to find it. There's something that comes close in Isaiah 11 where it talks about the Messiah being the branch, and the Hebrew word for branch is nazir, and they think maybe that's it.

But I want you to notice, Matthew is deliberately showing us his cards here. This is what I mean by this. He's trying to tell us, I'm not quoting the Old Testament like I normally do. Now this is evident both in the English translation, but also in the Greek original.

Let me just point it out to you. Look here, Matthew chapter 2, go back to verse 17. Then was fulfilled which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet saying, and then he quotes the passage. Now look at chapter 3, verse 3, for this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah saying, and then he lists the quotation.

Do you understand what he does here? He doesn't attribute this phrase, he shall be a Nazarene to any specific prophet. He doesn't say it's Isaiah. He doesn't say it's Jeremiah. He just says, if you notice that in verse 23 again, which was spoken by the prophets.

He means it in a very generic sense. And this is what he's saying. He's saying the generic prophetic expectation was that the Messiah would come from an obscure place. He would come from, if I could use it, nowheresville.

He would be a humble man coming from an obscure place. He would be the kind of guy who comes from Nazareth. That's the significance of it. And he was indeed. Jesus grew up in Nazareth. He matured into boyhood in Nazareth.

He grew up into adulthood in Nazareth. He fulfilled the responsibilities expected of a youngest son in Nazareth. At some time, we don't know when and we don't know exactly why, probably he died. Joseph disappears from the scene.

And then Jesus became the man of the family. He worked his trade. He supported his family. He loved his God. He proved himself to be utterly faithful in a thousand small things in Nazareth. That's where he ran his carpenter shop.

That's where he did his business all in Nazareth. Yet when you met him, when you saw his business card, so to speak, I, Jesus Carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth, do you realize you would never be intimidated to meet a guy from Nazareth?

Never. You would immediately think, when you met a guy from Nazareth, you'd think, I'm probably a little better than that guy. I come to a better place than he does. You see, there's a big difference.

What if I were to introduce myself to you as David Guzik from Oxford? You'd think, oh, he must be smart, right? He comes from Oxford. Or if I were to say, David from Las Vegas, well, you'd think, wow, he must be, you know, some kind of party from Las Vegas.

Don't you immediately have an association with the place? Well, listen, wouldn't it be more powerful if Jesus could say, Jesus from Bethlehem? Wouldn't that be true? Couldn't he? He could do that, right?

But he didn't. Jesus from Galilee, that's true. It's just the region instead of the place. But no, he deliberately chose to identify himself as Jesus of Nazareth. It stands, that title, he shall be called a Nazarene.

In the plan of God the Father, inspired by God the Spirit, embraced by God the Son, the Messiah grew up in a somewhat despised town. And indeed, not only would Jesus become known as Jesus of Nazareth, his followers, and I think I'm looking at a bunch of them right now, right?

His followers would be called Nazarenes. Now, can I point something out? To be called a Nazarene wasn't a compliment. It wasn't. It was a term of derision. It was a way of at least gently putting somebody down.

You're from nowheresville, or you follow the man from nowheresville. You must be nothing yourself. In Acts chapter 24, verse 5, the prosecutors of Paul said this to the judge. They said, we have found this man, Paul, to be a pestilent fellow, a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.

That's what they called Christians in the first century, Nazarenes. And he's been called that way today. Did you know that it comes to the present day? Did you know that it stands this way today, that today Nazareth is still a somewhat despised city?

Many of you have probably taken tours to Israel. I bet more than a few. Most tours through Israel don't go to Nazareth. Or if they do, they just drive the bus through town. It's still a somewhat despised place.

Today, in modern Hebrew, Jesus is sometimes called Ha-Notzri, which means the Nazarite. They call him the Nazarite today. Today, in modern Hebrew, the common word for Christians is Notzrim, Nazarenes.

And today, in modern Hebrew, Christianity is usually called Notzriut, Nazarite-ism. Today, we're still associated with this despised title. So what does it mean? What's the significance of this? Well, look, I mean, I thought about this for a couple of months.

I turned it over and over again in my head. What does it mean? And I came up with several ideas. I saved what I thought was the most powerful ones for last. So let me move through. I think I got six or seven of these.

We'll just move through them quickly until we get to the last couple ones. Number one, this shows us that what is important to man is often not important to God. If I would have planned the coming of the Messiah, I would have never had him come from Nazareth.

I would have had him come from a place either more dramatically glorious, like Jerusalem, or a place more dramatically wicked, like Babylon, right? Because man, those places are powerful. They say something about a man.

What does Nazareth say about somebody? Loser, that's about all it says. You're nobody. I wouldn't have picked Nazareth, but God did. I would have chosen a place that said something instead of nothing.

But again, what's important to man, what's important to us, is often not so important to God. Secondly, we, or maybe I'll just say myself, but I guess I can include we, we are more concerned with popularity than Jesus was.

Introducing yourself as Jesus of Nazareth is not the way to become popular. It was somewhat of a stain on his reputation if being popular was his great concern. But being popular wasn't his great concern, and so he didn't regard it as a stain.

Jesus Identifies with the Weak and Unpopular

Number three, Jesus is not easily embarrassed. I confess, I give a good part of my mental energy and sometimes my physical energy simply to avoiding embarrassment. It's a fairly high priority in my life, right?

Doesn't seem to be much of a high priority to Jesus. Look, it's just you and me and everybody else all around us. So I'll tell you this, I grew up in a despised place. You want to know where I grew up?

From about the time I was two to about the time I was 15, I grew up in Rialto, California. Now I don't know if anybody here knows Rialto. It's pretty much the armpit of Southern California. It's not a pleasant place.

Smoggy, dirty, now it's gang and crime infested. Wasn't so much that when I was a kid, but man, it was just a smoggy, dirty place. Then when I was 15, my family moved to Ventura. Now that's nice, right?

Especially compared to Rialto. So for about the first 15 years of my life, I lived in Ventura. And then for about the next 15 years of my life, excuse me, first 15 years of my life, I lived in Rialto.

Second 15 years of my life, I lived in Ventura. Where do you think I say I'm from, right? Where do I think of myself as being from? I don't think of myself as being from Rialto. No way, man. I mean, it's not like it's a secret.

I'll tell people if it's in conversation or something. But I don't even think of myself as being from Rialto. It's kind of like I got a choice between what I would call my hometown, right? I don't pick Nazareth.

I pick a better place, but not Jesus. Jesus says, I am happy to be Jesus of Nazareth. Number four, this shows us that God brings many great things from unexpected places. And he likes doing this. Again, let me stress to you, nobody expected a Messiah from Nazareth.

Nobody. Not in the Old Testament, not in the Apocrypha, not even in Josephus. Nobody was looking from Nazareth. Number five, and this is just a brief point, we could say that running away rarely gives God glory.

Joseph and Mary could have run away, right, from the whispering tongues, from the scandalous reputation. They didn't. Running away rarely gives God glory. And now, for my last two, these are the ones I think are more weighty, so I save them for last.

Number six, Jesus is happy to identify himself with the weak, the despised, the unimportant, and the obscure. Now, look, I bet one of those four applies to everybody here. I'll say it again. Jesus is happy to identify himself with the weak, with the despised, with the unimportant, and with the obscure.

I bet one of those four fits you. And maybe there's some lucky people, all four of them fit you here today. Now, listen, wouldn't you say that that was true of Nazareth, every one of those four things?

Yet Jesus gladly identified himself with Nazareth. Wouldn't you think that once he ascended up into heaven, he could stop identifying himself with Nazareth? No! He still identifies himself with the weak, the despised, the unimportant, and the obscure.

And that makes me very happy because that's me. I want him to identify himself with me. And that Jesus would put his arm around Nazareth tells me he'll put his arm around me. But it also tells me this.

I should put my arm around other people who are weak, and despised, and unimportant, and obscure. That should be my heart, my heart of Jesus towards other people. You know what this tells us? It tells us that we can be who we really are.

I believe that today, more than ever, if somebody doesn't like their normal life, if they don't like who they are, if they want to be somebody else, then they'll just live a lie or they'll live a fantasy.

They'll go on the computer, right? And they'll live out their life through some blogger anonymous name where they can be a lion behind the keyboard, right? But in real life, they're a little tiny mouse.

Or they'll play some role-playing game where they can be this or that, some simulated life. People love to do that, right? Because they don't like their real life. They don't like who they really are.

They'll go on the dating site, right? And they love the dating, matchmaking site because they can shape their own profile to be a better person than they are in real life, right? That profile picture that they put up there on the dating site, you know they stretched it out with Photoshop, right?

Knocked off 10 or 15 pounds, right? That's what we do! You know, someone very close to me, my daughter as a matter of fact, she just had this friendship with a girl and she found out this deep friendship that she had with a girl and she found out that the girl was a compulsive liar.

Lied about everything in her life. Lied about her family, lied about her education, lied about her job, lied about her future, lied about her past. And on the one hand, you're angry. On the other hand, you just think, poor girl!

So unhappy with who she really is that she feels she has to be somebody else. Now let me say, on some level, we do the same thing right here in church, don't we? You walk into church and you say, man, I cannot be who I really am here.

I better put on the mask. The good Christian mask. This is what I'm afraid of. I think if you come to church and just put on the mask and be the phony, that the real you never hears and responds to the gospel.

It's the real you that needs to be saved. It's the real you that needs to get right with God. And Jesus of Nazareth tells us that can happen. Jesus of Nazareth tells us you can be who you really are and Jesus will accept that.

He'll wrap your arms around. Now I'm not trying to say that who you are is really sweetness and light and beauty and all that. No, no, no, no. The real you has to repent like crazy and get right with God.

But listen, it's got to be the real you doing it, right? Look, being the part-time Christian with the phony thing, the problem with that is that the real you may never get saved. The real you is certainly never going to have joy.

You need to be set free from that. You can have the real you come to the real Jesus because Jesus of Nazareth means that Jesus was who he really was. He could have said Jesus of Bethlehem, but he didn't.

He could have said Jesus of Galilee. Look, I'm from Nazareth. That's who I am. That's where I grew up. This is the real me. And because Jesus was who he was, we can be who we are. It's okay. But you need to come and be real about yourself first.

And then the real you has to repent and believe and get right with God. Finally, number seven. Jesus of Nazareth tells us that it's okay not to be cool. Because listen, if there's anything that would just strip away all the coolness from your life, it would be introducing yourself as Jesus of Nazareth, right?

Nothing cool came from Nazareth. No trends ever started there. No, you know, beautiful things. No, it was an uncool place. And Jesus of Nazareth shows us that Jesus loves and died for and saves and blesses the cool people as well as the uncool people.

Christianity Is Not a Popularity Contest

You see, many people think that the best way to present Christianity is to show how really cool it is to be a Christian. And then, if you become a Christian, Jesus will make you really cool. Right? I saw this on a website.

Again, I don't mean to mark this conference, but I saw a conference that was held on the West Coast. This Christian, just a general one. It wasn't a denominational conference. This was a general Christian conference.

They were promoting it on their website. I looked at it, and man, those guys were so cool. You know, their hair, the music, the layout of the website, the links, the design. Man, they were so... Forget live blogging the conference.

They were doing a constant Twitter feed from the conference. Unbelievably cool. And I tell you, my first reaction to that was, I don't know if I'd fit in there. Really? I look at all these uber cool things, and I think, man, that's not me, because I'm not cool.

If you doubt that, just ask my kids. They'll tell you that. You see, I often feel awkward. I often feel out of place. I'm not the right look. I don't have enough of the right hair anymore. I'm definitely not in the right shape to be really cool.

I certainly don't have the right kind of fashion sense. And sometimes I see these uber cool Christian guys, and I don't despise them. I go, man, that's great. God bless them. That's great for them. What about me?

I've been walking with Jesus for a long time, and if being a Christian is supposed to make you cool, it's not working for me. And then I realized this. It's Jesus of Nazareth. You see, in some way, I don't mean categorically, but in some way, He wasn't cool.

He deliberately chose not to be cool. He loves me. He died for me. He saves me. He's my Lord. Now look, if you are cool, He loves you too. Just make sure that being cool isn't your idol. And please, make sure that you bring the real you to the real Jesus.

Jesus of Nazareth.