A Japanese soldier named Shoichi Yokoi was stationed on Guam in WWII. When the Americans began to get the upper hand in the war in 1944, Shoichi fled to an isolated jungle cave to avoid being captured. He stayed in the cave during the day and came out during the night to gather food. His diet consisted of frogs, rats, snails, nuts and mangoes. He avoided all contact with anyone and lived alone in that dark cave for 26 years. Finally, two hunters found Shoichi in 1972 and brought him out to civilization. He found out that the war was over and his life was not in danger. He was finally free, after 25 years of unnecessary self-imposed captivity in a cave.

Many people today live like Shoichi in a spiritual sense. They live in captivity to fears, worries, habits and sins, living as if imprisoned in a cave, not able to enjoy life, separated from a life with God and the people of God. In fact, everyone has at one time lived in captivity to sin. Because everyone of us has done wrong things, which the Bible calls sin. NLT Romans 3:23 For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

God’s glorious standard of living was shown to us in the life of Jesus Christ. None of us measures up to Jesus who lived a sinless life, we fall short. Children don’t have to learn how to sin, it comes naturally to them. It’s been programmed into their lives since the time of Adam’s fall. NLT John 8:34 Jesus replied, “I assure you that everyone who sins is a slave of sin.” Everyone who sins, which includes everyone, is imprisoned by sin. They are in captivity, living as it were in a cave, venturing out in spiritual darkness, stumbling around in the night, not able to see where they are going.

This is the problem of sin, a problem that every person who has ever lived must deal with. The sin problem is not just in this life, but it extends into eternity. Death doesn’t solve anything for the sinner, death is merely the doorway from the frying pan into the fire. NLT Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death. That means that sin will result in spiritual death, eternal separation from God in a place called hell in the life to come.

Sin is a huge problem. Sin is the biggest problem any of us will ever face. It’s such an enormous problem that we can’t get around it. No matter what we do, no matter what we try on our own, we can’t overcome it.

But God did something about our sin problem. God did something in history that defeated an enemy named Satan who used your sin against you as his weapon. The battle was won some 2000 years ago. Yet people still live in caves of sin, locked up in habits of depravity, injuring themselves and others, miserable and unfulfilled. God won the battle through the person of Jesus Christ, the most courageous human being who ever walked this planet.

Jesus came to this earth with a mission, a mission to set the captives of sin free. He lived a sinless life on earth, and then at the young age of 33, He willingly allowed Himself to be crucified on a cross to set us free. Jesus’ death was not an accident, it was not something that was out of God’s control. No, Jesus choose to die, because He loved you and me, He wanted to set us free. NLT John 10:18 No one can take my life from me. I lay down my life voluntarily.

Why did Jesus give up His life? What difference does Jesus’ death make for us today? How does Jesus’ death deal with our sin problem?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 20, 2005 message entitled Why Jesus’ Death Matters

Some 2000 years after He died, Jesus is still a very newsworthy person. Google news on the internet has over 12000 links to Jesus as a keyword in the last 30 days. Mel Gibson just released a new version of his movie called “The Passion: Recut” this past Friday, praised by some, condemned by others. Jesus is controversial, different people have diametrically opposed views on him. Who was this Jesus? How should we think about Him? How can we sort out the conflicting opinions that people have of Him?

Many people think that Jesus was a good teacher, but he never claimed to be God. They think that he is just one of many religious leaders that point us toward the truth about God. Where does that kind of thinking come from? Well, it comes from thinking without accurately considering the evidence.

The classic example of this in the last few years is illustrated by the Jesus Seminar. The Jesus Seminar is a small group of biblical scholars who joined together to discover who the historical Jesus really was and what the historical Jesus actually said. The scholars got together and went through the historical accounts of Jesus, the four Gospels plus the gospel of Thomas, and voted on whether the things that Jesus said were actually spoken by Jesus. At the conclusion of the voting, only 20% of Jesus’ sayings remained. What was the scholar’s criterion for voting? Simply their opinions, what they thought Jesus would say.

Just this month, March 2-5, the Jesus Seminar held their yearly conference in Santa Rosa, CA. The keynote speaker was the Rev. Jerry Stinson. Here’s a quote from Rev. Stinson:

“I think that the life of the historical Jesus, in which Jesus is a very human figure, points us in the direction of God. I don’t think Jesus was God, but I think that when we look at the life of the historical Jesus we can get some incredible insights into the nature of the divine … I think Jesus is one of a number of lights that illuminate the divine for us.”

What stands out for me in that quote is that Rev. Stinson uses the phrase “I think” four times in the space of a couple of sentences. Truth is not the matter of opinion, truth is what is real, truth is determined by evidence. Our understanding of who Jesus was and what He said is not a matter of opinion, we can know what Jesus said by reading the historical documents that record what He said. Those documents are the four Gospels, reliably translated in your Bibles.

In my message “Why Jesus’ Words Matter,” we’ll answer the questions: Why do the words that Jesus spoke thousands of years ago matter? How are they relevant to our lives? What can we learn from them? Did Jesus claim to be God or not?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 13, 2005 message entitled Why Jesus’ Words Matter

What was your most boring subject in high school? Well, mine was history, with apologies to any history teachers who might be reading this. History just seemed like an endless list of dates and names of people who were long gone. In high school, I just didn’t see the point of it all. It seemed irrelevant to my life. How could people who had died thousands of years ago affect my life today? It didn’t seem possible, it didn’t seem worth my time.

Many people today feel the same way about Jesus, a historical person who lived on the other side of the world some 2000 years ago and died at the early age of 33. That’s ancient history. The college textbook “Western Civilization” has this to say about Jesus:

“Jesus’ message was basically simple. He reassured his fellow Jews that he did not plan to undermine their traditional religion. … Jesus found himself denounced on many sides and … Pilate ordered his crucifixion. … A few loyal followers of Jesus spread the story that Jesus had overcome death and had been resurrected. He was then … hailed as the savior-God.”

If you’re a college student studying history, you wouldn’t think too much of Jesus would you? Just a Jew who had a few new ideas, didn’t amount to much or gain much of a following until some deluded followers became convinced he rose from the dead. The problem is, the things you’re learning about Jesus in school, whether high school or college are simply not true. There is more wrong in the quotes I’ve read you from that respected college text than is right. But with education like this, it’s not surprising that many people think that Jesus doesn’t matter to them, to their lives or to their families.

If you’d like to further your education about the most important person who ever lived in the history of this planet, listen up to my message series entitled “Why Jesus Matters.” In it, we’re going to be looking at why someone who lived and died 2000 years ago matters today, in 2005, for you and your family. Why should Jesus affect our lives? What is the big deal about Jesus? Isn’t He just like countless other religious leaders who have come and gone? Can Jesus really make a difference in your life, everyday, every hour, every minute? This series will help you deal with some of your own questions about Jesus, as well as prepare you to talk to others about why Jesus matters.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 6, 2005 message entitled Why Jesus’ Life Matters