Who Told You About Jesus?

Think about something someone said to you that changed how you live.

Not advice you googled. Not a concept you figured out through trial and error. A specific thing a specific person said out loud to you that you still carry around.

Maybe it was a parent who told you a hard truth. A friend who said the thing you didn’t want to hear. A complete stranger who somehow said exactly the right thing at the worst possible moment.

Those words have a longer half-life than most of us realize. They’re still shaping how we think and what we do years later.

That’s the setup for what we talked about this past Sunday.

Job’s Question and God’s Non-Answer

Job goes through the worst stretch any human being can go through. Loses family. Loses everything. And he does what every honest person does. He takes it directly to God.

God, where are you? Why is this happening? Show up. Do something.

And God’s response is interesting. He doesn’t explain himself. He doesn’t give Job a rundown of what’s happening behind the scenes. He asks Job three questions instead.

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Have you commanded the morning since your days began?

Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?

It’s not snarky. It’s a reorientation. God is saying: you’re asking me to explain myself to someone who wasn’t there when I started everything, can’t make the sun come up, and has never seen the full scope of what I’m governing. You’re smaller than you think. And that’s okay. But it matters for how you ask the question.

That doesn’t mean the pain isn’t real. Job’s pain was completely real. God doesn’t dismiss it. But the answer to ‘God where are you?’ isn’t always an explanation. Sometimes it’s a bigger view of who God is.

Jesus Was Wrecked and Went Anyway

In John 12, something happens that we don’t talk about enough. Jesus says: now my soul is troubled.

We’re used to seeing Jesus calm in the storm. Calm at the tomb. Calm in front of Pilate. But right here, six days before the cross, he says he’s wrecked. Disturbed. His stomach is in knots.

He doesn’t have to perform strength he doesn’t feel. He’s genuinely troubled. And then he goes to the cross anyway.

And he tells his followers why. Three reasons the cross exists in a series of rapid-fire one liners:

First: judgment. Not judgment as condemnation hanging over everyone indefinitely. No this is judgment as verdict and turning point. The cross is where the guilty verdict gets declared AND the sentence gets paid in full simultaneously. It’s where sin gets what it deserves and grace shows up in the same moment.

Second: the enemy gets dealt with. On the cross, the ruler of this world, the source of the actual evil in the world, not just human bad behavior but something deeper and older, gets cast out. Good Friday is the day the enemy loses, not Easter. Easter is the announcement. Good Friday is when it happened.

Third: the magnet. When I’m lifted up, I will draw all people to myself. Picture a cowboy with a lasso. He swings it, it catches, and suddenly you’re connected to something you can’t just walk away from. That’s the cross. It doesn’t just make salvation available. It draws. It pulls. It’s active.

Jesus was troubled. He went anyway. And the cross became the thing that catches people who can’t outrun the grace of God.

The Chain and the Beautiful Feet

Paul lays out a chain in Romans 10 that I want you to read backwards because it makes more sense that way. Someone gets sent. That person speaks. Someone hears. That person believes. That person calls on the name of the Lord. That person is saved.

Read it forward and it sounds like theology. Read it backward and it becomes personal.

You are saved because someone called on the name of the Lord because they believed because they heard because someone spoke because someone was sent.

There is a specific person somewhere in your story who opened their mouth and said the words. Not someone who just lived a good life around you, someone who actually said it. Words. Out loud.

Faith comes by hearing. Not by osmosis. Not by proximity to nice Christian people. By hearing. Someone has to say the words.

Paul calls those people beautiful. Beautiful feet. The people who carry the gospel with their mouths. Which is funny because feet are not beautiful, at least not to me. They’re the part of the body we hide in shoes. But God can make a stanky, gross foot beautiful if it’s carrying the gospel somewhere.

The One Specific Person

Here’s where this gets practical and maybe a little uncomfortable. This is not a general call to share your faith with people in general. That person doesn’t exist. The generic neighbor, the abstract coworker, the category called ‘my community.’ You can’t love a category.

Who’s the specific person? The one with a name. A face. Someone you can picture right now when you close your eyes. The neighbor two houses down whose name you know. The coworker you see every day in the break room. The friend you’ve been doing life next to for years who doesn’t know Jesus.

Who is the person God is sending you to right now? Not the category. The person. Say the name.

You don’t have to have a perfect speech prepared. You don’t have to know all the answers to all their questions. You just have to be willing to open your mouth and say something. The Spirit does the work after that.

Faith comes by hearing. And they can’t hear if nobody says anything.

Whose name is it?