Jesus continues to be the most engaging person who ever lived, not only a man of compelling words, and incredible miracles, but also a man who treated others around him as they had never been treated before.
Now, through the brush of award-winning artist, Murry Whiteman,
and the pen of authors, and collaborators on The Shack, Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings, experience the richness of the One who set the world on fi re.
In provocative paintings and insightful prose, these three unveil the life and teachings of Jesus to show how truly unique a person he was.
Discover afresh Jesus growing up and beginning to grasp his identity
as God’s Son, living loved through the temptations and turmoil he
faced, and finally offering his own life to rescue people he loved from
the darkness and fears that held them captive.
Let him become more to you than just the character in a book, a name used by those who fight over doctrine, or an empty religious icon. In him the God of the universe came and took up residence in his own creation.
The world has never been the same since.
Jesus continues to be the most
engaging person who ever lived,
not only a man of compelling
words, and incredible miracles,
but also a man who treated
others around him as they had
never been treated before.
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WEB STORE
Sample pages from book
Before the beginning they were always together celebrating life in a community of love and light far grander than anything
mere mortals could ever conceive. One day their joy erupted into the darkened void of chaos with a proclamation
of profound consequence,
“Let there be light!”
And there was!
Father, Son, and Spirit gave birth to a new reality, what we know as our universe. Father proclaimed and the Son brought his words to life—creating light, stars, planets, oceans, land, and animals. Everything that was created, the Son created. This was his world teeming with life and beauty and it reflected his magnificent glory. And as the crowning glory of creation, they made a man and a woman in their own image and gave them the earth to live in and care for. And God made himself known to them by coming each day and walking with them in the cool of the day.
For a time all was well and the earth was at peace. But it did not last.
One day a deceiver appeared in the garden and seduced the first two humans into thinking they knew better than the God who made them, and they chose a course that seemed more pleasing to them. Wanting to know good and evil outside of their relationship with God, they rejected his counsel and by doing so plunged themselves and their world into another chaos. Selfishness, shame, disease, and war began to rule the world, marring them and the creation.
Yet God continued to come to them, seeking to rescue what sin had destroyed. Darkened in their understanding, the people retreated in fear whenever God approached them and misunderstood his attempts to rescue them as the brutal punishment of an offended deity. They could no longer see who he was, nor how passionate he was to redeem them out of their brokenness and restore them to his glory. But he persisted, continuing to prepare his people for a day of greater revelation and the inauguration of a new creation.
In the fullness of time, God spoke again into the chaos of darkness. This, too, was a word of creation and light, but this time it was not in a voice, but a baby, the Word made flesh now inside the creation. God sought to prove he was not distant and uncaring, by becoming one of us, embracing all that it meant to be human. Here he lived, he loved, he taught, he healed. He came to set us free, to invite us into the life-giving relationship that he himself enjoys with the Father. He willingly gave up his life so that we and this world could be redeemed back to God.
He came as a Son that he might reveal to us the Father. His life–who he was, what he did, and how he related to others–exactly reflected God’s nature. If you want to know what God is like, we have only to look to him.
This is the story of that man, Jesus – a man like no other!
Genesis 1-3, John 1:1-12, Galatians 4:1-4, Hebrews 1-5:3, 2:14-18
Who Would Have Imagined?
God very God. The King of the Universe. The Creator of all. He who was before anything ever was. He could have come into this world in any manner he chose. He could have come in all his glory with guns blazing, demanding submission, demonstrating his power, and commanding our worship.
Instead he chose to come in the womb of a willing teenager. Though Mary was a descendant of the line of King David, Israel’s most celebrated king, she did not exactly come from one of the more noble branches of that family tree. She was a simple, young teenager, betrothed to a humble carpenter.
One day God sent the angel Gabriel to her. Even though she was still a virgin he told her she would become pregnant and give birth to a son. His name would be Jesus, and he would be called the Son of the Most High. He would be the promised Messiah.
“How can these things be?” Mary asked. The angel answered, “It will happen by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Mary knew what was at stake. This was an invitation to certain ostracism. Her reputation would be ruined. Would anyone believe her? The angel may have greeted her as the “Favored one,” but that was about to end in everyone else’s eyes. What would her parents think? What would Joseph, her fiancé, think?
Nevertheless, in spite of all her concerns and fears, she said, “Yes, I am your willing servant. Let it happen as you have said.”
Thus the God of the Universe entered into his creation as a single cell. He who is Life itself spent nine months growing in a womb. He was part of the struggle and pain of childbirth, a baby gasping for his first breath. A cry pierced the night, and “God” was comforted by the love of a young couple. Tiny, helpless, and utterly dependent, he was cared for by two first-time parents with little more to their name than what their donkey could carry. This was his grand entrance, a baby in a stable, in a small forgotten town on the backside of all that mattered.
If any of us were God, would we have done it that way? Wouldn’t it have been far more spectacular to rend the Heavens and come in full glory on top of theTemple Mount, perhaps with a legion of angels in our wake?
God chose something different. Even in the face of a world perishing in the corruption of sin God did not overwhelm the planet. While the salvation of the world hung in the balance, he was not in a hurry. Instead, he embraced all that is human with a steady, slow deliberation as if savoring each moment.
In doing so he celebrated the ordinary—the miraculous among the mundane. he would not skip ahead to the good stuff. This was the good stuff and he was not about to miss the joy of growing up in his own creation.
Matthew 1-2, Luke 1-2
What Others Could Not See
To most people it was just another baby like all the others born that year. But a few recognized that something greater
had come into the world.
On the night he was born an angel appeared to a band of shepherds, as they were tending their flocks. Shepherds in that day were not highly regarded, just the opposite. They were outcasts, ruffians, the unseemly ones. And yet, God chose them to be the first to hear the good news. Suddenly, the sky lit up with the light of God’s glory and the shepherds fell to the ground, terrified. The voice of an angel broke the silence, “Don’t be afraid. I’m here to bring you good news.
Today the Savior has been born for you in Bethlehem.”
Then out of nowhere, a multitude of the heavenly host appeared, shouting: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth among men—with whom he is pleased.” Did mankind have any idea that was what was motivating all this? It’s as if the angelic creation, hiding behind the curtain of reality, could not contain themselves. They could not remain silent—they had to tell somebody.
So the shepherds went and found Mary and Joseph and the baby exactly as the angel had said.
A star appeared in the East, signaling to the “magi” of that far off region that a great “king” had been born. So astonishing was the sign, that it beckoned them to come and worship. What did it all mean? How did they know? Why would they leave their own land and travel hundreds of miles in search of the newborn king?
Arriving in Jerusalem, they asked, “Where is he who is born king of the Jews?” The news troubled King Herod. What ‘king’? Consulting the chief priests and scribes, they discovered the prophecies revealed that Christ would be born in Bethlehem. The star went before them and guided the wise men to the very house of Mary and Joseph.
When they saw Jesus, who was but a child, they fell at his feet and worshipped, and gave him their treasure. Having been warned by God in a dream of Herod’s desire to kill the child, they did not return to Herod as he had asked, but departed for their own country by another way.
He Came As One of Us
As unimaginable as it might be to us that the Creator would enter his creation as a dependent, vulnerable infant,
what is perhaps even more astonishing is that he spent the next thirty years as a human, living among his people,
and no one had a clue who he was.
On a mission of redemption he was content to let the drama unfold quite naturally. For thirty years he did nothing anyone would regard as significant. He learned to walk. He learned to speak. He learned obedience and did his chores. He grew up. He was a child and became a young man. He loved. He laughed. He cried. He simply lived life as a human being, encountering all its foibles and frailties. Though God very God, never once did he act out of that nature. He came as one of us and lived fully human among us.
Since the Gospels mostly focus on Jesus in his thirties, we forget that ninety percent of his time here on earth he simply grew up as a carpenter’s son in relative obscurity. He spent the vast majority of his time on what was truly significant, something we often miss: the extraordinary gift of everyday life.
It says of the boy Jesus that “the child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom, and God’s grace was upon him.” The picture Scripture paints is not that Jesus knew he was God Almighty from infancy, enduring the delay of childhood and waiting for the day when he could give up the ruse of pretending to be human. Rather, he was a genuine child awakening to his true identity, discovering just as we do, his God-given purpose and destiny, and choosing to embrace it.
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