Who Is Jesus? Part 2 — The Redeemer Who Wore the Crown of Thorns

Who is Jesus? In this message, Dr. William P. Hohman answers with one word: Redeemer. Jesus is the Creator who handcrafted mankind, and when sin trapped people in what the pastor calls an earth curse system, He left the riches of heaven, wore a crown of thorns and took the whole curse on Himself so that we could live from the kingdom of heaven. This is the second message in the series and continues from Who Is Jesus? The Creator and Redeemer Who Bent Down for Us.

Below you will find the full video, a structured summary of the sermon, the Scripture behind each point (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps for receiving Jesus as your Redeemer this week.

Sermon at a Glance

This service from NTC Ministries in Merrill, Wisconsin, was posted on November 10, 2020. It opens with worship and an offering reading from 2 Corinthians 9:7–8: give as you purpose in your heart, with confidence that God will supply every need (Philippians 4:19). Where believers dwell in unity, the Lord commands the blessing (Psalm 133:1–3).

Before the message, the church honors its pastors from 1 Timothy 5:17, thanking them for late nights of study, hospital visits and prayer. Pastor Hohman then returns to the series he began a couple of weeks earlier and spends the rest of the service on one name for Jesus: Redeemer.

Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus: A Hint for Bible Readers

Pastor Hohman reminds the church that the series follows his teaching on the anointing. Christ is not the last name of Jesus; Jesus Christ means Jesus the Anointed One. He then gives a hint for reading the New Testament. Sometimes it says Jesus Christ and sometimes Christ Jesus, and the order matters because Jesus is the mediator between God and man.

As he teaches it, Jesus Christ points from us to God: how am I applying my life, how am I to serve, worship and honor Him? Christ Jesus points from God to us: what is God doing for me, and what is His relationship with me? He urges everyone to read the Bible every day, because the Word is a seed. Put the seed in and something good comes up. Leave it out, and weeds, thorns and thistles grow instead.

He frames the whole message with a hard truth. You may be a very nice person, but your life does not reach its full worth until Jesus Christ finds you and brings out a potential nobody else could see. To believe what He will do through you, he recommends starting with the achievement, the history and the greatness of the Lord Jesus.

Who Is Jesus? The Creator Who Handcrafted You

To answer who is Jesus, the pastor goes back to the beginning. John 1:1–3 says the Word was with God and was God, and all things were made through Him. Read beside Genesis 1:1, he says, this shows that Jesus is the Creator of all that exists. He spoke the hippos, the eagles, the sun, the moon and the stars into being.

Mankind was different. God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26), but He did more than speak. He formed man from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7). Everything else was good; the handcrafted man was very good. Pastor Hohman adds that God then built the woman from Adam’s rib, which is why he who finds a wife finds a good thing (Proverbs 18:22).

From Hebrews 1:1–3, he describes the Godhead at work. The Father is the architect who planned everything. Jesus, the son of a carpenter, is the general contractor who made everything out of nothing. The Holy Spirit breathes life into everything Jesus touches. The Son upholds all things by the word of His power, and that is why His words are spirit and life (John 6:63).

Hebrews 1:10 says the heavens are the work of His hands, and Psalm 147:4 says He counts the stars and calls them all by name. With trillions of stars in our galaxy alone, Pastor Hohman says, Jesus still knows each one personally, the way you know something you built with your own hands. If He values stars that way, how much more the people He shaped from the dust?

Life Under an Earth Curse System

That masterpiece was marred when Adam and Eve let sin, corruption and darkness into their hearts. The result, Pastor Hohman teaches, is an earth curse system. Everything in it starts out good and ends in corruption. People enter a profession wanting to help others, then see dollar signs and start cutting corners. The same pull distorts politics and every human system.

No child dreams of growing up to be a hobo stealing a pie off a windowsill. Children say they will be a pilot, an engineer, a firefighter or a physician. Yet only a small percentage reach even part of what they believed for, and many who do are destroyed by the corruption involved in getting there. None of us asked to come here, he says. God chose the exact place and time we would live, and He had a purpose for it.

That purpose was never problem after problem or a dead-end street in a dark alley. It is the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy; Jesus came so that we may have life more abundantly (John 10:10). Much of our deterioration comes from focusing in the wrong place. Jesus says come to Him and He will give rest (Matthew 11:28), and when trouble fills the world, we are told to look up, because our redemption draws near (Luke 21:28).

He illustrates the loss with a priceless vase. Imagine you made the most valuable vase in the world, and someone took it legally and used it as a garbage can. Your heart would sink: you did not make it for that. Now imagine a kidnapped child who is abused and misused. You might give everything to buy that child back, even your life, yet you could not fully heal the wounds and scars. But God, he says, could.

What the Redeemer Left Behind

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16). The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Pastor Hohman asks the church to imagine what Jesus left to enter this earthly, cursed time capsule. He created time but had never lived in it. He had seen Adam’s sorrow, but had never tasted the corruption Himself.

Adam had handed everything over, which is why Satan could offer Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if He would bow down and worship him. Jesus answered that it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve (Matthew 4:8–10). The pastor hears Him saying He would get it all back, but never in a corrupt way. “I’m here to save, I’m here to redeem, and that’s who He is.”

He explains that redeem in Hebrew means to buy back, or to marry. When a woman lost her husband, the next male of kin could marry her so she had a home, security and safety instead of starving. That is the Redeemer’s role. As 2 Corinthians 8:9 says, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.

Pastor Hohman stresses that Jesus never once used His supernatural power for His own convenience or comfort. He walked many miles in extreme heat and had nowhere to lay His head (Luke 9:58). He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). Even His brothers did not believe in Him.

He was the only one ever forsaken by both man and God, crying, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). He gave His back to those who struck Him and did not hide His face from shame and spitting (Isaiah 50:6). Because He went through all of it, the pastor says, He is a faithful High Priest who understands whatever you face, with compassion instead of condemnation.

The Crown of Thorns and the Curse It Carried

Then Pastor Hohman reaches his main point. In Matthew 27:29, the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns, put it on His head, put a reed in His hand and mocked Him as King of the Jews. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. Those thorns, he says, were two to three inches long and were driven in, not placed gently.

Why thorns? In Genesis 3:17–18, God told Adam that the ground was cursed for his sake and would bring forth thorns and thistles. The pastor teaches that God was not cursing man; He was holding up the seed packet and showing what that choice would produce. Every one of us knows the thorns and thistles of life: the sucker punch out of nowhere, the opposition that slows us down, the struggle to get anywhere.

Most people spend their lives learning to work the system to get more. Jesus asked what it profits a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul (Mark 8:36). When Pilate brought Jesus out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, he said, “Behold the Man!” (John 19:5). They saw a nobody. They were looking at their Redeemer.

Pastor Hohman lists what they dismissed: only the Creator of all that exists, only the One who knows every star by name, only the One who handcrafted us and wrote our days before anything was made. He did not just leave heaven’s riches; He took every speck of the curse on His own life. Galatians 3:13–14 says, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us,” so that the blessing of Abraham might come on us.

Colossians 1:13–14 adds that He delivered us from the power of darkness into the kingdom of His Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood. Yet without that knowledge, the pastor warns, people still pour more effort into working the earth curse system than into letting Jesus accomplish what was written about their lives. Psalm 103 shows the exchange: Jesus was crowned with thorns so that He could crown us with lovingkindness and tender mercies (Psalm 103:1–4).

Two Adams and Two Seas: Living From Another Kingdom

Receiving the Redeemer starts with yielding: I give up, I will trust You and not lean on my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5–6). James asks why there are wars and fights among us, and answers that we desire and cannot obtain (James 4:1–2). Pastor Hohman calls this a pecking order mentality: get to someone bigger, get the edge. The redeemed do not have to grovel. Having done all, they stand (Ephesians 6:13).

The woman at Jacob’s well came at noon to avoid her neighbors’ criticism. Jesus told her everything about her life, never condemned her, and offered living water so she would never thirst again (John 4:10–14). She ran to tell the town. When the Redeemer becomes real, the pastor says, you cannot stay silent, and even in hard times you can praise Him, knowing His plans are for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11).

From 1 Corinthians 15:45–49, he contrasts the first and last Adam, and then the two seas of the Holy Land. The table below follows his comparison.

Because the redeemed are confident in their redemption, they can give. It is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), and God gives back good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over (Luke 6:38). Success gained by working the world’s system carries a huge price tag, he warns, naming famous Hollywood lives as examples. Jesus is the only way out; He is the door (John 10:9).

He did not only come to get us to heaven; He came to bring heaven to us. Pastor Hohman reads Psalm 139:16, that every day of our lives was written in God’s book before one of them came to be. He then recalls a Bible college mission trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Police warned the team not to go under the piers where addicts and abandoned people lived. They went anyway, preached the Redeemer, and saw dozens born again and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Receiving Jesus as Redeemer This Week

Pastor Hohman closes with a prophetic word he wrote down: what you see now is not what will be forever, so set your heart on God’s faithfulness. He then invites everyone to stop holding Jesus at arm’s length. Here are practical steps drawn from this who is Jesus message:

• Read your Bible every day. The Word is a seed of creating substance; without it, thorns and thistles grow.
• Notice Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus. Ask what you are doing for God, and what God is doing for you.
• Stop working the system. Trade the pecking order for trust, and let Him open doors and grant favor.
• Be a Sea of Galilee. Give freely, because the redeemed do not need to hoard.
• Look at the crown of thorns. When disappointment comes, remember He paid an immeasurable cost for you, and rise and try again.
• Receive Him personally. Pray, as the pastor led: Jesus, You are my Redeemer, and I receive Your redemption plan for my life.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:01 Worship and the offering
• 5:32 Give as you purpose in your heart
• 29:08 Honoring the pastors: 1 Timothy 5:17
• 36:17 Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus
• 40:40 John 1: Jesus the Creator
• 42:52 Hebrews 1: the general contractor
• 46:30 Sin and the earth curse system
• 49:49 God chose your place and time
• 51:51 The priceless vase and the stolen child
• 54:27 What Jesus left to come here
• 55:39 Redeem means to buy back
• 58:31 He never used His power for His comfort
• 1:01:25 Isaiah 50 and the crown of thorns
• 1:04:12 Thorns and thistles: Genesis 3
• 1:06:21 Behold the Man
• 1:08:51 Galatians 3: redeemed from the curse
• 1:14:12 The woman at Jacob’s well
• 1:18:07 The first Adam and the last Adam
• 1:22:04 The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea
• 1:25:57 Jesus is the door: Psalm 139
• 1:28:58 Mission trip to Puerto Rico
• 1:31:10 Psalm 103: crowned with mercy
• 1:32:38 A prophetic word
• 1:37:50 Prayer to receive the Redeemer

Who Is Jesus Series

This message is part of a five-part series at NTC Ministries on the identity of Jesus. Go back to the previous teaching or continue with the next one:

• Previous: Who Is Jesus? The Creator and Redeemer Who Bent Down for Us
• You are here: Who Is Jesus? Part 2 — The Redeemer Who Wore the Crown of Thorns
• Next: Who is Jesus?3

Frequently Asked Questions

Does God want believers to live a hard life until heaven?

Pastor Hohman rejects that idea directly. He warns against preaching that says God does not even want you to have a pillow and that you must live a miserable life and then go to heaven one day. Those who teach that, he says, do not understand redemption. Jesus came to give life more abundantly here and now, and to bring the blessing of heaven into this world, not only to take us out of it.

Why did the church honor its pastors in this service?

A church member read 1 Timothy 5:17, which says elders who rule well are worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine. The congregation thanked the pastors for their sacrifices behind the scenes, prayed over them before their trip, and asked for protection and divine health. Pastor Hohman responded that the work never rests on one person’s shoulders; it took a whole team to build the ministry.

What if I feel too far gone to be redeemed?

That is exactly who Pastor Hohman preached to under the piers in San Juan. His message there was that nobody is too lost or helpless, and nobody is so bad that Jesus will not pick them up, brush them off and change them. He adds that it does not matter who you are or what you have been doing. All you have to do is receive Him as Redeemer, and He heals the wounds of the past and present.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Galatians 3:13–14 — redeemed from the curse of the law
• Matthew 27:29 and John 19:5 — the crown of thorns
• Genesis 3:17–18 — thorns and thistles
• John 1:1–3 and Hebrews 1:1–3 — Jesus the Creator
• 2 Corinthians 8:9 — rich, yet He became poor
• Isaiah 53:3 and Isaiah 50:6 — the suffering Servant
• Colossians 1:13–14 — redemption through His blood
• 1 Corinthians 15:45–49 — the first and last Adam
• Psalm 103:1–4 — crowned with lovingkindness

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

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