Who Is Jesus Really? Part 5 Series

Well let’s see our bibles this morning, word. Let’s see our pens and your lesson plan. Let’s turn to Matthew 4, Matthew 4.

I was watching Larry King a couple days ago, about a week ago. He had on 6 religious leaders and we had a, they had a Christian pastor, a catholic priest, Jewish rabbi, a Muslim imam, a, the president of the American atheist, and another woman which I don’t know what she represented. I never saw her title but she was somewhere, she wasn’t our definition of Christian. And they were asking questions about life, death, just the tsunami, 9-11, all these different questions.

Larry King said to John Mc Arthur who was the Christian pastor said – Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven? And he says – Absolutely. The bible says that there’s no name under heaven by which men may be saved except the name Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ and now this is me talking, Jesus Christ is the only one that died for our sin, that claimed to die for our sin, claim to rise from the dead and did. He said that and of course everyone else had an issue with that but sitting next to him was a catholic priest and the catholic priest says = I appreciate your, you know I believe Christ is the Lord but I believe there are other ways and he gestured to the Jewish rabbi and the, thee ah um the Muslim imam and he said – There are other ways people can experience God. I don’t believe Christ is the only way. And I was like – Man! You know, and on those shows you have to be very diplomatic. I just can’t imagine myself being on this show just saying, sitting there going – Oh yeah whatever you say.

Um and then there was a woman and by the way, this summer we’re gonna go through a lot of the religions and cults and talk about their view of Christ. Cuz right now we’re talking about who is Jesus really and then we’re gonna talk about how other people view Him so you can see the difference because there is a difference. I know in our society we want to include everybody, um in reality that’s not true.

You know I have 3 children. That’s all I have, 3 children and if all these other kids come over to my house, yeah you come over to my house visit, you know eat food, you know play in the pool or whatever but you’re not my kids. I have 3 children. I know who my 3 children are.

Christ knows who His children are and there are certain guidelines to how to become one of His children.

But this lady on there, she was an atheist. She was a, thee president of American atheists and she said – There is not one shred of evidence that a man named Jesus lived and everyone else was silent. They went to a commercial and I’m thinking – Say something someone that she is out of her mind. Now that’s her, her, she represents the devil. When I say that I really believe that. To say there’s no God, the bible says a fool says in his heart there’s no God. And so she’s representing that whole mindset that God does not exist at all, much less Christ never existed. Not that He wasn’t God, He never even existed.

How do we know that Christ existed? Today we’re gonna talk about who the disciples believe Christ was. The reason I tell you story about the atheist is because there’s many ways to prove that Christ existed without even having seen Him. The one way you prove that Christ existed is by what people do and how He’s changed their life.

We do a lot of counseling here. I think we get about a call an hour give or take on a working day. It averages about a call an hour or two for counseling and I do basically none of it but I have counseled many people in my lifetime and whenever I counsel someone who is a, cheating on their wife or mistreating their wife I always, they always tell me – I did this. I did this. I did this or I didn’t do this and then somewhere in that conversation they will always say – But I love my wife. And then somewhere in that conversation, probably right after they say that I will say – you don’t know what that means. You don’t love your wife. You love what you want to do and the way you can tell by, if someone loves somebody, the way that you can tell that they have that person really in their life is really not by what they say. It’s about what they do.