Title: Jesus Is . . .My Lord And My God
Series: Who Is Jesus? (Sermon # 5)
Text: John 20:24-28
Date Preached: March 30, 2008
COPYRIGHT © Joe La Rue, 2008
INTRODUCTION
A. As we begin this morning, we are going to play a little game. I am going to make three claims about myself. Two of them are true. One is false. Your job is to pick the claim that is false when I ask you to vote. Are you ready? Here we go:
1. I argued an issue before the Ohio Supreme Court and won, nine years before I attended law school.
2. I have been honored by a Black church and interviewed on television for my contribution to our society’s understanding of Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement.
3. I have authored a book explaining the history leading up to the famous Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in America, as well as the case’s effect on modern society today, and that book made the New York Times’ Bestseller’s List.
Okay, which one of those three statements is false? Raise your hand if you think that I didn’t argue and win an issue before the Ohio Supreme Court nine years before I went to law school. That one is actually true.
How about number two: who thinks that I was not really honored by a black church and interviewed on television in relation to my work on Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement? That one is also true.
Though not quite as impressive as I am making either of them sound, both of those statements are really true. So, the one that is false? Number 3. I have not authored the book on Roe v. Wade, though I actually hope to at some point.
B. You know, I could probably tell you just about anything and get you to believe it. And you could do the same to me. If we know how to persuade people, we can make just about anything sound believable. I mean, how many people have a book that has been on the New York Times’ Bestseller’s List? That’s a pretty incredible tale! Yet, it sounded convincing when I told it, didn’t it? If we know how to persuade people, we can make almost anything sound believable! We can make people believe almost anything . . . except that we are God. That’s one of the few claims that people know is false. When we hear someone say that he or she is God, we intuitively know that they are not. We don’t pause and wonder, “Hmmm. Could this person really be God?” Rather, we know that they are not God, because experience teaches us that people are not God. In order to believe that someone really was God, it would take some pretty convincing proof, don’t you think?
C. Trans: And yet, make no mistake: Jesus claimed to be God.
I. JESUS CLAIMED THAT HE IS GOD.
A. For instance, Jesus claimed the right and the ability to do things that only God has the right and ability to do.
1. In Mark’s Gospel, the 2nd chapter, for example, we find the story of the paralyzed man who was carried by his friends to Jesus. They were hoping that Jesus might heal him. And when they got to the house where Jesus was teaching, they found such a great crowd that they could not get their friend into the house. Remember what they did? They cut a hole in the roof of the house and lowered their friend down on his pallet to Jesus’s feet. And the Bible says that Jesus said to the man, “Your sins are forgiven.” (Mark 2:5, NASB). And the people sitting around kind of did a collective gasp and said, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7, NASB).
a. And they were right: only God can forgive sins in total. You see, each of us can forgive the sins that have been done to us. If someone were to punch me in the nose, I can forgive him. But I cannot forgive him if he punches you in the nose—that would be for you to do. And you cannot forgive him for punching me in the nose. That is for me to do. That’s why we say that only God can forgive sins in total: only God has the ability to declare sins forgiven in their totality.
b. Yet Jesus said to this man, “Your sins are forgiven.” And when we read this passage, we do not get the impression that Jesus was forgiving only sins that the man had done to him specifically, but rather, that Jesus was forgiving the man’s sins in their totality. And that, friends, is something that only God has the right and ability to do; yet, Jesus claimed to have that right and ability, too.
2. Or, think about the times that Jesus declared that He possessed eternal life, and would give it to the ones He wished.
a. Now, God is the creator and giver of life. The Bible says that “God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being” (Gen 2:7), and the Bible says to God, “With Thee is the fountain of life” (Psalm 36:9, NASB). God possesses it. God gives it to whom He will.
b. And yet, Jesus said such things as, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6, NASB), and, “the Son gives life to whom He wishes” (John 5:21, NASB), and, “If anyone keeps My word, he shall never taste of death” (John 8:52, NASB).
3. These are things that only God has the right to say and the ability to do. Yet, Jesus said them and claimed to be able to do them.
B. And Jesus went even further than this. Not only did He claim to be able to do things that only God can do, He claimed to actually be God.
1. Jesus said such things as, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Now, that is not a statement that would be true if I said it. Nor would it be true if you said it. That statement would only be true if one really was somehow God. And Jesus said it: “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”
2. And Jesus also said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Now, that’s quite a statement, isn’t it? That statement would not be true of me, nor would it be true of you. When Jesus made that statement, He was not mincing words or leaving anything open for debate. No, He was making it perfectly clear that He believed Himself to be God.
C. Trans: And not only did Jesus make the claim that He was God, but the Bible makes that claim about Jesus as well.
II. THE BIBLE CLAIMS THAT JESUS IS GOD.
A. I think of that wonderful passage that we hear nearly every Christmas from Isaiah, where the prophet writes, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” (Isa 9:6, KJV). Those are descriptions of God. And the Bible said that they would apply to Jesus.
B. Seven hundred years before Jesus was born, those words were written. And seven hundred years later, Jesus was born and claimed to be the fulfillment. He claimed to be God. And the Bible says in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And in verse 14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:1, 14, NASB).
1. Professor Paul T. Butler has said that this “might be considered the greatest single verse in the whole New Testament.” Paul T. Butler, The Gospel of John 31 (Joplin: College Press, 1961). If not the greatest, this verse is certainly one of the greatest; for, it affirms for us that Jesus was both God and man, at the same time. And this was tremendously important.
a. You see, only a man could die for us. God cannot die. God is eternal. God is immortal. God is incapable of death. Only a man could die for us.
b. But, only a perfect man’s death could save us. Had Jesus sinned even once, His death would have done us no good. He would have been dying for His own sin. He could not have died for ours. So, only a perfect man’s death could save us.
(1) But, no man who is "only" a man can be perfect. We know that from our own experience. We try to do right, but fail. We do things that are wrong. We do things that we regret. We do things that we don’t understand.
(2) Had Jesus only been a man, He would have been just like us in this. He would have had failures and shortcomings. He would have sins for which He would have had to pay.
(3) But Jesus was not only man. No, He was also fully God, even while He was fully man. And so, the Bible says that He lived a perfect life, being tempted exactly like we are, yet without ever sinning. (Heb 4:15).
c. And so, Jesus was able to be exactly what we needed: He was able to be the sacrifice for our sins, taking our punishment upon Himself and dying our death for us, in order to save us.
(1) One who was only a man could not have done this; for, although he would be able to die, he would not have been sinless in order to die for others.
(2) But, one who was only God could not have done this, either; for, God cannot die. So, even though God is perfect and so is eligible to die for us, He cannot die our death.
(3) Only one who was both fully God and fully man could pay the price for our sins. Only such a one could live a perfect life, without ever sinning. Only such a one could then die the death we deserve, so that we might live the life that He deserved! Only Jesus could do this for us.
d. Professor Butler is right: John 1:14, “The Word became flesh,” “might be the greatest single verse in the whole New Testament.”
2. Now, I don’t totally understand this. Rather, I accept it by faith. I say, “God, this is what Your Word teaches, and I don’t understand it, but I have found Your Word to be trustworthy in those areas that I do understand, so I will accept what Your Word teaches in those areas that I do not understand.”
C. Trans: And the Bible teaches that Jesus was both God and man, and Jesus claimed that He was both God and man. But as I said earlier this morning, it would take some pretty convincing proof to believe that someone really was God.
III. THE RESURRECTION CONFIRMS THAT JESUS IS GOD.
A. That’s one of the reasons why the Resurrection of Jesus is so important: it validated His claim to be God, and the Bible’s claim that He is God. God would not have raised a false teacher to life to deceive us. Now this is important, friends. Let me say this again: God would not have raised a false teacher to life to let him continue deceiving us. We don’t have a God who would do such a thing to us. So, the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead means that God was putting His stamp of approval on Jesus, His ministry, His teaching, and His claims, including His claim to be God come in the flesh. You see, Jesus claims that He is God and the Bible claims that He is God, but it is the Resurrection that confirms that Jesus is God. It is the Resurrection that allows us to accept and believe the claims! Because God raised Jesus from the dead we can believe that Jesus really is who He said He was!
B. And that’s exactly what the Apostle that we call ‘Doubting Thomas’ experienced. If you have your Bibles this morning, open with me to John 20, beginning in verse 24. Jesus had appeared to a group of His followers on Easter Sunday, and they rejoiced that He was alive. But one of the Apostles, Thomas, was not there when Jesus appeared. And that’s where we pick up in verse 24 of the twentieth chapter of John. Look at it with me. The Bible says,
“But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples were saying to him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.’ After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then He said to Thomas, ‘Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.’ Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:24-28, NASB).
C. As many commentators point out, Thomas’s statement is not to be understood as an ‘exclamation of astonishment’ as when one might cry out almost involuntarily “oh, my!” in response to something startling or surprising. No, this is an exclamation of address: He is calling Jesus his Lord and God. As the great New Testament scholar Richard Lenski writes in his commentary on John, “We may indeed say that the exclamation has the sense, ‘Thou art my Lord and my God.’” Lenski, The Interpretation of John 1389 (Hendrickson Publishers, 1998) (1943).
1. Thomas understood that if God had raised Jesus from the dead, then that meant that God had set His seal of approval on Jesus, and everything Jesus had taught had been true, including His claim to be God in human flesh.
a. And so Thomas proclaimed, “You are my Lord and my God,” and we should understand those expressions to be parallel expressions affirming Christ’s divinity.
b. It’s not that Thomas was calling Jesus two different things: ‘Lord,’ and ‘God.’ Rather, in Jewish thought, God was the Lord; and, the Lord was God! These were both words used to refer to the Deity.
2. So Thomas took the two common words from his Jewish experience to describe Deity—‘Lord’ and ‘God’—and ascribed them to Jesus, because the Resurrection had vindicated Jesus’s claims.
CONCLUSION
A. There are many people today who wish to deny that Jesus was God. Their reasoning, set up in a logical syllogism, generally goes like this: People are not God. Jesus was a person. Therefore, Jesus was not God. This syllogism’s minor premiss is correct: Jesus was a person. The Bible affirms that. However, the major premiss, people are not God, is faulty, for it assumes more than it can prove.
1. True, most people are not God. In fact, I have never met a person I suspected was God. We can even go so far as to say “Every person I have ever met is not God.” By definition, God is infinite and we are finite, and so the ones who don’t believe Jesus was God simply assume that since he was a person, he could not have been God.
2. But, what if God broke the rules once? What if the infinite God chose to become finite and become a person, so that He could experience the death that sin deserves, and save us in the process? If God chose to do that, the result would be Jesus: the one who was fully God and fully man, so He would be able to die for our sins.
B. Perhaps you need to accept Jesus as your Savior this morning. Perhaps you, like Thomas, are ready to bow before Him and proclaim, “You are my Lord and my God.” You’ve heard Jesus’s own claims, that He is God come in the flesh. You’ve heard the Bible’s claims about Jesus saying the same thing. And the Resurrection confirms it: The Resurrection is God’s stamp of approval on Jesus and His claims, for God would not have raised a false teacher to life to confuse us and mislead us. In the Resurrection, God said, “Jesus’s claim is true! Jesus really is Lord and God.”
C. God loved you and me so much that He took on flesh, so He could be fully God and fully man, so He could live a perfect life and then die for us, so He could pay for our sins and offer us salvation. If you need to accept Jesus as your Lord and God and make Him your Savior, please come forward as we sing. Or, if you want to rededicate yourself to Jesus this morning, and say with Thomas, “You are my Lord and my God,” you come forward as we sing too. I’ll meet you down front and we’ll talk about your spiritual need, and then I’ll share a general description of why you came forward with the church family. Please, if you have a decision to make, now is the time. Come forward as we sing.
