Over the last few weeks we have scraped the salty soil of Israel and searched the starry skies of Bethlehem for the reliability of the claims of Christmas - and what a journey so far! So now we begin to study the supernatural sending of the Savoir of the world for the accuracy of the claims of Christmas!
It was September 18, 1910 on a Saturday at the Hiller home in Chicago. Clarence Hiller had spent the day painting his house. By early evening everyone was in bed asleep. The Hillers woke up in the early morning and noticed. Clarence went to investigate why a gas light near his daughter’s room had gone out. As he came to her door a fight broke out with 2 gun shots fired and Mrs. Hiller got to the room to find her husband dead at the foot of the stairs with blood everywhere.
The police arrested Thomas Jennings a convicted burglar who lived less than a mile down the street from the Hillers. There was blood on his clothes when they picked him up that he said was a result of falling off a street car. In his pocket the police found the same kind of gun used to shoot Clarence Hiller – but they could not determine if it was the murder weapon in those days – they need more evidence – but from where?
So the detectives returned to the Hiller’s home to search for more clues and they found that the killer came through a rear kitchen window and there next to the window forever imprinted in the white paint Clarence had painted earlier – they found 4 clear fingerprints from someone’s left hand.
What is amazing about this story is this crime was the first one where police used a fingerprint to convict a person of a crime – and it worked! Thomas Jennings was convicted of the terrible crime because of leaving his fingerprints at the scene of the crime!
Using another kind of evidence today, we are going to get at the Christology of Christmas to establish a degree of certainty that Jesus Christ is Messiah!
Just who is this man behind the claims? If you’ve thought that before you would not be the first!
Mark 4:41 “Who is this man? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
Luke 5:21 “Who is this man…who can forgive sins but God alone?”
Luke 9:9 “Herod said…who is this man of whom I hear such things?”
Matthew 16:15 “He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?”
Christopher Hitchens in his best seller, “God Is Not Great” writes,
“The Gospels agree on many things about Jesus, most of which are fictions, and all of which are rubbish because he was a failure on a grand scale.”
“The sayings and teachings of Jesus are hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay, which helps explain their garbled nature…This is why some of the Gospels report people (including his family members) saying at the time that they thought Jesus must be mad.”
Let’s take Christopher Hitchens on!
Jesus did put everything on the line when He said concerning Himself…
Luke 24:44 “This is what I told you while I was still with you, everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” NIV
Luke 1:2-4
“Having perfect understanding” = literally he’s saying, “having traced out”
“Certainty” = firmness or stability
LifePoint: If Luke can get this vital information right then the reliability of his historical account of his claims of Christmas logically has to be trusted!
Dr. Norman Geisler writes, “Luke references 32 countries, 54 cities and 9 islands without a single mistake.”
Dr. Bruce Metzger of Princeton Theological Seminary writes, “There are an unprecedented number of New Testament manuscripts and that they can be dated extremely close to the original writings. The New Testament is 99.5 % free of textual discrepancies, with no major Christian doctrines in doubt.”
Dr. Gary Habermas writes in his book, “The Historical Jesus” – “One expert documented 39 ancient historical sources that corroborate more than 100 facts concerning Jesus’ life, teaching, crucifixion, and resurrection.”
So let’s investigate the Christology of Christmas for ourselves. Why Jesus and not some other 1st century want-be holy teacher? Why Jesus and not a 2nd century want-be messiah? Why Jesus and not a 7th century want-be prophet of God?
Let’s look at:
1. The Conspiracy Attempt.
A valid question could be asked, “Isn’t it possible that the gospel writers faked everything including the birth of Christ to make it look like this man Jesus fulfilled everything needed?”
For example: The bones of Jesus not being broken as the O.T. predicts?
Or the prediction of being sold out for 30 pieces of silver? Born in Bethlehem? Couldn’t the Apostles played a little loose with the facts? Played make-believe with so-called truth?
This just doesn’t add up for many reasons. In God’s wisdom I think He created checks and balances in and outside of the 1st century Christian community.
• Most of the years following Christ’s death, many eyewitnesses were still around and they could have begun to say, “It just didn’t happen this way or that way!” - “I was there and many bones were broken!” -“He never said, “God why have you forsaken Me!”
• Jews of the 1 century took their spiritual journey very seriously and just would not put up with 12 men that conspired together for some lunatic leader of theirs!
• What’s more, the Jewish community could have jumped on the first chance given them to discredit the Gospels as fake jobs! With fake fulfill prophecies. This would have been so easy to discredit the writers.
• Do you know this - Fact: The Jewish Talmud mentions Jesus Christ many times, but not once does it make the claim that the fulfilled prophecies connected to Him were falsified – not once!
2. The Counterfeit Assumption.
Believe it or not – some skeptics really believe that Jesus simply manipulated His life in a way to fulfill prophecy! For example: Jesus could have just read Zechariah where he predicts that Messiah would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey at the perfect time – could Jesus have done that? On a few prophecies yes, but it’s unconceivable on very many of them.
How could he counterfeit the prophecy…
• Controlling the Sanhedrin to offer Judas 30 pieces of silver.
• Arrange His genealogy just right to fit the line of Messiah.
• The place of His birth in Bethlehem.
• Soldiers gambling for His clothes before His death.
• Performing miracles in front of His enemies more than once.
• Arranging the resurrection with incredible detail.
• For the matter manufacture the way He would die?
• Daniel 9:24-26 predicts that Messiah would exist at just the perfect time after the time of King Artaxerxes issues a decree for the Jews to return to Israel and rebuild the city walls after a long 70 year captivity in Babylon. The time: just over 400 years later Messiah will be at your doorstep Israel! Do you understand no one can pre-arrange their birth? What a prophetic fingerprint to analyze! What a climatic clue to study! What enormous evidence to ponder!
I’m getting a headache just thinking about this!
3. The Coincidence Approach.
If anyone really buys this – maybe they need to get some professional help!
The odds are so off the chart that any one person could fulfill just 8 prophecies - let alone over 300 recorded in the Old Testament!
Mathematician Peter Stoner has figured that just fulfilling just 8 of the 300 prophecies connected to the requirements of Messiah is: one chance in one hundred million billion! That number is millions of times greater than the total number of people who have ever lived on this planet!
Maybe you’ve heard his example: if you took this number of silver dollars they would cover the state of Texas 2 feet deep. If you marked just one silver dollar placed it among the other coins, blind fold someone and give that person just one chance to pickup the buried marked coin – what are the chances he would pickup that one coin – one chance in one hundred million billion!
Now Peter Stoner has statistically figured the probability of one man fulfilling 48 of the 300 prophecies concerning Messiah - are you ready for this: one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion.
Acts 3:18 “…Those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.”
If only Peter could have known the odds of Jesus fulfilling just the crucifixion prophecies – it would have blown his mind!
4. The Creator Angle.
Part of the picture of Jesus must match that fact that God is an uncreated being who has existed in eternity past!
Isaiah 57:15 “He who lives forever.”
But there are some verses that make this claim very hard to understand.
So let’s look at:
• John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” KJV
Many say that the begetting or creating was done in the Virgin Mary. But in fact this falls short in translation!
This word “begotten” literally translates “Unique One”. This word used in the 1st century always meant “unique and beloved”. So John was stating of Jesus – he is the unique and beloved Son or as the NIV states “The one and only Son”.
• Colossians 1:15 “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”
Now in the O.T. most scholars believe that this phrase “firstborn” were connected to the law of succession - that is, the firstborn male received the largest portion of the family inheritance. So logically the firstborn was given all the rights of his father.
Now by the end of the 2nd century up to the days of Christ, this term was broadened to mean - the firstborn had all the authority that came with the position of being legal heir. The term “first born” is very misleading!
“Firstborn” = supreme heir – is the literal meaning of this word!
It’s fascinating to see that in the O.T. uses words like: Alpha and Omega, Savior, Deliverer, Redeemer, Light, Rock, Shepherd, Creator, Forgiver of sin – and the N.T. applies every one of these to Jesus Christ!
That’s why Jesus could confidently say in John 14:7 “If you really knew me, you could know the Father as well.” Loose translation –look at the sketch of God in the O.T., you will see the likeness of Me in then N.T.
