If you were with us last week, you’ll notice that we’re in part of the same passage we were then. Last week we started in verse 16 and looked at how and why the Jewish leaders rejected Jesus and wanted to kill Him. At the same time, we looked at how we reject Jesus for the same reasons. We found that there were two reasons. First, they rejected Jesus because He broke their rules by healing on the Sabbath. By doing that, He tore down their legalism and the way that they were trying to justify themselves. But the biggest reason that they rejected Jesus was that He claimed to be equal with God. And if Jesus was God, that meant that He had to be Lord of their lives. And if Jesus was going to be Lord of their lives, that meant that they couldn’t be. That was why they hated Him. They hated Him because He was telling them that He is God. And in case there was any confusion as to what Jesus was saying, He expanded on that in detail over the rest of the chapter. Jesus spends the rest of the chapter telling the Jewish leaders all the ways in which He is God. Not the ways that He acts like God. Not the ways that He talks about God. But all the ways that He is God. He makes six specific claims that make Him equal with God. We’re going to look at each of those claims over the next six weeks. We are going to see how Jesus is God in Person, in Works, in Power, in Honor, in Salvation, and in Judgment. But this morning, we’re going to see the first way that He claimed to be God. The first way that Jesus claimed to be God was that in these two verses, He claimed to be God in person. He said that in three ways.
First, Jesus claimed to be God in person because of His work in creation. He said that as God the Father works in creation, He works in creation. In other words, Jesus is functionally God in person. Look how Jesus answered the Jewish leaders in verse 17. He said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” What was He talking about? Remember that this whole discussion was in the context of the Sabbath. When was the Sabbath originated? During creation. Remember back in Genesis 1. Genesis 1 gives us an overview of the six days of creation. It tells us that God created light and separated it from the darkness. Then He created a firmament, or expanse to separate the water below from the canopy of water above. Then on the third day, He separated the water on the earth below with land. And on that land, He created all the plants. On the fourth day, He created the stars and other planets, specifically including our sun and moon. On the fifth day He created all of the fish and birds and on the sixth day, He created all of the land animals. But that’s not all He created on the sixth day. Because He created the crowning glory of all creation. On the sixth day, God completed His creative act by creating man and woman. They were the crown of His creation because they were the only beings who were created in God’s very own image. Unlike our culture today, the Jewish people of Jesus’ day knew all that. They accepted it as fact. They hadn’t bought into the ancient Greek pagan philosophy that said that a long time ago, a primordial soup spontaneously appeared. And out of that primordial soup, life appeared and began to evolve. You thought that started with Darwin? Actually, it started with Greek philosophers hundreds of years before Jesus. But the Jews didn’t fall for it. They understood Scripture and knew that God created the heavens and the earth in six days just like He said He did. And one of the ways that they were supposed to constantly remind themselves of God’s work in creation was by honoring the Sabbath day. After Genesis 1 finishes telling us what God did in the first six days, Genesis 2 begins with these words: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” The Hebrew word for “seventh day” is Shabbat which we’ve carried over to our English word Sabbath. Later on, when the Israelites asked for the Law, one of the laws God gave them concerned the Sabbath. God told Israel that they were to remember the seventh day (Saturday) and keep it holy. In Exodus 20:8-11, God told them, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Basically God told them, you need to remember my finished work of creation by not doing any work on Saturdays. This was deeply ingrained in the Jewish culture of Jesus’ day. So much so, that the religious leaders had come up with all kinds of extra rules and regulations about what constituted work. Jesus openly broke their rules without breaking God’s Sabbath law. Now, how was that possible? Because just because Scripture says that God rested on the Sabbath day, what did that mean? Did it mean that God took a nap and didn’t do anything? Of course not. God continually sustains His creation. If God was to remove His sustaining hand from creation for one second, creation would cease to exist. Psalm 121 reminds us in verse 2 that our help comes from the Lord who is the maker of heaven and earth. Then verse 3 says that He that keeps you will not slumber. Verse 4 says that God never slumbers nor sleeps. Jesus told the Jewish leaders that He’s just like that. The Father rested from His creative work on the very first Sabbath day. But that didn’t mean that He wasn’t working. It meant that He was finished. Just like a short time from our passage, Jesus would rest from His redemptive work. In just a short time, Jesus would proclaim from the cross, “It is finished.” Was He finished? Of course not. His redemptive work was finished. But Colossians 1:15-23 tells us that Jesus’ work as God was still going on. Turn to Colossians 1:15-23
COLOSSIANS 1:15-23
Jesus was redeeming and reconciling all things to Himself. All of the things that He had created. All of the things that He is sustaining. As God, Jesus is working to reconcile all of His creation to Himself. For His glory and for the glory of the Father. Jesus told the Jewish leaders that day that just as God the Father works in creation, God the Son works in creation. He told them that He is functionally God in person. He also told them that He is legally God in person. Look back to verse 18.
Jesus claimed to be God because of His position over the Law. He said that as God the Father is over His laws, I am over His laws. Jesus is legally God in person. In verse 18, Jesus allowed the Jewish leaders to accuse Him of breaking the Sabbath. Have you ever been wrongly accused? It’s not very much fun, is it? When that happens, what’s the first thing you want to do? You want to speak up and tell them all the reasons that they’re wrong. You want to defend yourself. Once again, we see that Jesus didn’t do that. He didn’t tell the Jewish leaders how wrong they were about the law. He didn’t tell them that He wasn’t breaking God’s law. He didn’t tell them that He was only breaking their silly rules that they attached to the law. He didn’t do that. Instead, He just let the accusation go unanswered. And by letting it go unanswered, Jesus spoke volumes. All throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus confronted the Law. But every time He confronted it, He did one of two things. He either broke down the Jewish leader’s silly additions to it. Or He restated it in much harsher terms. Think about it for a second. The Jewish leaders tried to earn their righteousness by adding to God’s perfect Law. And instead of making people who saw God as holy and righteous and looked to Him for grace, they created legalistic monsters. And Jesus confronted them about it in Matthew 23:15. He said, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.” They weren’t creating lovers of God and followers of God. They were converting people to Judaism by making them follow all of their rules. The Jewish leaders were trying to make people earn their own righteousness by following their souped up version of the Law. But what did Jesus do? He boiled the law down to its two essential elements. In Matthew 22:37-40, He said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Jesus took all 613 Jewish laws and condensed them down to two. And then He spent the rest of His time showing us how we fail to do even those two. You say that murder is wrong. I say that even if you curse your brother you’ve committed murder in your heart. You say that adultery is wrong. I say that if you even look on a woman lustfully, you have committed adultery with her in your heart. Jesus continually showed His position over God’s law. In Matthew 19, the Jewish leaders were trying to use a provision in God’s Law as an excuse for easy divorce. Jesus pulled the rug out from under them by reminding them that it was a provision due to their sinfulness. He reminded them of the permanence of marriage by telling them that it wasn’t that way from the beginning. In John 13:34 Jesus told His disciples, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” Now, was loving one another really a new commandment? No, what was new was the way Jesus clarified what that meant. He gave a new standard as to what it means to love one another. We are to love each other the way that He loves us. And how does Jesus love us? Unconditionally. While our actions were still hanging Him on the cross, He loved us enough to die for us anyway. Jesus loves us enough to not only be our law giver. But He knows that we cannot be perfect as the law requires. So He loves us enough to be our law fulfiller. He lived the perfect life that we cannot live. He died a terrible death that He did not deserve. He took the wrath that we deserve and He gives us righteousness that we can’t earn. Jesus is God because He is the law-giver and the law-fulfiller. Just as God the Father gave the Law on Mount Sinai, God the Son clarified and refined that Law in the Sermon on the Mount. Just as God the Father gave the law to show us our sin, God the Son fulfilled the law to give us His grace. Jesus told the Jewish leaders that day that just as God the Father is over His laws, God the Son is over His laws. He told them that He is legally God in person. He also told them that He is relationally God in person. Look back at verse 18.
Jesus claimed to be God because of His relationship with the Father. The verse says that He made Himself equal with God. CS Lewis has a famous quote about Jesus. He is trying to answer those people who say that Jesus is a great moral teacher or a prophet, but He’s not really God. Here’s what he said, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.” You see, there is really no middle ground. The Jewish leaders knew it. They wanted to kill Him for blasphemy. Jesus’ own family knew it. They thought He was crazy. Mark 3:21 tells us that, “they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.” Everybody knew that Jesus was claiming to be God. In John 10:30, Jesus states it about as plainly as you can get. He said, “I and my Father are one.” What does that mean? Does it mean that they have the same message? Yes. Does it mean that they have the same mission? Yes. But it means a whole lot more than that. It means that they are the same essence. Just as the Father is God, the Son is God. The Jewish leaders understood that. So much so, that in the very next verse it says that they picked up stones to stone Him. So, the bottom line is, just like the Jewish leaders in our passage, we are all faced with a choice. We can either believe Jesus or not. We can’t hem and haw around about it. There is no middle ground. Either Jesus is God or He isn’t. If He isn’t then all you have is the best it’s ever going to get. If He isn’t then you have no explanation for evil. You have no hope for the future. You have no answer for sickness and pain and disease. And if Jesus isn’t God, then death is the cruelest, blackest, most fearful thing imaginable. If Jesus is not God, then your best hope against the seemingly immovable forces of time and age are doctors and medical systems who don’t care about you and most of the time don’t have a clue how to make things better. If Jesus is not God, then your best hope against the mysterious and powerful forces of nature are scientists who can’t even figure out what happened yesterday much less what’s going to happen tomorrow. If Jesus is not God, then you’d better tremble in fear over the swine flu. If Jesus is not God, then you’d better worry about us running out of water and air and fuel and natural resources. If Jesus is not God, then you’d better be quaking in fear over the economy and health care and terrorism and a thousand other things. But I’ve got good news for you. Jesus is God. And as God, He can say to you, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” As God, He has that authority. As God, He has that power. As God, He has that grace. And as God, He has that love. So where do you stand this morning? Do you stand with those who hate Him? Probably not—at least openly. Do you stand with those who are trying to make Jesus less than He is? There are lots of religious people in the world. Lots of people hang up pictures of Jesus and talk about Him like they really like Him. There are even people who will pray to Him for miracles. They like Him for the stuff He can do for them. But do you know what? If you do not recognize Jesus as God and bow before Him as Lord of your life, you will be among those who He will say, “depart from me for I never knew you.” But Jesus, I had a fish on my car. I had a praying hands picture on my desk. I voted for all the right candidates. Do you know what He’s going to say? “Was I seated as God on the throne of your life?” Are you making Jesus less that He really is? Or are you trusting Him as the Lord and King and Master and God of your life?
