[Much of the material in this sermon was taken from a sermon by Brian Mavis of SermonCentral.com.]
Who was Jesus Christ?
“Almost everyone who has heard of Jesus has developed an opinion about Him. This is to be expected, for He is not only the most famous person in world history, but also the most controversial” (Tim LaHaye, best-selling author, JWH, 59).
Matthew 26:57-61
Those who had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas, the high priest, where the teachers of the law and the elders had assembled. But Peter followed him at a distance, right up to the courtyard of the high priest. He entered and sat down with the guards to see the outcome.
The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death. But they did not find any, though many false witnesses came forward.
Finally two came forward and declared, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.”
At Jesus’ trial the leaders of the Jews were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put Him to death. Two thousand years later people still are making false claims about Him.
1. FALSE—Jesus was just a good moral teacher.
The first false claim is Jesus was a good moral teacher. Have you ever heard someone say that Jesus never claimed to be God—that He was just a good moral teacher? It’s a common belief. For example, Gandhi believed this. He writes in his book called The Message of Jesus Christ:
“It is more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us were his sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself…. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it, my heart could not accept” (p. 12).
But listen to what C. S. Lewis said:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. 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 the man who says he is a poached egg—or else He would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about Him being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to” (Mere Christianity, pp. 55-56).
Liar? Lunatic? Lord?
2. FALSE—Jesus is a myth.
a. Some people think Jesus never existed.
“The memory of any stretch of years eventually resolves to a list of names, and one of the useful ways of recalling the past two millenniums is by listing the people who acquired great power. Muhammad, Catherine the Great, Marx, Gandhi, Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin and Mao come quickly to mind. There’s no question that each of those figures changed the lives of millions and evoked responses from worship through hatred. It would require much exotic calculation, however, to deny that the single most powerful figure—not merely in these two millenniums but in all human history—has been Jesus of Nazareth. Not only is the prevalent system of denoting the years based on an erroneous 6th century calculation of the date of his birth, but a serious argument can be made that no one else’s life has proved remotely as powerful and enduring as that of Jesus” (Time Magazine, “Man of the Millenium,” Dec. 6, 1999).
“I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history” (H. G. Wells).
b. Some people think Jesus’ followers made Him out to be more than He really was.
They say Jesus said many good things, but His disciples said He was God. They say Jesus did many good things, but His disciples said He did miracles. They say Jesus died on a cross, but His disciples said He resurrected. He wasn’t a liar, Lord, or lunatic—He was legend.
But listen to what Albert Einstein said in an interview with the Saturday Evening Post:
“As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful…. No one can read the Gospels without feeling the presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life” (Saturday Evening Post, October, 1929).
William Robinson: “If one takes a historically objective approach to the question, it is found that even secular history affirms that Jesus lived on earth and that He was worshiped as God. He founded a church which has worshiped Him for 1,900 years. He changed the course of the world’s history” (OL, 29).
[Picture: Behold the Man]
3. TRUE—Jesus is the Son of God.
The truth is that Jesus did exist. He claimed to be the Son of God. And He gave proof of it in many ways. Let’s go back to Matthew 26 and read what happens next.
Matthew 26:62-66
Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, “Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?” But Jesus remained silent.
The high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
“Yes, it is as you say,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?”
“He is worthy of death,” they answered.
Jesus had remained silent during the earlier, false accusations against Him. Now Caiaphas—who acted as prosecutor, judge, and jury—makes Jesus answer. He tells Jesus that He has to answer the question—under oath—if He is the Son of God. Jesus isn’t allowed to plead the fifth. He is forced to answer. And He says, “Yes, I am the Son of God.”
At this moment pandemonium erupts in the courtroom. The high priest cries out and tears his clothes. They yell at Jesus. They spit on Him. They slap Him. They hit Him with their fists.
You may wonder, what just happened? What did I miss? What did Jesus say that infuriated people? As far as the religious leaders were concerned, Jesus just confessed to the ultimate crime. He claimed He was God. This was blasphemy. He would have been better off to say he was a mass murderer.
The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet” (Ps. 110:1).
“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (Dan. 7:13-14).
Craig Blomberg, a noted NT scholar and author: “In this context, ‘Son of Man’ means far more than a simple human being. Jesus is describing himself as the ‘one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven’ who ‘approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence’ and given authority and power over all humanity, leading to universal worship and everlasting dominion (Dan. 7:13, 14)” (JG, 341-343).
Jesus knew this. He wasn’t surprised by their reaction. Their reaction would have been justified if Jesus weren’t God. But He was. For Jesus to say He was the Son of God wasn’t blasphemy; it was fact.
This was the reason they put Him on trial and put Him to death. But just because Jesus claimed to be the Son of God doesn’t necessarily make it true. If someone you knew claimed to be the Son of God, would you think it was true? No, you would probably think that person had a serious mental problem.
But when Jesus claims to be the Son of God, no one doubts His sanity. Why is Jesus believable? Let’s conduct our on trial of Jesus and look at the evidence.
a. His Life
The Bible says He lived a perfect life. He was sinless. Look again at verse 59: The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death. This verse points out that even His enemies knew that they couldn’t charge Him with doing anything morally wrong. They couldn’t charge him with one legitimate sin. The Bible says, He was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15). He committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth (1 Peter 2:22).
Thomas Shultz: “Not one recognized religious leader, not Moses, Paul, Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, etc., has ever claimed to be God; that is, with the exception of Jesus Christ. Christ is the only religious leader who has ever claimed to be deity and the only individual ever who has convinced a great portion of the world that He is God.”
b. His Miracles
The Bible refers to miracles as signs. The miracles of Jesus pointed to Jesus’ deity. Of the hundreds of miracles He did, one was especially important—He rose from the dead, never to die again.
Again, let’s take a look at this trial against Jesus. Verse 61 says, Finally two came forward and declared, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.’” These false witnesses had twisted Jesus’ words. What Jesus actually said was, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2:19). He didn’t say He would destroy it—He said they would. Furthermore, Jesus wasn’t referring to the temple in Jerusalem, but the temple He had spoken of was His body. Jesus was all the time pointing out the miracle people should be looking for—namely, that He would rise from the dead three days after being killed.
Would the disciples die for a lie?
People will die for their religious beliefs if they’re convinced their beliefs are true. But people will not die for their religious if they know their beliefs are false.
c. His Prophecies
Hundreds of years before Jesus came to earth, many predictions were given about the identity of the Messiah. Jesus matched every prediction. It was like one-of-a-kind divine DNA.
Isaiah 53 is just one example of prophecy that was fulfilled by Jesus. Let’s read verses 3-12, and you can see how obvious it is that Jesus is the fulfillment of this prophecy that was written 700 years before Jesus was born.
Isaiah 53:3-12
In his book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell says that the Old Testament contains over 300 references to the Messiah that were fulfilled by Jesus. He refers to the work of the mathematician Peter Stoner, who calculated the mathematical odds of fulfilling just 8 of the 300 prophecies: “We find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is one in ten to the seventeenth power. That would be one in 100,000,000,000,000,000.”
In order to help us comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing that we take ten to the seventeenth power silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will over all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one.
What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man.
Now What?
How does this affect your life? It’s really quite simple. If Jesus is God’s Son, the consequences are enormous. For example:
• God must exist, and He can be known through Jesus.
• He’d rather die than live without you.
• Jesus is alive here and now.
• He has revealed The Way to peace and purpose in life.
“But what about you?” [Jesus] asked. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:15-16).
You must also answer the question: Who do you think Jesus is?
Philip Yancey: “It occurs to me that all the contorted theories about Jesus that have been spontaneously generating since the day of his death merely confirm the awesome risk God took when he stretched himself out on the dissection table—a risk he seemed to welcome. Examine me. Test me. You decide” (JNK, 21).
How To:
If you are ready to confess that Jesus is more than just a man, more than just a great moral teacher, more than a myth—but that He is actually God, then you need to act. As James 2:19 says, You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder. Intellectual belief in the existence of God is a start, but not nearly enough. What is required is submitting to the lordship and leadership of Jesus. If you are ready to do this, you can begin by praying this prayer:
“God, I believe that Jesus is Your Son. I believe that He has authority over my life. I believe He died for the forgiveness of my sins. I believe He rose from the dead to give me life forever. Forgive me of the wrong things I have done. Create in me a clean heart. Teach me to obey You and follow You the rest of my life. Amen.”
