1 Is Jesus Really God?
Blaise Pascal
“God made man in his own image, and man returned the favor.”
Ø Art work – Songs – Movies - T-shirts – Politics (God is on your side
of the aisle) – Denominational views – Religions
We can imagine Jesus in many different ways, but there is one question that
stands out above the rest
Prophecy
Hundreds of prophecies written down in the OT, thousands of years before
Jesus ever came onto the scene that predicted things such as his virgin birth,
birth place, his family line, and his death and resurrection etc.
Isaiah 53:2-7 “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root
out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing
in his appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected
by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom
people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
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Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him
punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our
transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that
brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all,
like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the
Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and
afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the
slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his
mouth.”
I told you about how much I love mathematics last week…
Probabilities study
Professor Emeritus of Science at Westmont College (Santa Barbara, CA),
Peter Stoner, has calculated the probability of one man fulfilling the major
prophecies made concerning the Messiah. The estimates were worked out by
twelve different classes representing some 600 university students.
After examining only eight different prophecies, they conservatively
estimated that the chance of one man fulfilling all eight prophecies was one
2 in 1017. (a number with 17 0’s)
Suppose that we take 10^17 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas.
They'll cover 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've had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come
true in any one man
As Professor Stoner concludes
“Any man who rejects Christ as the Son of God is rejecting a fact, proved
perhaps more absolutely than any other fact in the world.”
Jesus’ own Words
Matthew 26:63-65 “The high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath
by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” 64 “You
have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will
see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming
on the clouds of heaven.” 65 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. 66 What do you think?”
John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.”
Mark 2:7-11 (Healing of the paralyzed man)
C.S. Lewis Quote
“I am trying here to prevent anyone 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
3 nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to
us. He did not intend to. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a
lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or
unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.”
Resurrection
Matthew 16:21 “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples
that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the
elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be
killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
No one else in history has predicted their death and willed themselves back
to life.
No One.
Had Jesus healed people, forgiven sins, and had a group of men and women
willing to die for him, yet stayed in the tomb, we wouldn’t be having this
conversation today.
Colossians 2:13-15 “When you were dead in your sins and in the
uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us
all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which
stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the
cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public
spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
Illustration: Public Spectacle Parades
Jesus made a public spectacle of death by his resurrection and through his
resurrection death doesn’t have the final word
1 Corinthians 15:54-55 “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
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“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
Who other than the Creator of life and the Master of death --- could turn
death into victory?
4 History
There is arguably no other person in history as fascinating, popular, debated,
disregarded, and talked about than Jesus of Nazareth
If we let history speak for itself, it points to Jesus being more than just a
mere man
Tony Evans quote
Jesus of Nazareth never wrote a song, yet there are more songs written
about Him than any other person in history. He never authored a book, but
entire chains of bookstores can hold only a fraction of the volumes written
about Him. So cataclysmic was His appearance on earth, that it served to
divide the whole of human history in two: B.C. (before Christ) and A.D. (an
abbreviation for the Latin words meaning ``after His coming''). He calmed
the sea, raised the dead and agitated the religious and political leaders of
His day. It's no surprise that even His own disciples wondered, ``What
manner of man is this?'' In their own way, they were asking, ``Who is this
Jesus?'' People have tried to ignore that question, change the question,
outlaw the question and silence those who ask the question--all without
success. We can choose to love Jesus or hate Him. We can elect to serve
Him or reject Him. But from the moment of His appearance, it has been
impossible to ignore Him.
History tells us that the movement that is Christianity would not have made
it past the first century had it been based on a lie
Peter Kreeft quote
“Why did thousands suffer torture and death for this lie if they knew it was a
lie?” “What force sent Christians to the lions’ den with hymns on their lips?
What lie ever transformed the world like that?”
Thomas Aquinas quote
“If the Incarnation did not really happen, then an even more unbelievable
miracle happened: the conversion of the world by the biggest lie in history”
There is and has never been a more important question than that of Jesus to
his disciples in Matthew 16:15, “Who do you say I am?”
And if you claim that Jesus is Lord, it requires more than just a profession of
faith, but it calls for all who believe in him as Lord to submit to him as Lord
of their life
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