I Am God

Matthew 16:13-16

EXTENDED WELCOME

Good morning church, this morning we are launching a new-ish series called Red Letters Part 2. I say new-ISH and PART 2 because we preached a series called Red Letters two years ago focused on the words of Jesus. In case you aren’t aware in many Bibles that we carry, the words that Jesus spoke are written in red font. When we preached the series in 2024 we mentioned that it was a series that we could run an entire year, because there are so many great things Jesus said that we can build a sermon around.

Some of the statements Jesus made were incredibly difficult to believe and being Easter I thought I would bring emphasis to what is perhaps the most unbelievable reality that surrounded many of Jesus’ statements and that is the phrase.

I AM GOD.

What you might typically expect from a pastor at this moment is to ask you to turn to a particular passage of scripture, where we would read something like, “and then Jesus said I AM GOD.” Rather I want to share a few passages that express this reality and then focus on one passage in particular where Jesus asks one of His followers a question about His own identity, and then we will use that question as the reference point for the rest of our time here together this morning.

In John 14 Jesus said to Phillip that He was one with the Father.

In John 8 Jesus told the Pharisees that before Abraham was, I AM. To them this was a clear statement that He was saying He was God, so much that they were going to stone Him for blasphemy.

In Matthew 14 after Jesus walked on water He received worship as a God when the disciples said He truly was the Son of God.

In Mark 2 Jesus healed a paralytic and forgave his sins. The scribes said that this was blasphemy because only God could forgive sins. So that in their attempt to accuse Him, they actually acknowledged His deity before others.

Finally Jesus claim to be God is the very reason He went to the cross. In John 19, the Jewish leaders said the very reason He ought to die is because He made himself the Son of God.

The fact that you are in a church today means you are probably ok with the phrase, Jesus is Lord, but we take it for granted. If we put ourselves at that time and place in history, we need to imagine He was a man that everyone knew was born to Mary and Joseph, He walked among everyday people, and yet had the audacity to identify as a God.

Sometimes the reason we don’t see someone for who they truly are is because we have diminished their identity to something that is less than the fulness of who they are. We identify someone by their race, their hair color, their accomplishments, or perhaps their failures.

This morning I think it’s important that we recognize that Jesus isn’t part of a bumper sticker to shame others for tailgating you in traffic. He’s not a mini figurine you keep on the dash of your car. He’s not part of a line in a country song, and I hope He is not one of your favorite swear words or expressions. I know this is earth-shattering, but He’s definitely not a white person, as much as the pictures you see of him lead you to think otherwise.

I’ve heard it said before that if you have constantly tell people who you are, then you probably aren’t that thing. For example, if you have to constantly remind your employees you’re the boss, you probably aren’t a very good boss. Jesus did much more to show His Authority as God than He ever had to say it. And so today instead of focusing specifically on who Jesus said He was, we focus on how He was perceived by His actions.

Today’s sermon is built around one simple question.  Each of you might answer the question differently; many will answer the same.  It’s not even really MY question, but one that Jesus asked. Look at Matthew chapter 16 with me where we will see Jesus present this question and then we will talk a little bit about what to do with it.

NIV Text: Matthew 16:13–16 “When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.””

 In Matthew chapter 16’s account Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

I Imagine between the lines of scripture Peter must have turned to the other disciples and said, “Guys it’s Him, do you realize, it’s Jesus Christ, He’s come to save us, everything is going to be different now.” And it became different. After this admission 11 of the 12 disciples were executed because they refused to stay quiet about the Jesus that they walked with, they now understood that Jesus was Lord of all.

This morning I’m not asking anyone to die for Jesus, but I am about to ask you to live for Him. The question that I’m asking today, the question today that Jesus asks of you is “Who do you say that I am?”

PRAY

The great author C.S. Lewis presented three very concrete choices that we could make as we answer this question. He said that we could see Jesus as our Lord, we could see him as a stark raving mad Lunatic, or the greatest liar that’s ever walked the face of the earth. Let me read to you a brief excerpt from Lewis’ book Mere Christianity. Lewis writes…

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 said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a 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 His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

My assumption

This morning I believe the majority of you would lean more towards Him being God than you would Him being a liar or a lunatic. I don’t think that the issues lies in how you would answer the question, but the issue lies in the fact that we don’t want to deal with the question. Whether you are a Christian or not the more we deal with this question the more it affects the way that we live our lives.

And I believe there are… Four reasons we won’t answer this question:

The first is that we don’t want to change the way we live

CHANGE

The late Dr. James Kennedy said - It is not because of any lack of historical data that people do not believe the Scripture or do not believe in Christ.  Rather, it is because people do not want to surrender their life to the Lordship and authority of Jesus Christ.  It is the moral problem that confronts most unbelievers.”

I would say this to those of you that might fall into this category. Everything that you are holding on to is just a cheap imitation of the joy and happiness that you would find in Christ. Every single day, every single one of us goes to bed either possessing a true peace about who we are in Christ or doing something to create a synthetic form of it through the use of alcohol, drugs, food, sex, or just having our egos stroked by scrolling to see who liked our latest social media post. If we don’t ultimately recognize Jesus as Lord we don’t have to change the way we live, secondly…

We are angry at God

ANGER

I get it. I really do. I’ve seen people I love die all too soon. I’ve seen all three of my children go through pain-staking surgeries. I grow weary of fighting the flesh. I see innocent people suffer. I’ve watched friends go through the pain of difficult divorces. But God has not allowed anything that we have not brought on ourself. I may not have personally done anything to cause cancer, but perhaps we as a human race have. I may not have ever been personally involved in military combat where thousands suffer and die, but every day I have no problem indulging in privileges that I have because others have. We want to blame so many other ideas for what is wrong in this world, but if God made us all puppets or robots that did exactly as we should all the time, we would have no sense of human emotion, no joy because we overcome hardship, no comfort where were overcame pain.

Romans 9:20 “But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”

We will never be able to have a sense of peace with God, when as His creation we continue to question the creator. Peace with God starts with trusting that He knows what’s best for you, and then continually cultivating that trust by drawing closer to Him in prayer and devotion.

Ultimately our anger with God is a way of saying we would be able to run this world better, a pride remains that in a sense causes us to acts as little gods of our own little worlds.

            In his book Crazy Love, Francis Chan offers up this thought to those of us who might be angry at God about something that happened in life that we don’t think is fair: Francis writes this, “Psalm 115:3 reveals, “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.” Yet we keep on questioning Him: “Why did You make me with this body, instead of that one?” Why are so many people dying of starvation?” “Why are there so many planets with nothing living on them?” Why is my family so messed up?” “Why don’t You make Yourself more obvious to the people who need you?” The answer to each of these questions is simply this: because He’s God. He has more of a right to ask us why so many people are starving.

At the end of the day we are ok with authority, order, and justice when man puts it in place. We understand a parking ticket when we park illegally. We may not like it, but we understand it. Yet with God for some reason we think the entirety of life should be a perpetual get out of jail free card.

This leads to the third group today…

We might say we don’t understand God

MISUNDERSTOOD

If I could fully understand God, He wouldn’t be great enough to take care of me. I want a big God, a mysterious God that I will spend my entire life getting to know more and more every day. He is big and He is mysterious, but at the same time He doesn’t leave us ignorant about who He is.  He reveals Himself to us time and time again if we will only chase after Him.

In James 1:5 the Bible tells us quite simply, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”

God wants you to know Him! The idea of misunderstanding God will always fall on us! He is not hiding from us. He longs to be close to us, but because He allows us to be creatures of freewill, He waits for us to make the first move. James 4:8 says draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

Let me press in a little on this one. Trying to understand God is not going out in your backyard and yelling at the stars after you have had a few beers on a Friday night and questioning why God exist.

Drawing near to God means withdrawing from things that are not of God. Sin, and continuing to feed our flesh, clouds our understanding of God and makes us incapable of clearly seeing the true God of the universe whose heart is full of love for us, and His plans for us are ultimately and eternally good. If we want to understand God, we have stop allowing competing voices of the enemy and the world speak into our life. This only contributes to confusion and duplicity that will frustrate us further. Begin walking toward God and you will soon find Him running to you.

And lastly today…

Some of us believe we have messed things up too much

MESSED UP

Romans 3:23 tells us that we have ALL, (everybody say all) We have ALL sinned and come short of the glory of the God.  None of us is any better or worse than the person next to us. Yet our responses can be different, as those who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

Then the verse that we all know, even if it’s the only verse we know because some guy at a football game holds it up on a sign during a field goal.

John 3:16 tells us that God loved the world so much, that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever (ANYONE!) would believe in Him will not perish but will live forever and ever.

All of us have messed it up, and all of us have a chance to believe!

A few months ago I got summoned for Jury Duty. When I showed up there were 40 of us civilians there that would be considered for the panel of 12 that would help judge the case. I’m not sure if you’ve been a part of this process before but both the prosecutor and the defense attorney had their chance to question all of us in the jury selection process. They might call out one of us specifically with a question or they might pose a question to all 40 of us. The defense attorney posed the question, “If without hearing any details of this case, if I asked all of you whether the defendant was guilty or innocent, how many of you would say innocent?” I was the only one in the room that raised my hand.

Let me share a few theories with you about what we can learn from such a question and the response that followed.

First, and probably most basic, people are terrified of being social awkward, I’m certainly an exception to that, but most are terrified of being awkward so they didn’t want to raise their hand.

Secondly, the fact that this person was on trial caused most people to lean towards suspicion which is a horrible commentary on what we now think of each other as human beings.

Thirdly, I recognized that if I was sitting in that defendant seat I would want grace from all the jurors and a fair chance to plead my case.

Now I don’t want to say I was the teachers pet, but the attorney affirmed me as the only one that got the answer right, reminding everyone there that, at least in theory in America, we are all innocent until proven guilty.

Maybe this morning you don’t want to change, I know it’s hard. Maybe you think you have a right to feel anger, and maybe you do. Maybe you just don’t understand God, I know it can be a confusing matter. Maybe the guilt and shame of messing things up seems like it’s too much to bear.

But let me tell you all you need to know about Jesus. At the end of this life no matter how much you resisted change, how little effort you make to know him, how angry you might have been at him, or how bad you think you messed things up… When you stand on trial if you have chosen to put your trust in Him, according to the Bible there’s only one thing God is capable of forgetting as an all knowing God, Hebrews 8 teaches us that if we know Him, He will forgive our wickedness and will remember our sins no more.””

And because He will not remember your sin, all the evidence against you won’t be present, and the judge and jury will find you and the defendant innocent for all of eternity

INVITE TEAM

I know a name

They are going to sing a song called I know a name. When you call on the name of Jesus, He will answer. He knows your name, He is your maker, He formed your heart, Before time began, He held your life in His hand. He knows your every thought, He’s seen every tear that you’ve cried, and He will hear you when you call upon His name.

Reverting back to our original text today, When Peter proclaimed that Jesus was the Christ, the son of the living God, in verse 17 Matthew 16:17 “Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Peter, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.”

In this moment, if you sense a greater understanding or a voice that is speaking to you like never before, that is the Holy Spirit of God revealing Himself to you. In the same way Peter’s eyes needed to be opened to the truth of Jesus’ identity by the Father, you too can choose to recognize Him as Lord of your life today.

STAND

May I just for a moment have a one on one conversation with you in a room packed full of people today… You know this is right don’t you? There’s not a doubt in my mind today that you know Jesus is Lord. I know Him too well and I know He’s revealed that to you this morning, listen to what a writer named, G.K. Chesterton said. He said that, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. I’m challenging you to try God today. If you have tried before and failed, I invite you… God invites you… to try again.

Today’s your day. If you aren’t living in a relationship with Jesus today, I bet there’s a good chance you came with someone who is. As we sing this song would you just ask that person to walk down here and pray with you. He’s waiting for you. Let’s give it a go.

PRAY

Let’s worship him together this morning.

POST RESPONSE

Altar in a packed room is a big ask so want to give you another opportunity on your way out. SALVATION, BIBLE, BAPTISM, FOUNDATIONS