The Truth About Christianity - Week 3

(*)

- This morning I would like to begin by talking about something that is undoubtedly on all of our minds.

(*)

- I would like to talk about how the earth is flat.

- I don’t know if you know this, but the North Pole is the centre of the flat disk and surrounded by a wall of ice.

- The moon and the sun are only around 4,800 km away (not 384,000 km and 148 million km as #fakescience wants you to believe).

- NASA is a place like Disneyland (because it’s all pretend), and all astronauts are actors.

- And, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a little place called “Australia”, but I hate to break it to you. Australia doesn’t exist!

- Because Australia is supposed to be on the other side of the world, but there isn’t an “other side of the world to begin with”.

- And all of the airlines, and all of the pilots are in on it.

- And if you’ve ever met someone who says they are from Australia, they are actually a secret government agent.

- Ok, seriously, you maybe have heard about some of the different conspiracy theories about how the earth is flat.

- There are actually people who believe that the whole “earth is round” thing is one great big conspiracy.

- And it appears as though no amount of evidence and proof will convince these people otherwise.

- Because, and maybe we know someone like this (maybe we are someone like this), some people just love a good conspiracy theory.

- Now, even for those who don’t buy all of the skepticism and doubt put forward by conspiracy theories such as this, we still all know the famous quote: “History is written by the victors.”

- And when we say that, deep down, what we are saying is that we can’t really trust history to tell us a completely balanced, unbiased, truthful account of what really happened.

- Because we weren’t eyewitnesses to events that have taken place throughout history, so some of us feel at least a little bit of doubt, a tiny amount of uncertainty, because we wonder if history really happened the way we’ve always heard that it did.

- And so this morning we are diving into our third week of “The Truth About Christianity”, where we are looking at five of the biggest questions, objections, and problems that people have with Christianity.

- We’ve already looked at “Can we trust the Bible?” and “Is there only one way to God?” and today we are going to do our best to look at a massive question as quickly as possible – a question so big that we could spend five weeks on it alone and still not cover all of the information there is concerning it.

- Our question for today, in our search for the truth about Christianity, is “Is Jesus God?”

- Because, just like how there are those who doubt that the earth really is round, there are those who doubt that Jesus existed.

- There are those that doubt Jesus was God.

- There are those that doubt Jesus really said and did the things that the New Testament documents tell us that He said and did.

- Now, when we look at something like the shape of the earth, we turn to the third-party evidence.  We look at the data, we examine all of the research and findings we can.

- And that is how we should come to our conclusion (one way or another).

- But does this apply to Jesus?

- Can we take that same approach, and reach a truly credible, logical, and trustworthy conclusion about who Jesus was – or potentially, who Jesus is?

- Regardless of where you are at in your faith today – whether you are a follower of Jesus, a doubter of Jesus, or an opponent of Jesus, I think we can all agree that there is a need for reliable information about Jesus.

(*)

- There is a need for trustworthy, unbiased information that can tell us who Jesus was, what Jesus did, and how it affects us – if in fact it affects us at all.

- Last week we looked at the question “Is there only one way to God?” and we saw why pluralism really isn’t a viable, logical, rational, or credible worldview.

- But, just because pluralism is wrong doesn’t automatically mean that Jesus is right.

- And so this morning we’re going to specifically look at Jesus, and whether the belief that He is God holds any ground in our modern, advanced culture.

- So let’s get moving!

(*)

- We need to start by considering the historicity of Jesus.

- What that means is, before we even look at the issue of Jesus being God or not, is there even any reason to believe that a man named Jesus actually lived and physically existed?

- Because obviously, if it can be proven that the man we know as Jesus never even walked on the earth, then we don’t even need to go any further in looking at whether or not He is God.

- I mean, we know that the Christian Scriptures tell us that Jesus was a real man who lived, died, and rose again.

- But what does history – specifically non-Christian history – tell us?

- There are some people who believe that we can know almost nothing about Jesus from ancient, non-New Testament sources. But this is not the case.

- In fact, many scholars say that Jesus is one of the persons of ancient history concerning whom we have a significant amount of quality data.

(*)

- Jesus’ life is said to be one of the most-mentioned and most-substantiated lives in ancient times.

- I’d like to quickly run through some of the references about Jesus that are found in historical records and writings – outside of the Bible.

- A man named Cornelius Tacitus, born around 52-54 AD was writing about the reign of Nero, and he writes:

- “Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius”.

- Lucian of Samosata, a satirist of the second century, writes this:

- “the man who was crucified in Palestine because He introduced this new cult into the world” (Lucian did not hold Christianity in high regard).

- Suetonius was a Roman historian born in 120 AD, and in his report on Roman history, Jesus is mentioned:

- “As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [another spelling of Christus], he expelled them from Rome”.

- Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor in the early second century wrote this:

- “they sang in alternate verse a hymn to Christ as to a god, and bound themselves to a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft, adultery, never to falsify their word, not to deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up”.

- Beyond this we have references about Jesus from Tertullian (a Jurist-theologian of Carthage) from around 197 AD, Thallus (a Samaritan-born historian who wrote about Christ in 52 AD), and Phlegon, a first-century historian.

- There are also several different portions of the Talmud that refer to Jesus.

- The Talmud is basically a Jewish encyclopedia that contains a massive collection of rabbinic traditions.

- And the Talmud was finally put together and codified in the fourth through sixth centuries.

- And the Talmud repeatedly acknowledges, not only that Jesus existed, but even says that Jesus worked miracles.

- However, the way that the Talmud described Jesus and His miracles is by referring to Him as one who “practiced magic and led Israel astray”.

- And, perhaps the most famous of all mentions of Jesus from outside of the Bible, is found in the works of Flavius Josephus.

- Josephus was a Jewish historian, born in 37 AD, who became a Pharisee at age 19.

- And here is one excerpt that Josephus wrote concerning Jesus:

o “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call Him a man, for He was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure.  He drew over to Him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles.  He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned Him to the cross, those that loved Him at the first did not forsake Him; for He appeared to them alive again in the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning Him.  And the tribe of Christians so named from Him are not extinct at this day”

- And so all in all, even when you remove the Bible from the picture and look for other references to Jesus, you find Him all over the place.

- You find Him in Jewish writings, such as those of Josephus and the Talmud.

- You find Him mentioned by the Greek writers Lucian of Samosata and Mara bar Serapion.

- And you find Him referred to by Roman historians Thallus, Tacitus, Pliny, and Suetonius.

(*)

- Concerning all of this, the Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say: “These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.”

- And so there is no scholarly reason to doubt the historicity of Jesus.

- There is no real defensible argument that claims that Jesus never existed.

- And so all of this leads us to ask another important question.

- Namely, when you take all of these references to Jesus, and you put them together, what sort of picture do you get?

- Does the Jesus written about in history resemble anything even remotely like the Jesus written about in the Christian Scriptures?

- Here is what we know about Jesus, based only on sources not including the Bible:

o Jesus was a Jew who lived in Israel during the first third of the first century.

o Jesus was born out of wedlock.

o Jesus intersected with the life and ministry of John the Baptist.

o Jesus attracted great crowds (especially because of his wondrous deeds).

o Jesus had a group of particularly close followers called disciples (five of whom are named).

o Jesus had conflict with the Jewish religious authorities because of His controversial teachings.

o Jesus was crucified during the time of Pontius Pilate’s governorship in Judea.

o Jesus was believed by many of His followers to have been the Messiah (the anticipated Saviour of Israel).

- And so all of this leads to the only possible conclusion.

(*)

- There is good, solid, trustworthy evidence to believe in the fact that Jesus was a historical person.

- Jesus was an actual man who actually lived right at the beginning of the first century.

- Jesus was a controversial teacher who claimed to be God and was executed because of it.

- And, whether you believe in Him or not, it also cannot be argued that Jesus made such a difference in the world that we literally date our calendars and years around His life.

- Jesus actually existed and lived.

(*)

- The real question is, was He just another man, or is He truly God?

- So let’s spend a little bit of time looking at what the New Testament documents say about Jesus.

- Because, while it would be foolish to base our entire time today around an argument like “Jesus is God, and we know it because the Bible says so!”, it would also be foolish to completely ignore and devalue what the Christian Scriptures say about who Jesus was and what Jesus did.

- It would be historically prejudiced to automatically exclude all Christian evidence about Jesus, because of the faulty belief that no one who became a follower of Jesus could ever report accurately about His life and teachings.

- I mean, we don’t do this for anything else.

- You’ll never hear about how anyone who believes in evolution can’t be trusted to write a scholarly, rational report about evolution.

- Or as if anyone who lives in Canada cannot be trusted to tell someone else about Canada, because they are incapable of being objective.

- Likewise, we cannot assume that all evidence about Jesus from outside of the Bible is necessarily more “objective”, and that all Biblical evidence is biased and shouldn’t even be considered (especially when we’ve already talked about why we can trust the Bible).

- And so let’s start with this.

(*)

- The broad and most central items common to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are considered by many scholars to be historically reliable.

- Matthew, Mark and Luke are referred to as the “Synoptic Gospels” because they have a lot of material in common (while John tells much about Jesus that does not appear in any of the other Gospels).

- So, let’s just think about the common material from Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

- If we take away all of the extra stuff, and only use the material that the majority of scholars – both liberal and conservative – believe to be historically accurate, then what kind of picture are we left with?

- And, does it resemble what we’ve already said about the picture of Jesus we know from non-Christian sources and references?

- So here are the broad and most central items that are common to the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke:

o Jesus was a Jewish teacher who was raised as a carpenter but who began a public ministry when He was around the age of 30.

o Jesus submitted Himself to John’s baptism.

o Jesus announced both the present and future dimensions of God’s Kingdom (or reign) on earth.

o Jesus gave love-based ethical commands to His listeners.

o Jesus taught in parables a lot.

o Jesus did amazing signs and wonders to demonstrate the arrival of His Kingdom.

o Jesus implicitly and explicitly claimed to be the Messiah or liberator of the Jewish people.

- So we can see that the most broad and central items that are common to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, share a considerable amount in common with the references to Jesus from outside of the New Testament documents.

- To add to this discussion, I’d also like to share something that brings me tremendous confidence (both in the trustworthiness in the Bible, as well as my belief that Jesus is God).

- And some of you have heard me say this before, but I hope you don’t get tired of hearing it, because I’m not getting tired of saying it!

(*)

- 1 Corinthians 15:1-6

o Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then, and you still stand firm in it. It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you—unless,

(*)

o of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place.

o I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he

(*)

o was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.

- Now the reason I wanted to point to this, is because even though most of the information we know about Jesus appears in the four Gospels, the Gospels are not the earliest Christian documents chronologically.

- Even though Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John appear at the beginning of our modern New Testament, they were actually written later than many of the letters that you read following the four gospels.

- The Gospels were not written before the 60s, and Jesus was crucified around 30 A.D.

(*)

- However, many of Paul’s letters were written in the 50’s AD.

- This includes Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.

- This is important to note, because that means that Paul cannot simply be copying this information out of one or more of the written Gospels (because the Gospels hadn’t been written yet).

- This means that when Paul wrote these words: “I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said.”, when we read this, this is not just Paul plagiarizing one of the Gospels.

- This is Paul passing along an oral tradition that had been around in the roughly 20-years between Jesus’ crucifixion and Paul finally recording this in written form.

- And this kind of time-frame doesn’t allow for legendary, mythic tales to develop.

- This belief was being spread during the lifetime of original eyewitnesses, which means that you can’t just go around making stuff up. Because the eyewitnesses can just immediately discredit you.

- So the fact that this oral tradition was already circulating as credible, factual, trustworthy information by the time Paul wrote his letters (which itself predates the writing of the four Gospels), that is really saying something in strong favour of what the Bible says about Jesus.

- Let’s take this a bit further.

- Let’s consider another piece of evidence as we look at this question of: “Is Jesus God?”

- And this piece of evidence is all about prophecies that we find fulfilled in Jesus.

- In the Jewish Scriptures, there are hundreds of prophecies (both outright prophecies, as well as allusions and prophetic symbols or types). Hundreds of predictions that foretold of what would happen when the Messiah (the Saviour) came to earth.

(*)

- Depending on what all you include you can arrive at different numbers, but conservatively we can say that Jesus fulfilled at least 300 ancient Jewish prophecies during His life.

- Here are just a few of them:

- Prophecies fulfilled by Jesus:

o Born of the seed of a woman – Genesis 3:15

o Come through the lineage of Shem – Genesis 9 and 10

o A descendent of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – Genesis 12, 17, 21, 22, 28, 35:10-12, Numbers 24:17)

o From the Israelite tribe of Judah, of the family line of Jesse – Isaiah 11:1-5

o From the house of David – 2 Samuel 7:12-16, Jeremiah 23:5

o The Messiah’s hands and feet will be pierced – Psalm 22:6-18, Zechariah 12:10

o Born of a virgin – Isaiah 7:14

o His own people, the Jews, will reject Him.  But the Gentiles will believe in Him – Isaiah 8:14, 28:16, 49:6, 50:6, 52:53, 60:3, Psalm 22:7-8, 118:22

o There will be a forerunner to Him – Isaiah 40:3, Malachi 3:1

o Born in Bethlehem – Micah 5:2

o The Messiah would come while the Temple of Jerusalem was still standing – Malachi 3:1, Psalm 118:26, Daniel 9:26, Zechariah 11:13, Haggai 2:7-9 (the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70)

o Ministry would begin in Galilee – Isaiah 9:1

o Would teach in parables – Psalm 78:2

o Would enter Jerusalem on a donkey – Zechariah 9:9

o Betrayed by a friend – Psalm 41:9

o Forsaken by His disciples – Zechariah 13:7

o Silent before accusers – Isaiah 53:7

o Interceded for His persecutors – Isaiah 53:12

o Killed alongside thieves – Isaiah 53:12

o Would suffer thirst – Psalm 69:21

o Bones would not be broken – Psalm 34:20

o Buried in a rich man’s tomb – Isaiah 53:9

o Would rise from the dead – Psalm 16:10

- Now, I know that many people would argue and debate about that last one, whether or not Jesus really rose from the dead.  But that’s actually going to be our topic in two weeks, as we close this entire series on Easter Sunday (so please come back then if you’d like to hear more about that specifically).

- But these prophecies were all fulfilled by Jesus.

- Now some people say that Jesus Himself deliberately attempted to fulfill these prophecies.

- “Jesus just stacked the deck in His favour, making sure that He fulfilled these prophecies so that He could claim to be the Messiah.”

- “So therefore, just because Jesus forced Himself to fulfill these prophecies doesn’t mean that He actually is the Messiah.”

- But this criticism can be quickly dismissed when you simply look at the nature of some of these prophecies.

- Because sure, some of these could be forced.  Jesus could have made sure He wrote into Jerusalem on a donkey.

- But not all of them are able to be controlled by human will.

- Jesus had no control over where He was born.

- Jesus had no control over having someone betray Him and the specific price for the betrayal.

- Jesus had no control over the manner of His death, the casting of dice for His clothes.

- Obviously Jesus had no control over His own lineage.

- And so on and so forth.

- So you cannot look at all of these prophecies and say that Jesus just fulfilled all of them simply through sheer human grit and determination.

- It’s just not possible.

- Now, there are others who say that maybe this is all just too convenient.

- “Maybe these so-called “prophecies” were actually written down at a later date, and they were forged to substantiate the legendary claims of early Christians.”

- “And therefore, the truth is that Jesus actually lived and died, and then afterwards these prophecies were recorded and made to look like they were written about Him.”

- But this cannot be the case.

- Based on a widely accepted dating of the various books of the Jewish Scriptures (which contain all of these messianic prophecies), all of these prophecies were made at least 400 years before Jesus was even born (many were even considerably older than that).

- And even if you aren’t going to date these ancient Jewish documents as early as many scholars do, you cannot argue this fact: The Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) was translated around 150-200 B.C.

- That means that sometime before 150-200 B.C. there must have been a Hebrew version of the Jewish Scriptures to be translated into Greek.

- So, even if each book in the Hebrew Bible was written, compiled, and then immediately translated into Greek, you’d still have to conclude that everything recorded (in what we know as the Old Testament, but it wasn’t first created to be a part of the Christian Bible, it was first – and still is – the Jewish Scriptures)

- But, even if we want to be skeptical of how early we date the Jewish Scriptures, we have to conclude that all of it – including the prophecies of the coming Messiah, were written at least 150 years before Jesus ever came on the scene.

- These prophecies were not written down after the life of Jesus and fabricated to coincide with His life.

- The final objection to address, when considering the messianic prophecies and their fulfillment being found in Jesus, is this:

(*)

- “What if it was all just one big coincidence?”

- “I mean sure, maybe Jesus couldn’t have forced it and fulfilled all of these prophecies intentionally, because some of them were out of His control.”

- “But what if it was all just one huge coincidence, that Jesus just so happened to live like He did, talk like He did, be born like He did, die like He did, and so on and so forth.”

- “And Jesus really isn’t the Messiah – the Son of God – He was just the recipient of some lucky timing and lucky circumstances.”

- But remember, we’re talking about over 300 messianic prophecies and prophetic ramifications here.

(*)

- Using the science of probability, we find the chances of just forty-eight of these prophecies being fulfilled in one person to be right at one in 10157 (as in a one followed by 157 zeros!  And yes, I triple checked that there are actually 157 zero’s there on the screen, but some of you just can’t help yourself and are counting them right now)

- But what we’re saying here is that belief that this is all just a coincidence is ruled out by the science of probability.

- Ok, so forget about all 300 prophecies, and even forget about 48 prophecies.

- One scholar took eight prophecies and concluded “that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 1017.”

- Now, 1017 is a pretty hard number to wrap our minds around, so to help, this is illustrated the following way:

o “Suppose that “we take 1017 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas.  They will 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 have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote them in their own wisdom.

o “Now these prophecies were either given by inspiration of God or the prophets just wrote them as they thought they should be.  In such a case the prophets had just one chance in 1017 of having them come true in any man, but they all came true in Christ.

o “This means that the fulfillment of these eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writing of those prophecies to a definiteness which lacks only one chance in 1017 of being absolute.”

- Essentially what this scholar is concluding is this:

- The odds that Jesus is not God, based only on 8 prophecies that He fulfilled that were written hundreds of years before His birth, the odds that Jesus is not God is 1 out of 1017.

- Which would mean, that it might just be a bigger leap of faith to deny that Jesus is God, rather than to believe in Him.

- So let’s take a minute to recap and consider what we know.

- We know that Jesus is a historical figure, spoken of not only in Christian contexts, but in Jewish, Roman, Greek, and more.

- We know that the picture painted by these credible sources outside of the Bible shockingly resembles the same Jesus written of in the Gospels.

- We know that hundreds of years before Jesus was born, many prophecies were written concerning the Messiah, and they were all fulfilled by Jesus.

- We know that we cannot write this off as being manipulated, faked, or just a lucky coincidence.

- And we know that the Gospels can be considered to be trustworthy historical documents which accurately describe the events they depict.

- Now, there is one other thing that needs to be considered in this question of “Is Jesus God?”

- One thing, upon which everything else really rises or falls.

- One thing, which answers today’s question conclusively, one way or the other.

- And that is the question, that we will be looking at in two weeks, as we conclude our series on Easter Sunday: “Did Jesus rise from the grave?”

- Because if He did, then that is the conclusive answer to the fact that He is God.

- And, if He didn’t, then that would also conclusively answer the question that He isn’t.

- And so we’ll get back to that on Easter Sunday, but for this morning, to bring this message to a close, I would like to take an old and famous argument from the pages of C.S. Lewis.

(*)

o “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 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 up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to.”

- And so there are some who study and research and examine the evidence surrounding the person of Jesus, and they conclude “He was a good man.”

- “I mean, I’m not sure if He was God, and I don’t think He’s the only way to heaven, but He was a good teacher.”

- But Jesus’ distinct claims of being God eliminate this from being a viable option.

- Jesus claimed to be God – both Christian and non-Christian sources agree to this. And because of this, His claim must either be true or be false. There is no other option.

- As C.S. Lewis says, Jesus must either be a liar, lunatic, or Lord.

- So, as we prepare to close this morning, let’s quickly look at these three options.

- Was Jesus a liar?

- If, when Jesus made His claims, He knew that He was not God, then He was lying and deliberately deceiving his followers.

- This would also make Him a hypocrite because He told His followers to be honest.

- If Jesus couldn’t back up His claims and knew it, then He was unspeakably evil.

- I mean, this deserves some very serious consideration.

- Jesus cannot be a good moral teacher and knowingly mislead people.

- But then, if Jesus was a liar, why is it that wherever Jesus has been proclaimed, lives have been changed for the good?

- Nations have changed for the better.

- Thieves are made honest.

- The physically, emotionally, spiritually unwell are restored.

- Hateful individuals have become channels of love.

- Unjust persons have become just.

- How would followers of a liar be changed so much for the better?

- To pull off such an incredible lie would require that person to be incredibly smart and brilliant.

- But then again, a brilliant person wouldn’t be willing to die for what they know to be a lie – yet Jesus dies because of His claims to be God.

- I would suggest to you this morning, that someone who lived as Jesus lived, taught as Jesus taught, and died as Jesus died, could not have been a liar.

- So we reach our second option.

- Was Jesus a lunatic?

- If it is unlikely that Jesus was a liar, then couldn’t He actually have thought Himself to be God, but have been mistaken?

- After all, it is possible to be both sincere and wrong (the flat earthers are proof of that).

- Was Jesus a lunatic?

- But then consider this: in Jesus we don’t see any of the signs of abnormal behaviour, erratic speech, and mental imbalance that go along with being so fully deranged.

- In light of the other things we know about Jesus, it’s hard to imagine that He was a lunatic.

- Jesus is a man who spoke some of the most profound sayings ever recorded.

- The skill and depth of His teachings only support the case His total mental soundness.

- It is very unlikely that someone who lived as Jesus lived and taught as Jesus taught was a lunatic.

- And so we reach our third option.

- Was Jesus Lord?

- Is Jesus God?

- The question with these three options is not which is possible, for all three are possible.

- Rather, the question is, “Which is more probable?”

- And there are good reasons to believe that Jesus was not a liar or a lunatic.

- So we are left with answering this question: “Is Jesus God?”

- But I cannot make this final choice for you.

- And I urge you to take this question seriously.

- Because this is a question that may have eternal implications, and may just be the most important decision you ever make.

- A man named John was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, and he also wrote a Gospel to talk about the life of Jesus.

- And, near the end of his Gospel, John writes a little bit about why he took the time to write all that he did about Jesus.

- And this is what he says:

(*)

- John 20:31

o “But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him you will have life by the power of his name.”

- And this morning, everything I have said, all of the research I have done, even the silly illustration at the beginning about the earth being flat,

- All of it was done so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in Him you will have life by the power of His name.

- Is Jesus God? Yes, I believe that He is.

- But what do you think?

- Because considering this question, and where the evidence points us to an answer (even though it does require faith, and there are still questions and doubts and problems and issues),

- But, following this question to its most probably answer, might just lead us to discovering the truth about Christianity.

- Close in prayer

- (*) Now What

- Benediction:

- Benediction: Hebrews 13:20-21

Now may the God of peace—

    who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus,

the great Shepherd of the sheep,

    and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood—

may he equip you with all you need

    for doing his will.

May he produce in you,

    through the power of Jesus Christ,

every good thing that is pleasing to him.

All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.

Scriptures:

- 1 Corinthians 15:1-9

- John 20:30-31

- John 21:24-25

- Luke 1:1-4

- Mark 1:1-4

Prayer:

- Pray that God would draw near to you as you draw near to Him. Pray that the one true God – as revealed to us through Jesus – would reveal Himself to you (in new and fresh ways, or maybe for the first time).

- Pray that Jesus would reveal Himself as God to those around you who do not yet follow Him. Pray that their hearts would be softened, and that their eyes and ears would be open to seeing Jesus as God.

Discussion: Reflection:

- When you think about the need for reliable, trustworthy information (whether about Jesus, or even about other subjects), where do you turn? How do you know what sources to trust and what ones to ignore? How do you determine what is a “fact”, and what is a “conspiracy theory”?

- The historicity of Jesus is widely believed and held to be true, it is the divinity of Jesus that is what many people call into question. Is this something you’ve heard or known about before, or have you experienced many who doubt whether or not Jesus actually lived? How might the fact that Jesus was an actual man who lived on the earth be a helpful way to bridge a conversation into Him being the one true God?

- Without relying on a simple cliché of “the Bible says so”, how can Christians use the New Testament documents to help someone come to believe in Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour? Furthermore, how can the many ancient prophecies from the Jewish Scriptures that Jesus fulfilled help point someone to faith in Jesus?

- C.S. Lewis has famously argued that there are only three possible options for who Jesus was: Liar, lunatic, or Lord. What do you think about this argument? Do you really believe that it must come down to one of these three choices (as opposed to the idea that Jesus was just a good man and a good teacher, nothing more)? Why or why not?

Now What Next Step:

- Get together as a family – or with a group of friends – and take turns answering the question “Is Jesus God?”

- The other people can ask follow-up questions, playing the role of someone who is not following Jesus.

- This can be a helpful exercise in preparing to answer the real questions that real people have.