Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Jesus Christ P31 (01-04-21)
Synopsis
What are you looking for? Has every need been met in your life? What about the meaning and purpose to life? What about a reason to live? What about wisdom, righteousness and forgiveness? Many people, lost and saved, are looking for things, something that lasts. They may not even be sure what they are looking for. And, if you are saved, have you not realized all that you do have in Him? You do not seek what you already have.
At some point, it is vitally important that you come to realize that the thing you are looking for is not in a thing but in a person, the person of Jesus Christ. I am not looking for wisdom, for in Him, He became wisdom for me. I am not looking for forgiveness, because in Him, I have become a forgiven person. He has become for me my wisdom. He is my righteousness, holiness and redemption, living in me. Apart from him, I did not have any of that. I am not there looking for a reason to be alive. I did not find a reason to be alive. I came to Him. He becomes my reason to be alive.
When I am born again, I have all that is in Christ, who is God in the flesh. I have the same Spirit living in Christ. Christ Jesus is now living in me. I do not become God, or even a little god. I become a new creation, with the Spirit of God indwelling me. Jesus is God, and always will be God. Jesus is the person firstborn, the only person born with the Spirit of God living in Him, and who is also God. The rest of us, we had to be born again, with the Spirit of God put in us, in a moment in time in history, the moment we believed, when we put our faith in Him.
So we look at this history, His story, the story of Christ Jesus, who came from heaven to take upon human flesh, who came full of the Father’s glory, full of grace and truth. We ponder over what the disciples had said, who were eyewitnesses of Jesus when he walked on earth. We read what they had to say about Him through the gospel accounts. Did they come to believe Jesus is God? How did that change their lives? What impact did the historical Jesus have on them? How about you today, having read their testimony concerning Christ Jesus? Did you know these accounts were written down so that by believing you might have life in His name?
Transcript
Let us continue in our study in A Closer Look at Jesus Christ, in Chapter 9: Historical Evidence of Christ’s Deity. This entirety of the Christian life we are talking about is contained in a person. If we do not know that person, then, quite frankly, we will never get to know ourselves, because that person of Christ has become our very own life. So you cannot study this subject enough.
You think about being lost, for example. I certainly lived many years in that condition. There might be someone listening right now in that condition. And others have recently come to Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. The desire in your heart to find meaning and purpose to life, to find a reason to live, to find forgiveness, if that is what you are looking for, to find all kinds of things, that you are looking for something. Then, you come to realize that thing you are looking for is not in a thing but in a person.
1 Corinthians 1:30
30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.
I was searching as a human being for 36 years of my life for meaning and purpose to life. I never did find meaning and purpose to life. I found Christ, who became my meaning and purpose in life. We are looking for the wrong things. We just think that is what we are looking for. But we are really looking for Him.
A person is anxious to look for forgiveness. That is why people are so anxious to do something to get forgiveness. Christ is our forgiveness. In other words, I did not get forgiveness. I got Christ, who is my forgiveness. It is a subtlety isn’t it? Yes.
I am there looking for a reason to be alive. I did not find a reason to be alive. I came to Him. He becomes your reason to be alive.
It talks about wisdom. A person says, “I want wisdom.” We are looking for wisdom, then we come to Christ and say, “Hey, I found wisdom.” “No, you didn;’t. You found Him, who became your wisdom.”
A person is out looking for righteousness. And he says, “Hey, I found righteousness.” “No, you didn’t. You found Him, who became your righteousness.”
1 Corinthians 1:30
30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.
You have people who are looking for sanctification. So you come to Christ and say, “Hey, I found sanctification.” “No, you didn’t. You came to Him, who became your sanctification.” It is because of Him living in you that you have become set apart, which is what sanctification is, to be set apart from the entirety of the world.
So we think constantly that I came to Christ. I was looking for peace. When you are lost, you are looking for that. You will say, “I came to Christ, and I found peace.” “No, you didn’t. You found Christ, who became your peace.”
We keep looking for things, and He keeps wanting to present a person to you. So many times we are doing word studies and everything else, on how to find peace, and how to be free from anxiety and how to do this. But the fact of the matter is, He and He alone is the freedom of all of those things.
Isaiah 26:3
You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.
So He who keeps his mind on Jesus will be kept in perfect peace. So he whose mind is stayed on Him, not on trying to find peace, or trying to get wisdom or trying to get righteousness or trying to get holiness, but whose mind is stayed upon the one who is your holiness, who is your righteousness, who is your wisdom, who is your very own life, is kept in perfect peace.
When I came to Christ, I did not find life. I found Him who became my life. The subtlety of that is unbelievable.
Many times when you get ready to enter a study on the Deity of Christ, that you get a response, “Let us get into some of these deeper things of God.” How in the world do you get deeper than in the person of Christ? How can anyone say they have learned all they need to know about Jesus?
That ties into the statement in John 20.
John 20:30-31
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
As far as the study books that we do, this one is the very foundation. We read that also in Matthew.
Matthew 7:24-27
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
When the storms come, and they will, you better have your life on a firm foundation, which is Christ and Him alone. There is nothing else that allows that than studying about the person of Jesus Christ. It is about the deepest subject you will ever get into.
John 20:30-31
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
It is also interesting that at the very end of that gospel of John, in John 21 we read this.
John 21:25
25 Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
So, we literally, even though the bible that we have in front of us is fantastic, but it says, it is just a tip of the iceberg. If they would have recorded everything Jesus did, from the time he was born to the time he died, there would not be enough books in all the world to contain those works. That is not shallow stuff. That is very deep.
So we ask ourselves the question here. Jesus performed His miracles where? In front of his disciples. They were eyewitnesses of these events. That is where history comes down. I never knew Abraham Lincoln. Surprisingly enough, some people think I am that old. I never knew him. I never knew George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. But somebody did. They were eyewitnesses of the knowledge of those people. But I can be a skeptic and say, “I do not believe he was here at all.” I can just think some artist drew some man with a tall hat and a beard. And you would be a stupid skeptic. But there were people who were eyewitnesses of that and they were eyewitnesses to a historical fact. The eyewitness to that is the evidence of this historical fact. And that is what we are looking at, the historical evidence of the Deity of Jesus Christ.
These events were recorded by the disciples, and we are going to receive, as a result of that, is that we can have life. This is believing what Jesus was talking about. Believing in this Christ Jesus, understanding He is our everything. In John 20, by believing you may have life in His name.
John 20:31
31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Christianity is not some blind leap into darkness, but rather a step into life. Our faith is historical. It is not mystical. At a very specific time, God entered into this world and became flesh and lived among us as the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
In 2 Corinthians, it tells us that God made His light to shine in our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6
6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
So, if a man is to see God, he is going to have to focus on life and the words of Jesus Christ. For it is in Christ that God gave Himself a face, so to speak, a body, an incarnation. Incarnation, as Clark Pinnock notes in Biblical Revelation, “belongs to the flesh and bone of history”. Christ Jesus belongs to the flesh and bones of Jesus. It is historical not some mystical thing. Christ came to this earth. God visited this earth in the person of Jesus Christ.
As we talked about so many times, here Christ Himself claimed Himself to be God. As we studied in lesson 2, a person claiming himself to be God would either have to be a madman, who thought that he was God when indeed he wasn’t, which would really make you out to be a lunatic, or someone who knew full well he was not God but claimed that he was, and that would make him the biggest imposter who ever walked on the face of the earth, and would bring to man the worst atrocity of all to mankind, because of his teaching would be dooming many people to hell. For if he is not the way to truth and life and no one comes to the Father except through him, then those who believe that, all he did was condemn all of us and send us all to hell. It is a little difficult to think of Jesus as a madman or a lunatic. It is very difficult to believe him as a liar and an imposter. But those are the only options unless you believe him for what he says he is, either deceived beyond measure or a con artist par excellent, or he is truly is what he claimed to be, and that is God.
We are going to look at different areas where he received worship. Only God is worthy of receiving worship. There are not too many people who bow at my feet and say, “Praise, Bob”. If they did, they really would be a lunatic. It is “Praise God.” He is the object of worship.
Let us trace through the beginning, a chronology of people who were historical people, who came into contact with the historical Jesus, and came to some very vital conclusions about Jesus.
So let us read about the wisemen in Matthew 2:1-2.
Matthew 2:1-2
2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi[a] from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
Ask yourself the question. Why were these wisemen looking for the king of the Jews? To worship Him. Why would they be coming to worship someone? Because it was prophesied, and the different signs prophesied. These were wisemen, who certainly heard about the prophecies of the coming Messiah, and saw this sign of this star in the East, and came looking for him. They perceived that as a sign from God, where that is shining, that is where the Messiah is. We have come to look for Him so we could worship Him. Obviously it was a sign of Deity in their presence.
In Matthew 2:11, what did they do when they saw Jesus?
Matthew 2:11
11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
In this particular case, they bowed down, and worshipped the Lord Jesus Christ, even as a baby, and presented Him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. So Jesus, even before He is in His physical form, knew what was going on. He was being worshipped by wisemen who didn’t know what was going on.
He also received worship from those who knew him the best in his physical life, and those were the apostles.
Matthew 14:22-24
22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. 23 After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, 24 and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
If anyone who has ever been on the Sea of Galilee, you will understand that can happen in an absolute instance. When Amy and I had the fortunate experience of going over there, we were out on a boat on the Sea of Galilee. It was just like glass, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, that thing was bouncing all over the place. That can happen.
Here was Jesus with his disciples and he instructed them to get into a boat and go to the other side. So they were making that trip, being buffeted back and forth by the waves.
Matthew 14:25
25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.
If that does not get your attention, I do not know what would.
Matthew 14:26
26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
We look at that and read it. We say, “Well, did they not know Jesus was God?” The answer to that is, “No, not in His fullness yet.” Suspicious of it? Yes. Prophesied? Yes. But did they really get to the depths of that? No. Do you know why? It tells us. It was not until Pentecost.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10
9 However, as it is written:“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[Isaiah 64:4] –
the things God has prepared for those who love him –10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
Until the time the Spirit of God came to indwell those apostles, which was on the day of Pentecost, they did not understand or comprehend the fullness of the truth about Jesus Christ. That is precisely why Peter, a few days earlier, was out denying Jesus to a little maiden girl, and then forty days later was out to the very people who crucified Jesus, right in their face. You talk about getting in their face. “You are the ones who crucified the Son of man.” Where did that boldness come? Where did the rareness of that truth come from? It came from the indwelling of the Spirit of God, on the day of Pentecost, the first time man was born into this world. Jesus is the firstborn from among the dead, and the first man ever born alive spiritually. The rest of us, who are in Christ, had to be reborn alive spiritually.
Matthew 14:26-29
26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
27 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”28 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
29 “Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.
Now that would be an event!
Matthew 14:30-33
30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
32 And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. 33 Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
I think we have to put ourselves in these situations, rather than just reading words on a page in a book. Imagine yourself in the situation. Let us say you and I were going to go out fishing to get there. We were out in the middle of a lake in a boat. The winds came, and the one who had been our friend, and somebody who had been close to us, who we knew and was quite different from us, and making claims of himself that were quite unusual. We have read a lot of prophecies about this person, and all seemed to be fitting, but did not know for sure. But then you are out in the middle of a storm, and then all of a sudden you see your buddy walking out on the water. You would think you would say, “Come on in.” But I tell you, it would scare you to death. It is contrary to the laws of nature. You do not walk on water. You swim in water. So you are seeing a physical miracle right before your eyes, something you have never seen before. “This has got to be a ghost.” “This cannot be the real Jesus.” “He is like one of us. He cannot walk on water.” But there he was. He cries out to us. “Do not be afraid. Take courage.” “Hey, Bob. Come on Bob.” He says, “Come on out.” You get out of the boat and take a few steps. You could imagine the thrill of that, for a second or two. This is unbelievable. But you can also understand the fear of it because of the severity of the waves, knowing that out in the middle of that water, in the middle of that turmoil, if you were in water instead of on top of water, you would not be able to get out of the water due to drowning. And so all of a sudden, you get your eyes on the waves instead of on the Lord, who said “Come on out here.” Then you start seeing. Then you see salvation. Jesus reaches down in the water and picks him up and obviously puts him in the boat.
When studying a lesson like this, it is, of course, to show evidence of Christ’s Deity and only God can be the recipient of worship. As you study these things, we have to come to personal application. I think there is a phenomenal lesson for us in this particular passage of scripture alone. In this world in which we live, it is full of trials and tribulations. It is full of waves. It is full of the winds. It ties into, again, that passage in Matthew that says to build your life on a foundation, because when the storms come and the winds blow, it is going to blow your house down if you are not rooted in Jesus. Not in religion. Not in theology, but in Him are you rooted? It is not as if problems are going to come your way. It is just when they are going to come your way. None of us are going to escape those according to the word of God.
John 16:33 (NASB)
33 These things I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”
We were taught so many times, in the late 60s and early 70s, certain things. When I came to the Lord, there was this big conception that when you come to Christ all your problems will go away. People will come into your face, eyes gleaming and faces smiling and saying, “I came to Jesus and all my problems went away.” It was not very long before you would stop hearing those testimonies any more. The reason for it is because it is a lie. Those problems do not go away. You now have a problem solver in your life. But, again, He is not there to solve your problems. He is there to be your life. And His life is the solution to the problem. It is back to that simple reality that Christ is not a problem solver. He is your life. It is because He is your life that your problems will be solved.
It is one of those things we have to realize, that in this world we are going to have tribulation. There is no one that escapes that. Sometimes we get the idea that these pastors and people on television and on radio, they never have any problems because their faith is so big. Then we start talking about how big our faith is. You hear people say, “If you had faith in God blessing me the way I do, you would be as blessed as I am.” So, in many instances, people build up pastors and really help them to become extremely wealthy. They are the ones making him wealthy, not God. He is there telling them, “It is because of my faith I am wealthy, and if you have my faith, you will be wealthy too.” So people are out there trying to get wealthy instead of getting the one who is wealthy, who is Christ Jesus, the one who is more precious than all the gold and the diamonds in the world could ever possess. It should be obvious that the creator is more precious than the things created.
In this world, we are going to have tribulation. No one will escape that. I will not escape that. Nobody escapes that. We all have them. If our foundation is not rooted in Christ Jesus, then those things are going to blow us away. When He said to Peter, “You of little faith”, it was not sitting there to chastise the size of his faith. “Why did you doubt me?” That is the whole issue. It is not, “you need to work on your faith.” The issue is that you lost confidence in the faithful one. In other words, “Peter, why did you doubt?” “When I said come on out, I certainly would not be saying come out and walk on water, and say I pulled another one on you, as if I am a godly prankster of the age, saying ‘I got him again’. If I did not provide for you to walk on water, I would not have called you out on the water.”
Sometimes we have got to remember that, even in our work, if God called us to it, then He is going to provide the wherewithal to keep us in it. If He called us out on the water, then why would He call you out on the water and not provide you the ability to walk on water. But we get our eyes on the waves instead of on the Provider. We start yelling “help” and start sinking. Jesus is saying the same thing to us. “You of little faith. Why do you doubt me? If I called you into this, then why would you think that I am not going to provide for the water to hold you.”
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