The Jesus I Know

1 Corinthians 15:3-11, 13-19

Luke 1:1-4

Psalm 105:1-6

Who is the Jesus I Know?

This week, I found a song that resonated with me, and seemed to illustrate this struggle with uncomfortable clarity, and was the inspiration of the sermon this morning. Before I start this morning, I would like to share the lyrics of this song with you, and I would like you to honestly reflect on who you think Jesus is, and if that is an accurate image of who he is:

Do You ever feel misunderstood, When You look at what this thing's become?

How does something that sides with the least, Be the thing that excludes them the most?

And I'm not tryna put words in Your mouth, 'Cause I fear that's where we got it wrong

But sometimes the Jesus I see, Seems so far from the Jesus I know

And just like these people I blame, Have I made you something you're not?

'Cause I live off the good of Your name, And in some ways I profit the Cross

And I'm scared if you walked in this church, You might flip all the tables and go

So would that same Jesus love all my merch? Or is that just the Jesus I know?

And I've tried with the best of my words, To be true to who you really are

But I wonder how far I've fell short. Do you recognize yourself in my songs?

'Cause all that I want is the truth, And I hope my theology's close

But who could summarize infiniteness? To think I know only proves that I don't

A mystery I'll never quite get, That's the Jesus I know

This last lyric struck me the most when I listened to this song. And the heartfelt prayer of Benjamin William Hastings, a seemingly confused young man resonated with me, too. 4 years ago I found myself in His shoes. I was seeing so many versions of Jesus that didn’t quite fit together. I decided that I didn’t want to take people’s word for who Jesus was anymore. I wanted to know for myself. In 2019 I decided to read through the entire Bible. Suddenly, the noise of the world became quiet, and I could see the image of God and the person of Jesus jumping out of the pages. And after I did that, I realized just how much I had been missing out on, and enrolled in seminary almost immediately. There are still so many mysteries in scripture, but there is also so much wisdom already evident in scripture. In the midst of the mysteries, there is truth. But how do we know it’s true?

Who is Jesus?

An atheist homicide detective once begged this question. One day, he was invited to church by a coworker, and was intrigued by the way the pastor spoke about Jesus. He purchased a Bible and wanted to see for himself, for purely investigative purposes. As someone with years of investigative experience in multiple areas, the composition of the gospels fascinated him the most. He had heard hundreds, even thousands of eyewitnesses in his career, and the gospels had a striking similarity to those eyewitness statements. He began studying the gospel of Mark using Forensic Statement Analysis. After months of study, with much hesitation and skepticism, he concluded that this was, in fact, the true eyewitness account based on the statements of the apostle Peter.

This homicide detective is named J. Warner Wallace, and at the beginning of his book, “Cold-Case Christianity”, he describes what he calls “belief that” versus “belief in”. At the start of his skeptical analysis of the gospels, he had a strong “belief that” Jesus was a real person who existed and had some wise things to say, but the deeper he dug into the gospels, the statements of the disciples, apostles, and Jesus himself, he shifted from “belief that” to “belief in”. He no longer regarded Jesus as simply a historical figure who existed, but the divine son of God.

So what would cause a staunch atheistic homicide detective to bow his knee to Jesus? Well, it is because of the world’s most famous and controversial cold-case - the death and empty tomb of Jesus Christ. Like cold-cases today, where physical evidence is almost completely depleted, cold-cases are studied by scrutinizing eyewitness statements and what evidence may be remaining. Like a cold-case today, reliable witness statements of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus have been preserved, and along with the minimal evidence that still exists. In order to prove that Jesus was the son of God, we must do a couple things - find out who Jesus said He was, find out the verifiable facts about Jesus, and if those facts are found reasonably true, then this will prove that Jesus was who he said he was, and therefore, we are compelled to worship him. So let’s take this approach and see what we find.

Who does the Bible say Jesus was?

In order to study Jesus accurately, we must first see if the scriptures that speak about Him are reliable. Most skeptics write-off the Gospels not as eyewitness testimonies, but representations of the theology of their religious communities and not written by eyewitnesses. However, there is substantial evidence that the gospels are dated within the first century, within the lifetimes of the original eyewitnesses of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. The earliest written scriptures in the New Testament, however, are not the gospels, but Paul’s epistles. This is why his letters are so important, because he consistently affirms the theology of the early apostles and references eyewitnesses as his primary source of this information. The book of Acts helps to piece together the chronology of the rest of Paul’s letters and the actions of the first apostles.

It is important to note that the qualifications to be an apostle were very specific - they had to be eyewitnesses of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, in order to preach with the most accuracy. Paul was the exception to this, as he notes in 1 Corinthians 15:8-9:

“And last of all he appeared to me, as if I were born at the wrong time. I’m the least important of the apostles. I don’t deserve to be called an apostle…”

Early Christians were persecuted so intensely not because people thought they made Jesus up. They knew He was a real person, and most people were familiar with what He taught. Essentially, they either didn’t believe or were threatened by His claims to deity that the apostles were affirming, and affirmed continually, consistently, and through all sorts of questioning.

Historical accuracy was of primary importance to the apostles, and the Gospels emerged several decades after the death of Jesus and the period of Acts. As Christianity was spreading and churches were forming, many questions were arising about how to live out this new thing called Christianity. We see Paul and other apostles trying to ensure that the theology of these new churches is unified by the eyewitness testimonies of Jesus and His teachings, and the gospel accounts were written to provide written accounts of those testimonies for these new churches to reference. While they were not written to reflect these early Christian communities’ beliefs, they were written as a resource for these communities. And it is true that they were not written by eyewitnesses, but as accounts based on eyewitness testimonies, which does not negate their accuracy. Luke admits to this in his gospel in Luke 1:1-4:

“Many people have already applied themselves to the task of compiling an account of the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used what the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word handed down to us. Now, after having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, I have also decided to write a carefully ordered account for you, most honorable Theophilus. I want you to have confidence in the soundness of the instruction you have received.”

There are written sources by other non-Christians that affirm his existence and aspects of his character and teachings, most famously, Josephus. The fact is that there is sufficient evidence to support that the historical events in the Gospels are true and accurate, and the fact that they speak of the miraculous and divine does not negate their historicity. So then, how can we believe that the miraculous and divine acts that it speaks of are true?

Who did Jesus say he was?

Jesus makes many claims in the New Testament about His deity. A large amount of these claims align with Old Testament prophecies about the messiah. He was born a Nazarene. He was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. He was hung on a tree, pierced, and caused to suffer. If a person were to come and purposefully try to fulfill all of these prophecies themselves, it would be near impossible, as many of these circumstances would be out of anyone’s direct control.

Since many of Jesus’s statements of deity are closely tied with the prophecies, it is important to understand them in order to understand who Jesus said he was. Jesus most commonly referred to himself as the “Son of Man”. On the surface, it seems like this is just saying that Jesus was a human. However, Jesus uses this title to refer specifically to Daniel 7 - to the son of man coming on the clouds to bring an eternal, heavenly rule. As he is being questioned before his crucifixion, when the high priest asks Jesus if he is the Christ, God’s son, he answers “You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Jesus also said:

1. seeing him was like seeing God (John 12:44-46, John 14:6-9),

2. before Abraham was, He was (John 8:56-58), that He can forgive sins (Matthew 9:6-8, John 8:23,24),

3. that he can grant eternal life (John 5:21-23, John 11:25, John 10:27,28, John 6:40),

4. he predicted his own death (Matthew 16:21–23, Matthew 17:22–23, Matthew 20:17–19).

As famous astro-physicist apologist Hugh Roth says, 2,000 of the 2,500 Old Testament prophecies have been fulfilled to the letter, and many of those include the prophecies about the messiah fulfilled in Jesus. The remaining 500 prophecies deal with the end times, and have yet to be fulfilled, but with a batting average like that, we can feel confident that as these prophecies have been fulfilled, the remaining prophecies will be fulfilled as they are written as well.

So if we hold to Wallace’s conclusion that the gospels are genuine eyewitness accounts of Jesus, that the prophecies of the Old Testament and Jesus were fulfilled accurately, we can see the great possibility that Jesus was who He said He was, but we are not quite convinced yet.

What does the world think of Jesus?

While we have the written record of Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament and the prophecies about Him from the Old Testament, what good does that do us if we are not convinced of the accuracy of the Bible? While there are various sources that support the historical accuracy of the events recorded in the Bible, fierce skeptics will still not accept this as true. Apologist Gary Habermas has taken a new and interesting approach to defending the faith. He calls this the “minimal facts” approach. To combat the vehement skepticism of the validity of the Bible, he took on the challenge to defend the Christian faith using only the facts that were nearly universally agreed upon by skeptics and adherents alike. He developed a list of these facts, and four of them are the most compelling and universally agreed upon:

1. Jesus died on the cross and was buried

2. Jesus’s tomb was empty and no one ever produced his body

3. Jesus’s disciples believed that they saw Jesus resurrected from the dead

4. Jesus’s disciples were transformed following their alleged resurrection observations

These 4 minimal facts bear striking resemblance to Paul’s defense of the faith in 1 Corinthians 15:3-6:

“I passed on to you as most important what I also received: Christ died for our sins in line with the scriptures, he was buried, and he rose on the third day in line with the scriptures. He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve, and then he appeared to more than 500 brothers and sisters at once - most of them are still alive to this day, though some have died.”

What Paul and Habermas are trying to convey is that these historical events happened and can be verified, and if these events happened, then Jesus was who He said He was. And if Jesus was who he said he was, then we have eternal hope in him if we surrender our lives to him. Paul goes on to say this in 1 Corinthians 15:14-16:

“If Christ hasn’t been raised, then our preaching is useless and your faith is useless. We are found to be false witnesses about God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, when he didn’t raise him, if it's the case that the dead aren’t raised. If the dead aren't raised, then Christ hasn't been raised either."

Paul accurately states that the strength of our faith stands and falls on the truth of Jesus’s resurrection. This is not one of the minimal facts supported by both adherents and skeptics for obvious reasons. It has to assume the miraculous, which many modern thinkers will not accept. As a result, there have been many theories created to explain why the tomb of Jesus was found empty, which is a verifiable fact. Rumors to explain this scene began the moment Roman soldiers found the empty tomb, becuase the penalty for a failed crucifixion was steep, so to save their own skin, the constructed a lie (Matthew 28:11-15). There are other theories that emerged since then, including: the disciples stealing Jesus’s body, Jesus didn’t actually die and emerged as some sort of “zombie”, they buried him in the wrong tomb, there was an imposter Jesus, the disciples had a mass hallucination, or they lied to create a conspiracy. These theories range from probable to ridiculous, but are any of them reasonable?

Going back to our homicide detective friend, J. Warner Wallace, he takes a look at several of these claims and refutes them based only on these 4 minimal facts and basic reasoning. None of these theories can explain the 4 virtually indisputable facts about Jesus simultaneously, or give a reasonable alternative outside of those 4 facts.

For example, the disciples could have all just lied about seeing the resurrected Jesus. The problem is that there still was no body, so the evidence of the empty tomb was still there. But also, for the disciples to pull-off a conspiracy of this scale, there is no way they would have endured the intense persecution that they did. This is not one of the 4 facts in this list, but it is virtually universally accepted that early Christian faced fierce persecution. They were obviously changed by whatever they claimed to have seen at the empty tomb that cannot be explained away as a lie, and could not have been a good enough reason to be ridiculed, suffer, and die as a martyr. As Colson, infamous for the watergate scandal and now a born-again Christian is quoted saying:

"Here were the 10 most powerful men in the United States," he said, referring to the Watergate cover-up attempt. "With all that power, and we couldn't contain a lie for two weeks."

Each one of these theories seem reasonable in one regard, but are difficult to substantiate from every possible angle. Using abductive reasoning, as all of these other theories become less and less reasonable in light of the most generally accepted truths, the most reasonable conclusion emerges - the disciples were telling the truth about the resurrection of Jesus.

Who is Jesus to me?

So after going through the hard work of determining what the Bible says about Jesus, what Jesus said about Himself, and what the world says about Jesus, what does that mean for us? As C.S Lewis famously quotes, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

This reflects what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19 “If Christ hasn’t been raised, then your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins, and what’s more, those who have died in Christ are gone forever. If we have a hope in Christ only in this life, then we deserve to be pitied more than anyone else.”

Once again, Paul forces us to face the consequences of what it would mean to believe that Christ was a person who existed, but did not rise from the dead, and therefore, is not the messiah. Our “belief that” would be worthless if he was merely a wise human teacher with no supernatural power. But if we believe that Christ died and was resurrected, we then believe that He was the prophesied Messiah, and therefore, our hope in this life and the life to come and worthy of our eternal praise. We must choose - is God of no importance to us, or of infinite importance?

Unfortunately, many of us try to make Christ moderately important. There are many distractions that force us to put our faith on the backburner. And as many people try to get science and materialistic studies to take the place of God, rather than support the existence of God, we are made to feel silly for believing in a God who can do the miraculous, much less cares about us. And many people look at the terrible things done in the name of Christianity and write it off altogether. It is difficult to sift through all of the shadows the world tries to cast on Christianity today.

I want to encourage you this morning that answers are out there if you are willing to look for them. There are aspects of the Bible that are still shrouded in mystery, but there are many aspects that are verifiable and true. So if we can trust the Bible with what we know, then we can trust the Bible for what we don’t know. The wonderful thing is that Jesus invites us to explore this with Him. He wants us to get to know Him, to search and study the scriptures to see a more accurate picture of Him, and as we do so, we will find ourselves more compelled to devote ourselves to Him in faith. I know that I don’t have all the answers, and my theology is still a work in progress, but I have found this evidence to be compelling enough for me to accept the truth of Jesus in my life, and as I study, I continue to be convinced of the truth of the Bible’s teachings. If there is anything I said this morning that stuck out to you in any way, I encourage you to investigate it on your own. Search the scriptures on your own, consult the scholars who have spent their careers investigating the Bible, and see for yourself who Jesus is. I may not know all there is to know about Jesus, but what I do know is that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament to come and save us from our sins if we accept the atoning sacrifice He made for us on the cross, and believe that He ascended to heaven to make a way for all people to have eternal hope. How about you?

Epilogue

After writing and preaching this sermon last Sunday, a new episode of my favorite podcast came out, and interestingly enough, addressed several of the archaeological evidences for Jesus's resurrection, the reliability of scripture, and more! Here is a link to the podcast if you want to explore this topic in more depth.