THE DIETY OF JESUS

 “How do you KNOW Jesus was and is the Son of God?” 

All throughout the gospel records, Jesus urged his followers and listeners to believe in HIM, not just in his teachings.  All that Jesus did and said pointed to his identity as the Messiah, the Son of God, and to the purpose for which He came to earth.   There are only 3 different ways to interpret this:  1) He was not who he claimed to be and his teaching were the ramblings of a lunatic who sincerely thought he was God [and wasn’t]; 2)his teachings were the words of a liar who knew he wasn’t God [but said he was]; or 3) He was who He  claimed to be—the incarnate Son of the one and only creator of the universe, the one who said , “I am the Lord and there is no other.”   Can we prove he was really who he said he was? YES!  Jesus did not make His claims without also providing evidence.  More over, the evidence He provided is so overwhelming and compelling that it ought to fill our hearts with awe and wonder at the God-man, Jesus Christ. 

Imagine agreeing to meet someone you’ve never seen before at a large convention center.  As you make plans over the phone, you decide how you will recognize him/her.  What would you ask?   (What will you be wearing?  A blazer.  What color?  Blue   Where will you be waiting?  Near the north entrance?  What if I can’t find you?  I’ll wear a nametag.  Etc….)

Now imagine God devising the plan to send His only Son to earth to be born as a human infant.  He wants His people to know Him, so He spells out the ways to recognize Him. 

He will be an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham. (Genesis 22:18; Galatians 3:16)

Narrow that down?  A descendant of Isaac, not Ishmael. (Genesis 21:12; Luke 3:23-34)

Still too broad?  Born from Jacob’s line (Numbers 24:17, Luke 3:23-34)

More?  From the tribe of Judah… (Genesis 49:10, Luke 3:23-33)

Still not sure you’d find him? 

Family line of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1, Luke 3:23-32)

AND from the house of David (Jeremiah 23:5, Luke 3:23-31)

AND for extra measure, he will be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2, Matthew 2:1)

How will we know which baby born in Bethlehem?

He will be preceded by a messenger who will prepare the way (Isaiah 40:3, Matthew 3:1-2). 

He will begin his ministry in Galilee (Isaiah 9:1, Matthew 4:12-17)

and will teach in parables (Psalm 78:2, Matthew 13:34-35),

performing many miracles (Isaiah 35:5-6, Matthew 9:35).

Okay, that helps!  “Wait”, says God, “I’m just getting started!”

He will ride into the city of Jerusalem on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9; Matthew 21:2, Luke 19:35-37)

AND will appear suddenly and forcefully at the temple courts and zealously ‘clean house’ (Psalm 69:9; Malachi 3:1; John 2:15-16).

In ONE day no fewer than 29 specific prophecies were fulfilled, and these were written at least 500 years before his birth!

1.    He will be betrayed by a friend (Psalm 41:9; Matthew 26:49)

2.    The price of his betrayal will be 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12; Matthew 26:15)

3.    His betrayal money will be cast to the floor of God’s temple (Zechariah 11:13; Matthew 27:5)

4.    His betrayal money will be used to buy the potter’s field (Zechariah 11:13; Matthew 27:7)

5.    He will be forsaken and deserted by his disciples (Zechariah 13:7; Mark 14:50)

6.    He will be accused by false witnesses (Psalm 35:11; Matthew 26:59-60)

7.    He will be silent before his accusers (Isaiah 53:7; Matthew 27:12)

8.    He will be wounded and bruised (Isaiah 53:5; Matthew 27:26)

9.    He will be hated without a cause (Psalm 69:4; John 15:25)

10.He will be struck and spit on (Isaiah 50:6; Matthew 26:67)

11.He will be mocked, ridiculed, and rejected (Isaiah 53:3; Matthew 27:27-31 and John 7:5 and 48)

12.He will collapse from weakness (Psalm 109:24-25; Luke 23:26)

13.He will be taunted with specific words (Psalm 22:6-8; Matthew 27:39-43)

14.People will shake their heads at him (Psalm 109:25; Matthew 27:39)

15.People will stare at him (Psalm 22:17; Luke 23:35)

16.He will be executed among sinners (Isaiah 53:12; Matthew 27:38)

17.His hands and feet will be pierced (Psalm 22:16; Luke 23:33)

18.He will pray for his persecutors (Isaiah 53:12; Matthew 27:38)

19.His friends and family will stand afar off and watch (Psalm 38:11; Luke 23:49)

20.His garments will be divided and won by the casting of lots (Psalm 22:18; John 19:23-24)

21.He will thirst (Psalm 69:21; John 19:28)

22.He will be given gall and vinegar (Psalm 69:21; Matthew 27:34)

23.He will commit himself to God (Psalm 31:5; Luke 23:46)

24.His bones will be left unbroken (Psalm 34:20; John 19:33)

25.His heart will rupture (Psalm 22:14; John 19:34)

26.His side will be pierced (Zechariah 12:10; John 19:34)

27.Darkness will come over the land at midday (Amos 8:9; Matthew 27:45)

28.He will be buried in a rich man’s tomb (Isaiah 53:9; Matthew 27:57-60)

29.He will die 483 years after the declaration of Artaxedrxes to rebuild the temple in 444 BC (Daniel 9:24)

AND in addition:

On the third day after his death, he will be RAISED from the dead (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:31),  ASCEND to heaven (Psalm 68:18; Acts 1:9), and be SEATED at the right hand of God in full majesty and authority (Psalm 110:1; Hebrews 1:3)

What extraordinary lengths God went to in order to help people identify and recognize his only begotten Son!  Jesus fulfilled hundreds of major Old Testament prophecies—all of which were made more than 400 years before his birth.   This makes a very compelling case for the diety of Christ.  And I didn’t even mention the fact that his method of execution—crucifixion—had not even been heard of when the prophecies were made! 

Still skeptical?  Let’s talk probabilities and statistics.

Professor Peter W Stoner, in an analysis that was carefully reviewed and pronounced to be sound by the American Scientific Affiliation, states that the probability of just EIGHT prophecies being fulfilled in one person is 1 in 10¹⁷ (that’s 1 in 100, 000,000, 000, 000, 000).

Need a visual for that?  If you were to take 100, 000,000, 000, 000, 000 (that’s 1,000 trillion) silver dollars and spread them across the state of Texas, they would not only cover the entire state but would also form a pile of coins two feet deep! Now, take one more silver dollar, mark it with a big red X, toss it into the pile and stir it thoroughly.

Now, blindfold yourself, and starting at El Paso on the western border of the state, walk the length and breadth of it—from Amarillo in the panhandle to Laredo on the Rio Grande all the way to Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico, stooping just once along the way to pick up a single silver dollar out of that 2 foot deep pile.  Take off your blindfold and look at it.  What are the chances that you picked the marked coin?  The same chance that one person could have fulfilled just eight prophecies in one lifetime!

Jesus Himself pointed out that His actions, the miracles he performed, were evidences that He is God’s son.  (John 10:25, 38)

Who else but God has the mastery Jesus demonstrated over the human body, weather, gravity, and even death itself? Who else but the Incarnate One could do these things:

·       Calm a storm (Matthew 8)

·       Make a mute person speak (Matthew 9)

·       Feed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish (Matthew 14)

·       Cast out demons (Mark 5)

·       Walk on water (Mark 6)

·       Bring sight to the blind (Mark10)

·       Curse a fig tree (Mark 11)

·       Foretell the future (Mark 14)

·       Heal a paralyzed man (Luke 5)

·       Raise a boy from the dead (Luke 7)

·       Heal incurable hemorrhaging (Luke 8)

·       Cleanse lepers (Luke 17)

·       Turn water into wine (John 2)

·       Make the lame walk (John 5)

·       Forgive sin (John 8)

·       Raise a man from the dead (John 11)

    Jesus gave His life so that we can be saved.  Then He was resurrected--conquering hell, death, and the grave once and for all. All this so that we can live in heaven with Him--if we choose Him as our LORD and SAVIOR.

           

       "He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay."  Matthew 28:6 (ESV)   

      PRAISE GOD!!  Have a blessed Easter as you celebrate the RISEN LORD!

The Absolute Truth of the Bible, pt 3

A reminder of where we left off:

God wants us to be sure that His word really tells us about Him—to be so confident about His perfect book that we dare to put into action all that it teaches us.  So it makes sense that he gave us a book that can stand up to the same important questions we can ask about any other book in the world:

a)     Do the facts inside the book add up?  (discussed in part 1)

b)     Was the book passed down without mistakes?  (discussed in part 2)

c)      Do facts from outside the book back it up?

C.  Backed Up By Outside Facts

My pastor, Chad Mantooth, recently said that most old writings are considered to be true until proven false; however, the world reverses this when it comes to the Bible, saying it is false until proven true.  God provides that proof! 

Some people have claimed that the Bible is full of mistakes because it doesn’t match facts from history, geography, or science.  These critics are proved wrong time after time.  For example:

*People said Moses couldn’t have written the first 5 books of the Bible because writing didn’t exist back then—until scholars discovered that writing was invented at least 2,000 years before Moses.

*People said that there was no such person as Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who sentenced Jesus to die on the cross—until archaeologists found writings listing his name.

Facts from outside the Bible say it is trustworthy.  We have these facts from rocks (archaeology) and writings.

Here is just a little bit of the huge pile of archaeological evidence for the truth of the Bible:

 * The most documented Biblical event is the world-wide flood described in Genesis 6-9. A number of Babylonian documents have been discovered which describe the same flood. The Sumerian King List, for example, lists kings who reigned for long periods of time. Then a great flood came. Following the flood, Sumerian kings ruled for much shorter periods of time. This is the same pattern found in the Bible. Men had long life spans before the flood and shorter life spans after the flood. The 11th tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic speaks of an ark, animals taken on the ark, birds sent out during the course of the flood, the ark landing on a mountain, and a sacrifice offered after the ark landed.

*Sodom and Gomorrah. The Bible says that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and burning sulfur (Genesis 19). Excavations at the sites of these cities show that layers of earth were hurled high into the air, causing hot rock to rain down.

*Jericho. Joshua 6 says that the Israelites marched around the city of Jericho until its walls fell down. Archaeologists say that the walls fell outward so completely that the attackers could have climbed up and over their ruins into the city, which is exactly what Joshua 6:20^a describes.

*David. An astonishing clay tablet from nine centuries before Christ talks about both the "House of David" and the "King of Israel." It proves not only that David was real, but also that he ruled over an important kingdom.

* Campaign into Israel by Pharaoh Shishak (1 Kings 14:25-26^b), recorded on the walls of the Temple of Amun in Thebes, Egypt.
 

* Fall of Samaria (2 Kings 17:3-6, 24; 18:9-11^c) to Sargon II, king of Assyria, as recorded on his palace walls.
 

* Defeat of Ashdod by Sargon II (Isaiah 20:1^d), as recorded on his palace walls.

*Luke. Much of what we know about the birth of Jesus comes from Luke 2: 1-3^e. Luke's facts all check out, such as the Romans having a census every 14 years and making everyone return to his or her family's home to be counted.

While some puzzles of the Bible remain to be solved, researchers still haven't found any archaeological fact that proves the Bible is wrong. That's amazing!

Reading the Writings

The rocks shout that the facts of the Bible are true. And so do the works of writers living closer to Bible times. These authorities knew all about the events of the New Testament and the claims set forth in Scripture. Three big examples are:

Josephus, who was a famous Jewish historian born just after Christ died. A passage he wrote in AD 93 confirms that Jesus was a real person recognized by many as the Messiah.

Thallus, who wrote in AD 52 that earthquakes and a fearful darkness followed the crucifixion of Christ, just as Luke 23:44-45^f describes.

Pliny the Younger, a Roman author, who in a letter to the Emperor Trajan in about AD 112 talked about many early Christian beliefs. Pliny's letter gives solid evidence that Christians worshiped Jesus as God and followed the practice of eating together as reported in Acts 2:42 and 46^g.

If you were to pull together everything known about Jesus from ancient non-Christian writings, you would uncover even more facts-including the key facts that Jesus came from Nazareth, lived an extraordinary life, died under Pilate, and was believed to have been raised from the dead. And all of this information comes from outside the Bible. This is astonishing stuff!  God really wanted to be sure that the world understands that His Son and everything in His Word is real.

One last thing about the reliability of translations backed up by archaeological findings: Between 1947 and 1956, great discoveries were made in a series of 11 caves around the Dead Sea.  Scrolls of Biblical and non-Biblical writings were found preserved in clay jars.  Based on various dating methods, including carbon 14, paleographic and scribal, the Dead Sea Scrolls were written during the period from about 200 B.C. to 68 A.D. Until these discoveries, the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures were copies from the 9th and 10th centuries AD by a group of Jewish scribes called the Massoretes. Now we have manuscripts around a thousand years older than those. The amazing truth is that these manuscripts are almost identical to the scrolls! The minor differences are mainly spelling (comparable to the difference between spelling Saviour and Savior).

If you go to Josh McDowell’s site (link at the right), and click on “Can I Trust the Bible?”, you will find a series of videos that explain even more about the Bible.  I encourage you to view them. 

Scriptures are quoted from the New International Version, ©2011

a.   Joshua 6:20  “When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city.”

b.   1 Kings 14:25-26  “In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. ²⁶ He carried off the treasures of the temple of the LORD and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made.”

c.    2 Kings 17:3-6, 24; 18:9-11  “Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up to attack Hoshea, who had been Shalmaneser’s vassal and had paid him tribute. ⁴ But the king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea was a traitor, for he had sent envoys to So king of Egypt, and he no longer paid tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore Shalmaneser seized him and put him in prison. ⁵ The king of Assyria invaded the entire land, marched against Samaria and laid siege to it for three years. ⁶ In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria. He settled them in Halah, in Gozan on the Habor River and in the towns of the Medes.   ²⁴ The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim and settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites. They took over Samaria and lived in its towns.  ^18:9In King Hezekiah’s fourth year, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against Samaria and laid siege to it. ¹⁰ At the end of three years the Assyrians took it. So Samaria was captured in Hezekiah’s sixth year, which was the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel. ¹¹ The king of Assyria deported Israel to Assyria and settled them in Halah, in Gozan on the Habor River and in towns of the Medes.”

d.   Isaiah 20:1  “In the year that the supreme commander, sent by Sargon king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and attacked and captured it.”

e.   Luke 2:1-3  “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)  And everyone went to their own town to register.”

f.    Luke 23:44-45   “It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.”

g.    Acts 2:42, 46  “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,”