Questions from the Passion: True or False?

Sunday, February 29, 2004

Rev. Ronald Burcham

Typed from audio transcript

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

I don't know about you but, when I was in school, I did not like true/false tests. I know some people really like true/false tests. I think they reason they have a 50 percent chance of getting it right. I never looked at it that way. I liked essay exams. You see, in an essay exam, even if you don't have a clue what the answer is, if you write something down, you might scratch out a point or two. So I liked essay exams. I didn't like true or false, because with a true or false, you either get it right or you get it wrong. You don't get half credit. You don't get partial credit. You can't have it kind of right. It's either right or it's wrong. Either the statement is correct or the statement is incorrect. There is no middle ground.

There are some questions we need to answer about our faith and about Jesus that have just one answer. It's not something you could be partially right on. It's not something you can be halfway right on. Either you're right or you're wrong. Certainly, there are lots of things where God leaves us sort of gray areas, that He doesn't really specifically talk about. But there are other areas when He talks about Himself and who He is and what He accomplished that He's very black and white, that it's either true or it's false.

This morning we address one of those questions. Is Jesus the Son of God? True or false. Because either He is the Son of God or He is not. And frankly, our eternal destiny is really at stake. Is He the Son of God or is He not? Now I would like to believe and I pray that all of you know the answer to that question and you don't doubt the answer to that question, but there is a whole world of people out there who do not have the answer to that question, a lot of people who have questions about Jesus and who He was and wonder about the claims that we, as Christians, say that He is the Son of God. And is that true and, if so, why is that true?

So perhaps through our discussion today you can be a little bit more confident in your belief but also equipped maybe to answer a question that just might come up in a conversation. Is Jesus the Son of God?

A logical place to start is to start with Jesus. What did Jesus say? Did Jesus ever claim He was the Son of God? There have been a number of people throughout history that would say, "No, He didn't." They would say that Jesus was a great teacher. He was influential, but He never really claimed that title to Himself. It was other people who attributed it to Him, but He never once said that He was the Son of God.

Well, certainly I think all of us can agree that Jesus is an influential person. In fact, I don't even think I'm going out on a limb to say that He is the most influential man that has ever lived. We divide time by His birth, those years before it and those years after it. I don't think there's anyone who will deny that Jesus was an incredible teacher. People study Him now that don't believe in Him but study His teaching methods. They study His leadership ability. So there's no doubt that Jesus was an extraordinary human being, an extraordinary teacher, an extraordinary leader.

But was Jesus the Son of God? Did Jesus ever claim that for Himself? Well, we can't leave Jesus as just being a mere teacher. We just read from scripture a few moments ago. Jesus asked the very question we're asking right now. He asked it of His disciples. He said, "Who do people say I am?" The disciples said, "Well, some say you're Jeremiah. Some say John the Baptist. Others say you're one of the prophets." And then He turned and looked at them and said, "But how about you? Who do you, my disciples, say I am?" And Simon Peter sort of straightened himself up and he said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Now did Jesus deny that and go, "Ah, pashaw, Peter, you're too kind. I mean, I'm nice and all but, nah." Jesus said, "Upon this, that statement, I will build my church." He did not deny what Peter said. He embraced what Peter said and said, "Peter, upon that statement that I am the Christ, I am the Son of the Living God, I will build my church." Jesus embraced what Peter said of Him.

How about the High Priest? Jesus is going through His trial. He's in front of the High Priest. The High Priest looks Him square in the eye, and he says, "I ask you under oath of the Living God, are you the Christ, the Son of God?" And Jesus says, "It is as you say." Jesus said, "Yes, I am the Son of God. I am the Christ, the one you have been waiting for." Jesus claims for Himself that He indeed is the Son of God.

Consider this: You do not sentence somebody to the death sentence just because they're a good teacher. They did not sentence Jesus to death just because he taught, "turn the other cheek," or because He said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." In fact, they didn't even condemn Jesus to death because he kept challenging the religious leaders of the day. You don't sentence somebody to death for that. But you have somebody claim they are God and there's only one of two choices, either he's a fool and a madman or he is God. The religious leaders and the High Priest thought Him a fool and a blasphemer, and they condemned Him because He claimed to be the Son of God.

C. S. Lewis said this: "Either this man was and is the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool. You can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about Him being a great human teacher. He's not left that open for us. He didn't intend to."

You cannot say that Jesus is just a great teacher and acknowledge that He says He is the Son of God. Either He is the Son of God and His teachings are divine or He's a fool or a madman, but you can't have both. Jesus Himself claimed to be the Son of God, and Jesus proved Himself to be the Son of God. Scriptures tell us that the miracles Jesus performed were signs, were proof that He was the Son of God. John, at the end of his gospel, puts it this way, "Jesus did many other miraculous signs in front of His disciples, which are not recorded in this book, but these are written down so that you may believe and know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name."

Think of the hundreds of miracles that Jesus performed, those that are recorded and those that are not recorded. Hundreds of miracles that Jesus did. How did Jesus do it? Did Jesus draw attention to Himself? Was it kind of like a sideshow? "Everybody gather around." He's got the disciples out there gathering a crowd. "Come around. You're not going to believe what Jesus is going to do this time." A little band in the background getting everybody all excited. All of a sudden, they bring this guy up and lay him down. "Ladies and Gentlemen, you see this man down here. He can't walk. He hasn't walked for years. I say I'm going to heal him right now. Ready? Be healed!" And the man stands up. Is that what Jesus did? Jesus is sitting at the table, and He looks over and He says to the man, "Your sins are forgiven. Why don't you pick up your mat and go on home?" And he continues on with His conversation. He says to those who are sick with leprosy, "Why don't you turn around and go show yourselves to the High Priest? You'll be okay." And they turn around, and they're cleansed. He walks up to the widow who's weeping bitterly and touches her son and says, "Why don't you sit up, Boy? Go home with your mom." Jesus let the miracles speak for themselves because He was the Son of God. He didn't have to draw attention to it. There was no slight of hand. He just simply stated it, and it was done.

Think of the thousands of people who witnessed those miracles. Thousands of people and yet no one who challenged the validity of what He had done. They believed it to be true. No one questioned maybe it was some trickery or it was some deception that was going on. Even His most ardent enemies, those who would plot to kill Him, they could not give an answer to how Jesus could perform the miracles. The best they came up with is one time when they were challenged, they said, "Well, that's by the power of Beelzebub that He does that, that is, that's by the power of the devil himself that He's able to do that." And that doesn't make sense because all of His miracles brought glory to the one true God.

Jesus proved Himself to be the Son of God through the miracles He performed, and the greatest miracle of all was, after three days of being dead, He rolled away the stone and walked out unscathed. Jesus proved Himself to be the Son of God through the prophecies. There were some 332 prophecies about Jesus or about the Christ, the Messiah. All those prophecies done hundreds of years before Jesus was ever born. The prophecies told about where He would be born, how He would be born, whom He would be born to. They talked about how there would be someone who would lead the way for Him and get the people ready for His entrance into the world. They talked about his scourging and the spitting upon Him and the beating up on Him, how He would be sentenced to death and then how He'd come back to life again. 332 of them, and Jesus fulfilled them all. Now what are the odds of that? That's like a perfect DNA match… right on… prophecies from hundreds of years ago, and Jesus fulfills them.

Jesus proved Himself. He proved Himself to be the Son of God. He fulfilled all that was said about Him. You can't deny that. You can't excuse it. You can't explain it. You can't say that somehow beforehand, they manufactured it that way. Impossible. You can't say that after He was gone they just sort of twisted history to make it sound that way. Impossible. There's only one conclusion. Jesus was the fulfillment of that prophecy. Jesus is the Son of God. And it is upon that statement that Jesus built His church. If Jesus is not the Son of God, then you and I should not be here. If Jesus is not the Son of God, we are lost. We are lost forever, because God is clear in His word. God says that heaven is for perfect people and only perfect people. Now if you all are perfect, then you have an extra hour on Sunday morning. Knock yourself out. But there is no one that can measure up to being perfect in God's sight. And God says, "If you are not perfect, then the punishment for that is an eternal punishment from that." God looked down and He knew that His creation had rebelled against Him. His creation was filled with sin, and His creation was on a one-way road straight to the condemnation of hell itself. And only God could do something about that. Only God. So Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus took on flesh and blood. Jesus became one of us because, as human beings, we needed to be saved. Jesus, as God, was able to live a perfect life. But as a human being, He could offer Himself in our place. And as God, He could take on the sin of all mankind and, as God, He could die on that cross and, three days later, come back out of the grave. As God, He was able to do that. He was able to take your place and my place so we can be declared perfect. And heaven is a place that we'll live but only if Jesus is the Son of God. He claimed to be the Son of God. He proved Himself to be the Son of God.

But finally, it's God who reveals that in our heart. He said to Simon Peter, "Good statement, Simon, but you didn't learn that by any human means but My Father revealed it to you." Every believer in this room, it is God the Father through His Spirit who has revealed that to you, to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Because God doesn't leave it up to chance. He doesn't leave it up to the fact that you can look at reason and come up with the idea that He is the Son of God. No, He's not going to do that. He's going to move in your heart and He's going to convince you and He's going to erase all doubt from there. He wants you to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that His Son is God, that Jesus is the only way. It is by the power of that spirit that has come into your heart that you can say Jesus is the Son of God, that you can say Jesus is my Lord and you can say Jesus is my Savior.

It's one of the most important questions you can answer. Is Jesus the Son of God? True or false? Through the power of His spirit, I pray that you say unequivocally True. I know I can stand before you with no doubt in my mind and no doubt in my heart Jesus was and is the Son of God. Amen.

Copyright 2004 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church