The Claims of the Cross

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You know, I remember hearing on the radio, it’s been years ago, but I remember hearing on the radio them talking about the hybrid cars back when gas prices really started going high, $1. 40 a gallon. I remember driving around Oklahoma City with my sister, ranting and raving that I was not paying $1.

40 a gallon. Now I’d sell my sister for $1. 40 a gallon.

No, not really. Not really. But I remember hearing them talking on the radio about the hybrid cars, the mixed electric and gasoline engines, and about whether a certain brand, which was kind of the flagship of the hybrid car movement, whether or not they were really as environmentally friendly as everybody, as the manufacturer and everybody liked to claim it was.

And they said, you know, there’s still a question of that, how much it really saves you by the time you charge it up, how much money it saves you, and what have you. And was it really worth spending? People were spending thousands, which I know any new car you spend thousands and thousands of dollars on.

But people were spending, it would have been a good price for a house, but they were spending it on these hybrid cars. And people polled them and tried to find out what is the number one reason that they were buying these hybrid cars. Was it because of the environment?

Was it because of the gas savings? What was it? And the number one answer that they came back with was because it says something about me.

Kind of hard to believe, isn’t it? People were shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for these brand new cars because it said something about them, about who they were. You know, I hear a lot of people that, and I’m not here to criticize the environmental movement today, but I hear a lot of people that go green, so to speak.

Never really cared about the environment before, but it says something about me because it’s the trendy thing to do now. I personally don’t know how y’all feel about that. The car thing, if somebody wants to spend a little extra money on cleaners, that’s their business.

But the car thing, I just don’t get. My car, the statement it says about me is if I want to make a statement through my car, I’m too cheap to do that. I’m just going to get a bumper sticker.

That’s how I make a statement through my car. I’ve not understood that. But the fact is that a lot of the things that we do and that we say actually really do make a statement about who we are.

You can watch somebody if you’re perceptive. I’m not as perceptive as some others. But you can watch somebody for a little bit.

You can listen to them. If you really pay attention to somebody, they’re going to tell you who they are. I don’t care how close they try to be.

Mannerisms, the way you dress, the way you carry yourself, the things you say will tell you about people. My wife is very good at this as opposed to me. But my wife can sit in a restaurant and tell me who is there having an affair.

And, you know, sometimes if you eavesdrop on the conversation a little bit, she’s been right. Actually, most of the time she’s right. Brother Roy and I talked about that a few weeks ago, that women are just more perceptive than men, and I absolutely believe that.

But she can tell things about people that I would never have picked up on. But even me and my obliviousness, I can pay attention to people and pick up on some things. I remember being at a conference a few years ago, a political conference, and hearing a speaker who was trying to get people’s financial support for his campaign, and he was talking about being a church-going evangelical Christian, and we’re listening to him talk, and listening to him talk, and I think everybody was just eating it up and wasn’t paying real close attention, and he started talking about family evening on Monday night, having family home evening on Monday night and stuff, and I got to listening a little more, and I, wait a minute, he’s a Mormon.

Just little details, listening and picking up on who he was. figured out he was a Mormon and asked him about it. Well, yeah, I’m a Mormon.

You’re not an evangelical Christian. You’re a Mormon. You can pick up on things just by paying attention to people.

You know, we think we know people a lot of times, but we really don’t know because we don’t pay attention. If you want to know somebody, you’ve got to pay attention to them. Now, don’t be worried that I’m going to be studying you.

I’ve got way too much going on to try to study everybody and try to analyze your every little move. That would be very tiring. But I do try to pay attention to people.

If you want to know somebody, if you want to know one another, pay attention to one another. By their mannerisms, by the things they say, by the stories they tell, you can find out a lot about a person. But a lot of times in our culture, we go through life thinking we know the person next door.

That’s why you hear so many people say, oh, he shot up that daycare center? He was always so nice and quiet at home. You know, we don’t pay attention to the people around us, and then we’re surprised when we find out who they really are.

People are exactly the same way with Jesus Christ. If you ask anybody, almost anybody in the street today, in our country, the vast majority would say, oh yeah, I know who Jesus is. The vast majority would say, I believe in Jesus. But if you ask them what they mean by that, most people have no idea.

Well, okay, you know who Jesus is, you believe in Jesus, tell me a little something about him. Well, he was a good man, we’ll hear a lot of times. He was a good teacher.

We might even hear from people that he died on the cross. But you know, a lot of people in our world today, even if they know he died on the cross, they have no idea why. In some vague way, well, maybe he died for us, but we don’t know what that means.

And folks, there are a lot of teachers and a lot of theologians and a lot of preachers who say they believe in Jesus, who profess to know Jesus, who profess to teach Jesus, but who have completely missed out on who Jesus is, and there’s no other explanation or no other excuse than the fact that they have ignored the very things that he said and portrayed about himself. We cannot say we know Jesus. We cannot say we love Jesus and know who he is if we don’t pay attention to what he shows, what he reveals about himself.

Any more than you can know who I am if you don’t spend time with me, if you don’t pay attention when I talk to you, if you don’t spend time around my family. Any more than I can know you. I can say, yeah, I know Brother Phil, he’s a good guy, but if I don’t ever spend any time around Brother Phil, if I don’t listen to him when he talks, if we don’t ever have conversations, all I’m really doing when I say, yeah, I know Brother Phil, let me tell you about him, is telling you what my opinion, what my perception, what my ideas are about Brother Phil.

Folks, when it comes to Jesus, if it’s not based on what he’s revealed about himself, it’s just man’s opinion. And in that, it’s almost always wrong. In Luke chapter 18, verse 31, We’re looking at really a little over a week out from when he went to the cross.

I’m not trying to go exactly and, well, this happened this day and up until Easter, but this is about the time before Easter that this would have happened. He’s on his way to Jerusalem. He’s been out teaching.

He’s been out discipling his disciples and traveling around, and they’re with him. And it says in verse 31, Then he took unto them, I’m sorry, then he took unto him the twelve and said unto them, and Matthew says he took them apart, he took them, not in the sense that he tore them to pieces, but he took them away, they’re out on the road, and he kind of pulled them aside. Where there weren’t all the people on the road, maybe any others traveling with them, it was just him and the twelve.

He pulled them aside and told them in confidence, behold, we go up to Jerusalem and all the things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished. He tells them, what we’re doing now, we are going up to Jerusalem, and it’s really for the last time. Our journey together is really, as far as earthly journey, really is coming to an end.

We’re going up to Jerusalem, and they probably at this point think it’s business as usual. They’ve been up to Jerusalem many times, spent a lot of time in Jerusalem. They’ve done the Passover. They’ve done all these things for three years, and probably think it’s just business as usual. But he says, we’re going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished.

This is not going to be business as usual this time in Jerusalem. Something different is going to happen. Verse 32 says, For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and spitefully entreated, and spit it on.

It almost feels wrong to say that. Spit it on. But that was the proper English of the day when this was translated.

He says that the Son of Man, all the things written about him are going to be accomplished because he’s going to be taken. He’s going to be handed over to the Gentiles, and they’re going to mock him, and they’re going to spitefully entreat him. They’re going to insult him.

and he’s going to be spit on and all these other things. And they shall scourge him and put him to death, and the third day he shall rise again. Folks, to us it is very, very clear what this passage means.

If you’ve spent any time in church at all, if you’ve spent any time in a Bible teaching church at all, you know what this means. Because we all know that Jesus went to the cross. We know the suffering that he endured on the way up there and on the cross.

We know that he shed his blood and he died for us and that he rose again on the third day. But at this point, they had just been going through life with Jesus. And they hadn’t been through all the things that we now see from the other side.

But I still have to imagine that’s got to be pretty clear. It would have to be pretty clear to the disciples. I can’t imagine how they could miss it.

And yet they did. He tells them, we’re going up to Jerusalem. The prophecy is going to be fulfilled.

I’m going to be tortured, basically. Die on the cross. And I’m going to rise again three days later.

Verse 34. And they understood none of these things. and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.

And this morning, as we begin to look toward Easter, I want to talk to you about the claims of the cross. Because see, as Jesus went to the cross, for anybody that’s paying attention to what he did there, it tells us something about who he was. It tells us something about who he is, that he went and died on the cross.

It tells us something, the fact that he foretold it, and that he foretold it in this way. It tells us something about who he is. There are scholars, there are Bible scholars in our world today who try to claim that Jesus is not the Son of God, that he was a man.

That’s not just something the world teaches. There are people in major theological seminaries around this country who teach that Jesus Christ was a good man, a moral teacher, but was not the only begotten Son of God the Father. They teach that in Christian seminaries.

And their argument is that, well, Jesus never claimed to be divine. He never claimed to be divine. They overlook passages such as when he’s on trial or when he’s being questioned and they’ll ask him a question about his divinity and he’ll say something along the lines of, I am.

Now we would look at that and say, he is what? They would have understood it as him equating himself with God because God told Moses, who they all looked to and revered, I am that I am. And it was no happy accident of words that Jesus responded to them when he was questioned by saying, I am.

He wasn’t just saying, I am something. He was claiming to be very equal with God. The fact that he even called himself the Son of Man.

You know, for years I looked at that and said, well, that just means he’s human too. Not that I questioned the divinity of Jesus. I was taught from a little boy and still believe, even stronger today, that Jesus Christ, fully God, and fully man.

But I thought, okay, these are just two different terms describing two different aspects of him. Son of God, fully God. Son of man, fully man.

But if you look at some of the Old Testament prophecies, there are times when the Son of Man is spoken of as clearly being a Son of God. The way the Son of Man is described. Now, there are also places in the Old Testament where it talks about a Son of Man, or the Sons of Men, or the Sons of Man, where it’s talking about just regular human beings.

But there are places, I believe, in Ezekiel, for example, maybe Daniel, I should have looked at that, but I didn’t plan to talk about that. There are places in the Old Testament prophets where it’s written about the Son of Man where clearly He is not just any man. Clearly somebody through whom God is working and on whom the Spirit of God rests.

And so even when He claims to be the Son of Man, He’s claiming to be something more than just a regular man. And the idea that Jesus Christ never claimed to be God or never claimed to be the Son of God would be a devastating argument against our faith, if only it were true. It sounds good and it sounds scholarly to say, well, Jesus never made the claim for himself.

That was something that later on his disciples made up. Folks, I’m so sure they made it up. They decided that they were going to claim he was God and then they were going to die for something they knew was a lie.

Anybody buy that? I’m glad to hear you don’t I don’t either people will die for a lie but it’s very hard to find somebody who will die for something they know to be a lie because they made it up if it were true that Jesus Christ never claimed to be God never claimed to be the son of God but it was something that was made up later by his disciples it would be a devastating argument that would absolutely undermine our faith but it’s not true because he said I am he called himself the son of man and even in passages like this he points out to the fact that he was something more than just a regular man. And the only way that we can miss that, the only way that people miss that today is by completely ignoring what Jesus said about himself.

If you read the Gospel accounts and you pay attention to what Jesus says, to what Jesus teaches, to how Jesus behaves, how Jesus reacts, just like you would somebody else who’s here now, who’s here physically now that you’re trying to get to know, if you paid the same attention to Jesus, Folks, we couldn’t miss what he says about himself, and that is that he is the very only begotten son of God the Father. In this passage, he spells that out for his disciples as well, and they missed it. They missed it.

If you look at what their concerns were, I believe it was Matthew I looked at last night, where it’s basically this same passage, where he gives this same address to them. Shortly before or shortly after that, it may have been, right around this time, James and John come with their mother, and they’re all concerned about who’s going to be the greatest in the kingdom. At this point, the disciples were still under the impression that Jesus Christ had come to set up an earthly kingdom.

They were under the impression that he had come to set up a rule, to boot the Romans out, and to usher in this golden age for Israel. And they were excited. They were absolutely beyond themselves excited.

And James and John come with their mother, and they ask for a place of honor in the kingdom. Folks, that’s what they were focused on. And the only way they could miss this, what he has said, is because they’re not paying attention to what he’s saying about himself.

They’re too concerned with their own ideas of who Jesus is and what he’s come to accomplish. And folks, today, when people ignore what Jesus said about himself, it’s quite often because they’re more concerned with their own ideas about who he is and what he came to accomplish. If somebody is more concerned about the philosophical teachings or the ethical teachings of Jesus, then they are his atonement on the cross, his shed blood for our sins, then yeah, they’re setting themselves up for an easy miss here.

His disciples were more concerned about the earthly kingdom, and so it was easy to miss. It says, and they understood none of these things. But it’s so clear, it’s right here in red and white, that he’s going to die.

He’s going to be tortured and beaten to death, and he’s going to die, and he’s going to rise again the third day. What’s not to understand? What’s not to understand is they had this picture in their mind again of the kingdom that he was going to build.

And I figure they saw him his throne in their minds, ruling over Israel as a perfect theocracy where he ruled under God and he led them through their golden age where the Romans would be gone, the oppression would be over, he would cleanse the temple, he would get rid of the pagan practices and he would just make Israel, Israel again. And they saw themselves sitting by his side. They saw themselves as the vanguard of this new movement.

And that’s what their world at this point, I believe, revolved around. Seeing this future kingdom and seeing themselves in it. And everything they saw was processed through.

If you’re not familiar with the term worldview, it’s basically just a fancy term for how you view the world. People talk about worldview a lot now. Do you have a biblical worldview?

Do you have a Marxist worldview, humanist worldview? It’s basically the lenses you see the world through. Folks, the lenses they saw the world through was this coming kingdom that they thought he was going to set up.

And so when they look through those lenses and they see something that doesn’t quite fit, he tells them, I’m going to be delivered up to the Gentiles. I’m going to be beaten. I’m going to die.

I’m going to rise again. It’s not that they don’t understand what those words mean. The disciples were not stupid.

Some of them may not have been the most educated men of their time, but they were definitely not stupid. but they managed to tie their shoes and find their way home at night. They understood, I’m sure, what the words meant.

It’s a matter of processing this. How does this fit into what we already know, or think we know, about who you are and about what you’re here to do, what the world’s going to be? What he was telling them did not fit within the framework that they were familiar with, that they were looking through.

And so their lack of understanding was not, well, goodness, Lord, we don’t know what those words mean. It was a matter of, okay, you’re going to die, but you’ve also got your kingdom. How’s this going to be beaten, and yet somehow you’re going to be the king?

Lord, how? How’s this going to work? And they couldn’t get past their own picture of Jesus.

They couldn’t get past their own picture of what he was there to do for long enough to listen and pay attention to what he was telling them. Because he made some claims, in this passage, he makes some claims about himself that are even more incredible than what they foresaw. You see, we see here that the whole of his earthly ministry, The whole of Jesus’ earthly ministry led up to his death on the cross.

That was the point of his whole earthly ministry was that he would die on the cross. Verse 31, it says, Then he took unto him the twelve and said, He pulls them aside. He took unto him the twelve and says, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all the things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished.

Jesus knew that he was going there to die. He tells them, I’m going here to die. And he says, we’re going to Jerusalem anyway.

Folks, if I knew that I was going up to Springdale to die, I would stay as far away from Springdale as I possibly could. If I knew I had such an appointment up there. And yet Jesus says, I’m going to Jerusalem, I’m going to die in Jerusalem, and yet I’m going there anyway.

It was the culmination of his ministry. It’s what everything had been about. Everything that he had taught them had been about this spiritual kingdom that they would enter into when he shed his blood, when he died on the cross, when he purchased forgiveness for their sins so that they could have peace with God the Father.

He said, this is what’s going to happen, and yet, he said, it’s not just going to be by accident. We are actually going up to Jerusalem for this to happen. We’re going there on purpose.

I’ve told you before, one of the most irritating ideas that I’ve heard in the last ten years is the idea that God the Father is somehow abusive, that he forced his poor unwitting son to go up to the cross and be tortured and die and all these things, and God is just the worst father ever. Folks, everything in the Bible tells us that Jesus Christ went willingly to the cross. Now, his human nature, I can understand why he prayed in the garden, Lord, if there’s any other way.

But folks, he didn’t stop with, if there’s any other way. He went on to say, but nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done. Let nobody ever tell you that Jesus went to the cross kicking and screaming because God the Father made him.

Within the Godhead, within God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, there is a unity of will. There’s never disagreement about what’s to be done. And the whole of his earthly ministry, from the time that he was born, folks, the time he grew up, the time he worked as a carpenter, the time he started his ministry for three years, everything up to this point has been for the purpose of this trip up to Jerusalem.

And he makes that claim when he says, this was all written about beforehand, the things that were written about by the prophets. And he tells them, and folks, they missed it, that his earthly ministry was not about setting up that kingdom that they thought, but it was about him going to Jerusalem and the appointment he had there with our redemption. Secondly, we need to see that Jesus did claim to be the Messiah of God.

It’s easy even now to miss that, but folks, if they’d been paying attention, they would have seen it, because they would have been utterly familiar, more so than we are, with the writings of the prophets. I know they’re hard, but we would do well, and I’m talking about myself too, we would do well to spend more time in the Old Testament prophets because they point to Jesus Christ as well. And folks, they would have been familiar with what these prophets said.

He said, and all the things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. Accomplished by whom? By Him.

Excuse me. He didn’t, I wouldn’t imagine he left them with the impression that we’re just going up there to watch the things written about the Son of Man be accomplished. We are going to Jerusalem that the things written about by the prophets about the Son of Man shall be accomplished.

And folks, when he identifies himself as the Son of Man, when he identifies himself as the one written about by the prophets, if you remember back to the series in the fall, what were the prophets writing about? They were writing about the coming of the Messiah. And so when he says of himself, we’re going up there, I’m going up there, so that the things written about of the Son of Man, written by the prophets, can be accomplished, he’s claiming to be the Messiah that was written about in the Old Testament.

Let no one tell us that Jesus Christ never claimed to be the Messiah. Let no one ever tell us that he was just a good teacher and that that’s all he ever intended to be. Folks, he knew who he was.

He was exactly who we say he is, and he claimed it for himself. Third of all, Jesus claimed to hold power over death by declaring his resurrection. That would be easy to miss.

But as the ones standing there saying, What is happening? We don’t understand this. This would have been the one that made the disciples, I think, scratch their head the most. They’d seen Jesus raise people from the dead before, but folks, this still was not something that happened every day, even in Jesus’ own time.

Now, he raised a lot more people from the dead than any of us could, yet it still wasn’t something that happened every day. You don’t see it. In the gospel accounts, when it’s written of, it’s rightfully written down as a source of wonder.

As a miraculous thing, it’s recorded. Peter, I know Peter didn’t write. people believe Mark wrote down what he heard from Peter.

Peter and Luke writing things that he researched for himself and heard from Paul and John and Matthew. Folks, they didn’t write these things down and say, yeah, Jesus woke up that morning, raised somebody from the dead, and said, let’s go for coffee. It wasn’t, folks, it wasn’t a routine thing.

It happened enough that they knew Jesus was capable of anything, but still, this wasn’t something that happened all the time. And yet he claims that, he’s not claiming here that I’m going to go and I’m going to raise somebody from the dead. They’d seen that happen.

And he says, the Son of Man, which they’d heard him refer to himself as before, the Son of Man, will rise again the third day. And in that, Jesus is not just dryly stating a fact. Folks, he is in fact claiming power of life over death that he held in his own hands.

Let us never think Jesus is just an ordinary person. You say, why am I talking to you about these things and telling you, let us never be convinced of these things. Because more and more people buy into the idea that Jesus Christ was just a good moral teacher, an ordinary man, and nothing more.

There are people that, I don’t know about here, but there are people that sit in church pews week after week who believe those things. There are pastors who believe those things. There are very intelligent people who believe these things.

I’m not the most intelligent person in the world and don’t claim to be, don’t think I am. But folks, I’m smart enough to read what Jesus said about himself and say, how can they possibly conclude what they conclude? Because this Jesus they talk about who was just some good moral teacher who just walked around with flowers in his hair all the time and just told everybody to get along and they’d be okay is not the Jesus I know about from reading in the Bible.

It’s not the Jesus who’s testified of by the resurrection. And between now and Easter, I may talk to you about the evidence for the resurrection, not because I think you need to be convinced, but because you need to know the facts for when you’re confronted with people who don’t believe in the resurrection. Folks, I’ve examined the resurrection.

When I went through philosophy classes at OU and got hit hard by atheist professors who I believe were intent on destroying the faith of their students who came in and were unprepared, I sat down for myself and I said, I’m going to question what I believe and why I believe it and make sure it’s not just what my parents have taught me but that I know for sure what I believe. And folks, the thing that made it absolutely crystal clear to me like nothing else was the fact of the resurrection. There is no way to explain it away other than it happened the way the Bible claims that it did.

And we’ll talk about that probably maybe next week. Folks, the resurrection is absolute historical fact, incontrovertible historical fact. There’s no way around it.

And when Jesus here said, I will rise again on the third day, he’s not claiming to be just a good moral teacher, and there’s no way to excuse it away as him being just a good moral teacher. He’s claiming power of life over death. And I don’t know any philosopher who has that kind of power.

And finally this morning Jesus and his ministry cannot be understood unless they believe taught about philosophy or morals or ethics. I can’t remember who it was who said it, but I’ve always liked the quote from the man who said that Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. When he claimed to be God, as he did, when he claimed to be the Son of God, he was either lying and knew he was lying and was an evil man who led his followers astray.

He was either that or a lunatic who got other people to buy into his delusion, lots and lots of people to buy into it, or, and this is the option I go with, he was the Lord who he claimed to be. When you claim to be God, when you claim to be the Son of God, you can’t not be and still be somebody worth following. That’s just the long and the short of it.

And for anybody to say, well, we enjoy Jesus’ teaching. We look to Jesus as a good example, but we don’t believe that he is God in the flesh. Folks, that’s lunacy to me.

Say he was a nut who believed he was God when he wasn’t, but still I want to believe his philosophy. When I worked in in downtown Oklahoma City, I didn’t go down to the winos in the street and ask them for their life philosophy. I just didn’t figure there was a whole lot they could teach me.

If somebody was crazy and thought he was God when he wasn’t, why would we care to hear his moral teachings? If he’s lying about being God, why would we care to hear his moral teachings? Folks, the only way that we’re going to understand the whole purpose for Jesus being here, the only way we will ever understand his teachings, is if we believe what he claimed for himself and about himself.

And that was that he was the very only begotten Son of God, come to seek and to save that which was lost and able to save to the uttermost. That’s exactly who he is. That’s who he claims to be in the Bible. That’s who we claim him to be.

And folks, any other claim about him doesn’t make sense. So what are we to do knowing this? What we’re to do is to realize that if we’re not believing the things that we read about him, if we’re not believing the things that he claimed for himself, we’re never going to understand the depth and the breadth of why he came and who he was.

If you’re sitting there this morning and saying, well, I like Jesus, I like some of his ideas. Of course, people used to say about bands, I like some of his old stuff. Not that later on stuff, I’m going to die and rise again.

But I like some of his earlier stuff, blessed are the meek. Folks, blessed are the meek, the Sermon on the Mount, none of that means anything if he wasn’t who he claimed