Jesus, the Good Man

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We’re going to be in John chapter 5 this morning. John chapter 5. A couple years into his ministry, Jesus asked his disciples, who do men say that I am?

Who do other people say that I am? And they gave him all sorts of answers. Some say you’re Elijah.

Some say you’re Jeremiah. Some say you’re a prophet. Some say you’re a great teacher.

They gave him all these answers. And Jesus looked at them and said, okay, that’s great. Who do you say that I am?

And suddenly, they were quiet. You know, we’re all left to make a decision. Who is Jesus?

And we’re presented with that question, and it’s easy to say, well, so-and-so says he’s this. So-and-so says he’s this. No, no, the important question is, who do you say Jesus is?

And Peter, who was sort of the mouthpiece of the group, finally spoke up and said, well, you’re the Christ. You’re the Son of the living God. And you’ve got to understand, Christ is not his last name. Christ is a title.

It’s the Greek word for Messiah. So when he said you’re the Christ, he’s not just saying, like if I said, who do you say I am? Well, you’re the Byrns.

And he’s not saying his last name. He’s saying you’re the Messiah. You’re the one that God has promised.

And he said you’re the son of the living God. He went a step beyond that and said you are actually God’s son. And Jesus replied that that was correct.

As a matter of fact, he said, Peter, Simon, blessed are you because flesh and blood has not told you that. No person, no human being has revealed that fact to you, but God has revealed that to you. God has made it known to you who I am.

So the question that they were posed, the question that was posed to them years ago, is a question that still faces men today. Who do we say Jesus is? Now let’s make it a little more personal, because it applies to each of us.

Who do you say that Jesus is? now there are all sorts of answers as many people as there are on the planet you could probably just about find that many answers sort of like the old saying whenever you find 12 Baptists you’ll find 13 opinions you can find all sorts of opinions on who Jesus is you go ask a liberal church in Oklahoma City not to say they’re all liberal but there are some really liberal churches that shouldn’t even call themselves Christian in Oklahoma City who do you say Jesus is? They’ll give you one answer.

You ask your neighbor who do you say Jesus is? You’re going to get another answer. You ask Oprah who do you say Jesus is?

You’re going to get a different answer. You ask me who Jesus is you’re going to get an answer different from all of those. But we’re left each of us the most important question that we have to decide in our lives is who is Jesus?

Who do we believe Jesus is? Now Jesus actually made some claims about himself. And we were not left just to figure this out Who is Jesus?

He gave us some answers. In your bulletin, hopefully you all got a bulletin this morning, there’s a bookmark. Because I sat down and started coming up with a list of some of the things that, well, first of all, the scriptures where Jesus made claims about himself.

And then put them in categories. So what does this all fall under? And I wanted you to have this.

I thought I could put it in your bulletin, but now I want something that you might hang on to. I know some of you will throw these away, but if you keep them, you have a handy bookmark to remind you. And at some point, you probably will run across a family member or a friend or somebody who said, well, Jesus is just a good man.

He never claimed to be God. I hear that so much that I’m sick of it. Jesus never claimed to be God.

I’ve got a whole, this is not even a full list, but I’ve got a list of scriptures I made that say otherwise, of the things that he claimed. And this will be a good place for you to remember and be able to look these scriptures up.

but just some of the things that Jesus claimed to be and I’m not going to read off all the scriptures because I encourage you to go check these out for yourself and double check that I’m telling you the truth but he claimed to be the giver of life that takes some pretty big power to be able to give people life he claimed to be the source of eternal life not just, okay, I gave my children life but I can’t give them eternal life so we go a step beyond that he says I can give you life everlasting he claimed to be the light of the world none of us as good as we are can be the light of the world this world is pretty dark and there’s not a whole lot that we can do about it on our own he claimed to be the light that lights the whole world he claimed to be the conqueror of death sorry unless Jesus comes back before then everyone in this room is going to die someday I hate that I’ve been thinking about that a lot more since I turned 30 it seems to be more of a seems to be more of a real possibility than it was before but you know what he conquered death he conquered death didn’t we just celebrate Easter a couple months ago he beat death at its own game claimed to be the Messiah the one that God had been promising for 4,000 years who would set Israel free he said yeah that’s me he claimed to be the judge of sin all these people who say you can’t judge me only God can judge me and Jesus says I can judge you he claimed to be the judge of sin he also claimed to be the forgiver of sin it’s one of the things that Got him in trouble in the passage we’re going to look at today.

He claimed to be, listen to this, oh how hateful was Jesus. He claimed to be the only way to the Father. Wait a minute, that’s narrow-minded.

Sorry. That’s what he claimed. Take it up with him, not me.

He claimed to be the only way to the Father. He claimed to be the image of God. Now what does that mean?

For thousands of years people have been making statues and things to worship God. And God said, no, don’t do that. Here in the last few years, I’ve become convinced that when Moses was on Mount Sinai, and the people went to build the golden calf, for years I thought, well, they were building an idol, they were worshiping false gods.

As I re-read that, I mean, read it for yourself and see what you think. As I re-read that, I think they were in their minds thinking, we’re going to worship the true God, but we want this thing we can look at and sort of direct our worship to Him. Now, I’m not saying that’s right to do that.

There are churches in our state today, even in our city, where people say, we’re worshiping the God of the Bible, but we just use statues and paintings. And God says, don’t do that. God says, don’t make any images that are supposed to represent me, because no image can capture who I am.

The Colossians called Jesus the image of the invisible God. Jesus called himself the image of God, said, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. So for all these years when God said, no, no statue, no painting can capture who I really am, Jesus captured who God really was and showed us who he really was.

That’s what that means that he’s the image of God. He’s one with the Father. He is one with the Father.

That’s a pretty tall claim to say I’m one with God. I don’t dare say that because I’m not. I have peace with God through Jesus Christ, but I know I am not the same as God.

He claimed to be the Son of God. He did claim to be the Son of God. In every one of the Gospels, He claimed to be the Son of God.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you. Don’t ever let some pundit on TV or some brilliant college professor or some not so brilliant commenter on YouTube tell you that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God. He absolutely did.

He said, I’m the Son of God. I’m getting ahead of myself, but in the passage we’re going to look at today, ten times. Ten times just in these 14 or so verses, he claimed to be the Son of God.

He claimed to be not only the Son of God, but he claimed to be Lord and God. He claimed to be Lord and God. He claimed to be equal with God.

And he claimed to be the eternal God, the great I Am. He said, before Abraham was, I Am. They said, do you think you’re God?

Do you think you’re the Son of God? and they’re talking about Abraham and he said, I’m telling you, before Abraham was, I am. And we look at that today and say, big deal. What did God call himself to Moses?

He said, I am that I am. When Moses said, who should I tell the people of Israel? What should I tell the people of Israel when they ask who sent me?

He said, you tell them, I am sent you. And so when Jesus said, before Abraham was, by the way, 2,000 years before that, When Abraham, before he ever was, I am. Okay, that’s not just that Jesus forgot how to talk right.

He’s saying before Abraham even came into existence, I was the eternal God. See, you can disbelieve that Jesus was God. You can disbelieve all of this.

You can say he was wrong. But you can’t look at it and say, oh, he never claimed these things. There’s an old statement called Lewis’s Trilema.

I don’t expect you to remember that. There is no test. I’m just teasing. C.

S. Lewis wrote years ago that Jesus had to be one of three things. That he had to be a liar, he had to be a lunatic, or he had to be Lord.

He had to be one of those things. Now, Lee Strobel, if you know who he is, wrote the case for Christ. He and some others have said, well, there’s actually a fourth option. He could be a legend.

Now, Lee Strobel doesn’t believe that and spends time in the case for Christ arguing for why that’s not the case. The Gospels were written too close to the life of Christ for a legend to have had time to develop. It takes hundreds of years.

So we’re left really with four options. Jesus made these claims, as you see in this handy list that you’ve got. And again, you can go through the scriptures and you can probably find more instances where he claimed some kind of deity.

But this is just the list I came up with this week. He made all these claims reflecting the fact that he’s God.

he said I’m all these things that’s not in doubt the legend thing I throw out I said that when he was writing when the gospel writers were writing these things down within the lifetime of some of the people who walked with Jesus and could talk to the eyewitnesses and be disproved by the eyewitnesses then there’s not time for him to have been a legend these things have to reflect what really was said and done in his lifetime and there’s a mountain of manuscript evidence showing that it hasn’t been changed since then so he’s not a legend he’s left either being a liar or a lunatic or a lord he claimed to be God if you say but no he wasn’t God did he know he wasn’t God and so he was a liar did he think he was God even though he wasn’t and he was a lunatic did he never make these claims and was a legend or did he make these claims and was right about it see I don’t get the idea of people today who say Well, we’ll accept Jesus.

We think He’s a great man, a great moral teacher, great example, but He can’t really be God. But we’ll accept all this other stuff. Why would you accept all the other stuff?

Why would you think He’s a great moral teacher? Why would you think He’s a good man? If He said He’s God and He wasn’t, then He’s either a liar or a lunatic.

Why would you follow somebody like that? But I submit to you that He claimed these things because He really was what He claimed to be. And now, I’m not going to go in the next few weeks and pick apart each of these, liar and lunatic and legend.

You know, we’ve sort of covered that in a very short way. If you want more information on that, there are books that I can recommend that go more in depth than I have the time to do. But I want to, starting today and going into the next few weeks, into the month of June, talk to you about who Jesus really is.

Who He claimed to be. He’s not just somebody that we can say, well, I like some of His teachings, but I’m not really going to follow Him. We have to be all in, or we have to be all out.

We either have to accept him as God, or we have to completely ignore him as a liar or a lunatic or a legend. And over these next few weeks, we’re going to look at some of the views that people have today in the world, some of the views that people have of Jesus. And they say, well, he’s this and he’s that.

And then we’re going to look and see what does Jesus actually say about those things. The first of these, and today is going to be very short because we’ve got such a busy morning with the Lord’s Supper, Graduate Sunday and all that. But this morning we’re going to look at the idea of him being a good man.

Just a good man. Because that’s one of the things we’ll hear most from people who don’t want to accept him as God. They’ll still say he’s a good man.

Now again, I say he can’t be just a good man. If he’s not God, he’s a liar or a lunatic or a legend. But the idea of this popular view of Jesus is that he was just a good man and he gave us a good example of kindness and how to live, but there was nothing really divine about him.

There was nothing really that made him God. Jesus would argue with that. If you turn and look with me in John chapter 5 starting in verse 17, we’ll get through this fairly quickly, but he’s just been to the pool of Bethesda.

He’s healed a man. It’s a great story if you go back and read that at the beginning of John chapter 5. He’s healed a man, and he just happened to do it on the Sabbath.

And so the really religious people got all in a twist and said, well, you can’t do that. You broke our law. And I say, well, Jesus broke their law.

He didn’t break the law. Because if Jesus is the eternal God, he made the law. And if he wants to heal, he made the Sabbath.

If he wants to heal people on the Sabbath, he can do it. But they began to question him. And in verse 17, it says, but Jesus answered them, My father worketh hitherto, and I work.

My father works here, and so I work too as a result. Oh, you’re working on the Sabbath. Yeah, God works on the Sabbath.

God is still healing people. Therefore, verse 18, the Jews sought the more to kill him because he had not only broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his father, making himself equal with God. The Jews understood he’s claiming to be God.

He’s claiming to be the son of God. He’s claiming to be equal with God. It made them mad.

There was no question for them, does he claim to be God? They were so mad about it, they wanted to kill him. Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, the son, Wait a minute, the son of who?

The son, they were mad about him calling himself the son of God. The son can do nothing of himself but what he seeeth the father do. For what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the son likewise.

Whoa, lots of problems here. He’s calling himself the son of God. He’s saying, I’ve seen how God works.

He’s telling the religious people, I know better what the father does than what you do. And he’s telling them, the things that the father does, I can do too. This fellow thinks he’s God.

if you hadn’t picked up on that yet. For the Father loveth the Son, he loves me, and showeth him all things that himself doeth. And he will show him greater works than these that ye may marvel.

And he says, God the Father, he loves me, he shows me what he’s doing, he keeps me in the loop, and he enables me to do the things that he does and that he wants me to do. And the more he talks, the matter these religious people get. And as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, makes them to live again.

Even so the Son quickeneth whom He will. You know what? Just as God can raise people from the dead and make them alive again, I can raise up whoever I please.

For the Father judges no man. See, they looked at God the Father and looked at Him as the judge of everything. But He said, The Father judges no man but hath committed all judgment unto the Son.

He said, You look at God and say He’s the judge. I’m telling you, the Father made me the judge. I imagine they’re so angry.

They’re ready for blood at this point. That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He’s telling them, you should worship me the way you worship God.

The way you’re used to worshiping the Father, you should worship me. If you want to see the reaction that these men would have had as he’s talking to them, go talk to an Islamic group today. Go talk to ISIS.

I wouldn’t actually recommend it, but go talk to ISIS or Al-Qaeda or some group like that, and tell them, oh yeah, you should worship me like you worship Allah. You’re not getting out of that conversation alive. He was saying the same thing to them.

Worship me like you worship God. Verily, verily, I tell you the truth, I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death into life. And he says, and by the way, I’m telling you the truth, If you’ll listen to me and you’ll believe in me, then you’ll have, I’m telling you, you have eternal life.

You won’t pass into condemnation. You won’t pass into hell. You have eternal life.

It’s a huge claim he’s making to be able to say, oh yeah, you’re going to heaven if you believe in me. He either knew it was true or he didn’t. And you’ve got to decide for yourself.

He’s making this claim. Is he correct or is he not? Verily, verily, I say to you, verse 25, The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live.

They’ll not just hear the Father’s voice, they’ll hear my voice. The dead will hear my voice and they’ll live. For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.

And hath given him authority to execute judgment also because he is the Son of Man. So he said, I have power over life and death just as the Father does. And I have power to execute judgment just as the Father does.

marvel not at this verse 28 don’t be amazed don’t be amazed by this for the hour is coming in which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice and shall come forth they that have done good unto the resurrection of life and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation I can’t of mine own self do nothing as I hear I judge and my judgment is just but he still says here even though I have all this power to do this I do it in accordance with the will of the Father. And my judgment is just because I will seek, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.

There is another that beareth witness of me. And I know that the witness which he witnesses of me is true. And some people will say, well, see, he said he couldn’t do things without the Father.

So he wasn’t claiming to be God. That’s not what the Jews understood. That’s not what the people he was talking to understood.

and I’m going to go 2,000 years ago with the people that he was talking to rather than what somebody thinks today. There was no doubt in their minds that when he said, I do what the Father tells me to. It’s not him saying, I’m less, I’m not God.

It was him saying, I am so in tune with God that I do exactly what he tells me to do. These people hated him. They hated him for this very reason.

He absolutely claimed to be God. This idea in the modern world that Jesus is a good man, He taught us a good example, and He showed us kindness. All those things are true, but He never claimed to be God.

See, that’s where I fall off from the modern idea. He was a good man. He’s also God in the flesh at the same time.

He was a good man, and He did show us a good example, and He did show us kindness, but He absolutely claimed to be God. There’s no doubt in my mind reading this that He claimed to be God, and those people heard it, and they knew it, and they understood it, and they hated Him for it. See, ten times I went through and counted, and I counted again, and then I had my computer count just to make sure I wasn’t missing something.

Ten times in that passage he claimed to be the Son of God. Just in the sense of calling himself the Son. There were other claims he made throughout there that could only be fulfilled by God.

But ten times he referred to himself as the Son of God. And another ten times he referred to God as his Father. And again, not in the sense that all Jews thought that God was their Father, but in the sense that He is the Father and I am the Son.

20 times. 20 times in those few verses Jesus claimed the Son of God. So we’re left with a choice.

Do we believe the modern view that He was just a good man? Or do we take Jesus at His word? When He said 20 times, just in this passage alone, I’m the Son and He’s my Father.

You’re left with a choice. Do you believe the world or do you believe Jesus? So Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.

He claimed to work on His Father’s behalf. All throughout this. In my notes here, I didn’t even list which verses say that He claimed to work on the Father’s behalf because they just about all say it.

I mean, so many times through here He says, I judge because the Father has given me the authority to judge. I judge as He tells me to. I speak as He tells me to.

I raise from the dead as He tells me to. All throughout this, the Father and Son are so intertwined in their working that you read through this passage and it’s hard to see where one ends and the other begins. Jesus said, my Father and I are like that.

We’re like that. We share a mind. We think alike.

And I do the things that he called me to do. See, there’s a difference between knowing what somebody wants you to do and doing it because they’ve told you to and actually knowing what they want because you’re so in sync with each other. When Charles is getting ready for a big event or decorating for something, She’s told me before, I love you, but I want my mom’s help or my cousin can’t.

Either one. Because they know what I want things to look like. They know what I want, you know.

We don’t even have to talk about it. They just know. Whereas I’m going, what on earth is this for?

What does this do? And I can do what she asks me to do. But they have this unspoken thing.

I don’t even understand. Maybe it’s a one thing. I don’t get it.

But ladies, that’s what Jesus was saying here. The Father and I, we just know, and we work together in this. You and I can do what God asks us to.

Jesus was claiming something very important. The Father and I share a will and a purpose. So He was not just a good man.

Is He just a good man who showed us kindness, or was He fulfilling the Father’s will in everything because they were like that? Again, the world’s view and Jesus’ views are at odds, and we have to decide which one we believe. And finally this morning, this idea, oh, he was just a good man.

There’s nothing divine about him. He claimed to bring judgment on the world. He claimed to bring resurrection.

He claimed to bring eternal life. Last time I checked, none of us can do any of those things. We can’t.

Those are faculties that are reserved only for God. Even the world that’s hostile to the things of God admits it when people say, only God can judge me. In other words, you Christians, shut your mouths.

Only God can judge me. Okay, you’re right. Only God can judge you.

And here’s what Jesus said. And Jesus said, I have the power to judge. The Father has actually committed judgment to me.

The Father hadn’t committed judgment to me. He hadn’t committed judgment to you. Now, that’s not to say we have to keep our mouths shut about everything.

We’ll talk about that another time. One of the most misinterpreted passages of all of Scripture is, Judge not that ye be not judged. It’s been a whole series just on that.

We don’t have judgment the way Jesus has judgment. Where He will sit in judgment over all men. Over all men.

And we’ll give an answer to Him for the things that we’ve done. Only God can sit in judgment like this. He said, I’ve got that kind of judgment.

He said, I can bring the dead back to life. I don’t know anybody else who can do that. I know medicine has gotten very good these last few years.

And they can have somebody flatlining and they can revive them and all that. They can do incredible things. But there comes a point when somebody’s dead and they’re just dead.

You can’t even think about it. Lazarus was dead four days. I don’t think there’s a doctor in the world that could bring somebody back after they’ve been dead for four days.

And Jesus just said, Lazarus, get out here. Come forth. And he got up and walked out.

Jesus could raise the dead in a way that nobody else could. Jesus could promise eternal life. Jesus could promise a home in heaven with the Father.

folks those are things that only God could do and only God did and so we’re left with the choice is Jesus able to do the things that he said he was or is he not you’re welcome to disbelieve these things just know you’re not just disagreeing with the preacher’s opinion you’re disagreeing with what Jesus said about himself and if you think you’re smarter than Jesus be my guest you may be smarter than me but we’re not smarter than Jesus he made these claims about himself was he telling the truth was he a liar was he crazy are these things really true and if they’re really true he’s not just a good man he’s not just a kind example he is exactly who he claimed to be he’s the God of heaven we have to take seriously everything he said we have to take seriously what he said about sin and about judgment and about forgiveness