Jesus, the Religious Riddle

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All right, this morning we’re going to be in Matthew chapter 16. As I said, we’re on the last Sunday of our series on whether Jesus is who he claimed to be or not. Is he liar, lunatic, legend, or Lord?

Because he can’t be both. He can’t be both right and wrong. And it has bothered me, as I’ve said already, it has bothered me for years that people will say, well, yeah, I think he’s a great moral teacher, but I don’t believe that stuff about him being God.

Okay, well, Jesus claimed to be God. the options here are he’s a liar he’s a lunatic he’s a legend or he’s lord okay we have enough manuscript evidence of the new testament going back to within a generation of his time just a mountain of manuscripts that show the gospels have not been changed over time so we can say with certainty that jesus claimed to be god the things that the bible says he claimed to be he actually did claim to be. It’s not legend.

So we’re left with the other options. He claimed to be God, so either he was God and we have to acknowledge him as God, we have to acknowledge him as Lord, or we have to say, well, he claimed to be God when he knew he wasn’t, so he was a liar. Why would you buy into the ethical teachings of somebody who was a liar?

I wouldn’t do it. Or we’re left with the other option. Well, he believed he was God, even though he wasn’t.

So he wasn’t lying. He really thought he was God, but he wasn’t. Then he was a crazy man.

And I’ve never once thought I was God because I’m sane. I see things on the internet all the time where people think they’re God. There are people, nobody that’s ever been on the ballot here, but there are people who are running campaigns for president today.

Again, probably nobody you’ve ever heard attacking one of the major party candidates. But there are people out there who say, yes, I’m the reincarnated Jesus and I’m running for president. I would think if you’re the reincarnated Jesus, you’ve got bigger fish to fry than sitting in the White House.

But there are people out there who think they’re God. And guess what? They’re crazy.

They’re lunatics. So we’re left with either he’s God, as he claimed to be, or he’s a liar or a crazy person. And why do we think a liar or a crazy person is a great teacher to follow?

Now, personally, in all of those options, clearly I lean, not just lean to, I fall headfirst into the Lord position. I believe He is who He claimed to be. And hopefully, you all believe that He is who He claimed to be.

Or hopefully, if you’re just joining us, hopefully you’re open to that position. Hopefully you’re open to hearing that. Because you can’t say, well, He’s not really Lord, He’s not really God, but He’s a great teacher.

No, he’s either God or he’s a liar or he’s a crazy person. And so we need to look at the claims that he made and we need to say, is he who he said he was or is he not? We can’t just ignore those claims. Can’t just pretend they didn’t happen.

They’re all throughout the scriptures. One of the ones that we’re going to look at today is here in Matthew chapter 16 where his disciples claimed that he was God and he said, good for you. Hey, you got it.

You figured it out. and as we’ve gone through this series we’ve looked at some of the things that the world likes to say Jesus is. Instead of admitting that he’s God, the world paints all these pictures of Jesus and funny how all these pictures of Jesus that the world likes to paint look exactly like the people painting them.

I’m not talking literal pictures here, you understand. I read this week where Dr. Timothy Keller, who’s the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City very good speaker.

I don’t agree with all of his theology. He’s Presbyterian. I’m Baptist. But he’s a good speaker, good teacher.

I read something he wrote this week where he said, if your God never challenges you, then what you’re probably worshiping is actually just a picture of yourself. If your God agrees with you on everything, then you’re probably worshiping self that you’ve made into God. And that’s a paraphrase of what he said, but I think it’s true.

The world says, we don’t like this Jesus of the Bible, so let’s shave a little bit off here, and let’s add a little something over here, and let’s make a Jesus that we can deal with, that we can do business with. And it’s funny how that Jesus ends up looking like the one who made him. So we’ve been looking at all these pictures of who do people say Jesus is, and is he that, or is he who he claimed to be because he can’t be vote?

And this morning we’re looking at Jesus, the religious riddle. Jesus is somebody that everybody has an opinion about. You know, there are some things in our world where opinion matters.

When you go vote, hey, you have an opinion. That matters. When it comes to picking a restaurant, everybody has an opinion, and your opinion matters for you.

You may say Whataburger is not the best burger on the planet, and you have the right to be wrong because you have your opinion. Okay? My opinion is one of them.

There are some places where opinion matters. When it comes to who Jesus is, I’m sorry. Your opinion doesn’t matter.

And before you think, whoa, preacher, you’re being me. No, my opinion doesn’t matter either. My opinion and your opinion do not matter as much as the objective truth of who Jesus claimed to be.

And yet we are inundated. We are drowned in our society today with a list of opinions that everybody has about who Jesus is, and none of them match up with each other. And so our society has just sort of written it off that everybody’s got their opinion, we can’t possibly know, so your opinion is just as valid as anybody else’s.

Baloney! Our opinions are all as invalid as anybody else’s. The only opinion that matters is what Jesus said about himself.

And if you don’t think there are all these different ideas of Jesus, let me give you a list. I’ve written some out. Because it’s irritated me for years when people say, can’t we all just get along as long as we love Jesus? I mean, that’s a great sentiment, but my question is always, which Jesus?

Which Jesus are we talking about that we all love? Because there are different ideas of who Jesus is. The Mormon church teaches that he’s a separate God from the Father, that he was born to God and the Heavenly Mother, some of you have not heard this before it sounds crazy but it’s what’s taught that he’s the elder brother of Lucifer let that sink in for a minute one whose death atoned for only Adam’s sin and made it possible for us to atone for our own through good works so in other words his death wiped the slate clean for Adam you’re off the hook for original sin and now through good works you can earn your own way to heaven now please understand I’m not listing all of these views to attack these, to say, oh, I hate the Mormons.

I love the Mormons. I love the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I love the Muslims. There are some great people out there in our society who are Mormons, but their theology is wrong.

So I’m not saying all these things to attack anybody. I’m letting you know what these religions and what these churches teach, so we can say, is it that or is it what Jesus taught about himself? The Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that he was the Archangel Michael, who was then created as a man, that he died on a stake instead of a cross, that he rose again spiritually but not physically, the way I imagine that is that he was like a hologram when he appeared, and who returned to earth spiritually in 1914.

So y’all missed the second coming by just a few years there. Christian scientists. This is not scientists who are Christians.

This is Christian science, the religion. He was a mere man. He was just a man.

And he showed us how to be perfected, but he was not God. He did not die on the cross. He did not rise again.

He did not pay for our sins. The idea was that he was a good teacher who taught us how we could break the pattern of negative thinking in our lives. Scientologists, which is different from Christian science.

Scientologists, in Scientology, he’s not really important. That’s a religion based on aliens. I’m not kidding.

I wish I was. About aliens and clearing negative thoughts from your mind. He was not really important.

He’s just one of many examples of those who have overcome their mental diseases. Pagans of various sorts, different pagan religions, teach that he was either a false teacher or a good man who taught us how to love each other. So when you see people on TV who think they’re druids today around Halloween, I really wish I was kidding on this stuff.

When you see this going on or you see people who practice witchcraft today, you see these things, they believe that Jesus was either a false teacher or he just taught us how to love one another and be kind to one another. New Agers teach that he was a human guru. He was a teacher who showed us how we could access divine power, but he did not die for our sins and did not rise again.

And there’s a common theme in a lot of these. He did not die for our sins. He did not rise again.

In many cases, some teach he didn’t even come in the flesh. Hinduism teaches he was an enlightened teacher and that he’s part of God, just like every other being and animal and plant and rock and everything else in the universe, that all of the universe is part of God and Jesus is no different from us. Buddhists teach that he was an enlightened teacher but not really important to their belief system.

I’m almost to the end of the list. Muslims teach that he was a prophet of Allah, but he was not God, he was not the son of God, and as a matter of fact, to claim that he was God or the son of God is the unforgivable sin of shirk in Islam. He was not God or the son of God, he was not crucified, because again, he was a prophet, and they consider that it would be a great insult to believe that one of Allah’s prophets would have died in such a humiliating way. He did not rise from the dead, and he did not pay for our sins.

the Jews today just as they did in his time teach that he was a false teacher and false messiah who did not pay for our sins and did not rise from the dead and the Roman Catholic Church teaches they’re right on a lot of things about Jesus but they’re wrong on some too he is God the son he died for our sins on the cross and rose again from the dead but the problem comes in he’s still sacrificed week after week on the altar of the mass the belief that the wafer becomes the literal body of Jesus Christ. It has to be offered week after week for our continued sins. Folks, there are opinions galore around us about who Jesus is. And how can we go through that list and figure out which is the right one?

Folks, none of them are right. None of them are absolutely correct. And some of them are just way far off.

But we could sit down and we could make a list in here. If it sounds like I’m attacking anybody in these lists. We could sit down and make a list of what is your opinion about Jesus?

What is your opinion about Jesus? Ultimately, that doesn’t become the truth either. Just because it’s my opinion about Jesus doesn’t make it true.

It needs to be rooted in what the Bible says. So we compare all human opinions against the scripture and against what Jesus said about himself, and we come up with a very different picture. We go to verse 13.

Verse 13. When Jesus came under the coast Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? So he asked them, who do people say that I am?

And he identifies himself as the Son of Man. So he says, who do people say that I am? And they said, some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

So it was real easy to say, well, other people say this. Some people said that. Everybody thinks this.

Anytime you hear somebody, especially in church, say, well, everybody thinks, or everybody’s saying, some people have said, just ignore it. They answered him and said, okay, some people say you’re Elijah, some people think you’re John the Baptist. Interesting, though, that Jesus and John the Baptist were around at the same time. I guess some people forgot that.

So then he says, wait a minute, wait a minute. Doesn’t matter what other people say. What do you say?

Who do you say that I am? Verse 15, he saith unto them, but whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Peter answered and said, You’re the Christ, the Son of the living God. Understand here. Understand exactly what he’s saying, because the word Christ isn’t a name, it’s a title.

So we hear Jesus Christ, and when I was in school, there were people who actually thought Christ was his last name. Christ is not part of his name, it’s part of his title. And it’s the Greek word for the Hebrew word Messiah.

So when he said you’re the Christ, he’s saying you’re the one that God promised through the prophets for thousands of years before you showed up. You’re the one that the whole Old Testament talks about. And he said you’re the son of the living God.

Now Jesus, if he was not God, would have said, Now Peter, come on, you know better than that. You know better than to call me God. That’s blasphemy.

You’re going to get us killed. No, instead, verse 17, Jesus says, and Jesus answered unto him and said, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. He says, good for you, Peter.

Good for you. Way to go. And even better, because no man told you that.

Nobody came and informed you of that. Nobody shared their opinion. Peter, you didn’t come up with this as your human opinion.

He says, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. So wait a minute, Peter’s the one who said that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of the living God. Yeah, but Jesus agreed with it.

And Jesus said, you didn’t figure that out on your own. God told you that. God told you that.

And I say unto thee, verse 18, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Now, something we need to be clear about here. Some people think, oh, he built his church on Peter.

No, no, no. It misses something in the English translation. When he said, you are Peter, he was renaming him. He was giving him the name Petros in Greek, which means a little rock.

And he says, on this rock will I build my church. In the Greek, it’s Petra. the big rock.

And so there’s debate about whether it’s his confession that Jesus built the church on or if it’s on Jesus himself. Or he’s pointing to himself and saying on this rock I’ll build my church. Either one of those explanations is good but I like the second one.

Peter being the little rock that bears resemblance to the big rock. And he says, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. We may come back and talk about that in the next series.

You know, while we’re not promised an easy time in this world, but no matter how dark around us it gets, we have God’s promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against his churches. And so he says, after this confession of faith, on this rock I’ll build my church. Whether it’s on him or whether it’s on the confession, One thing is very clear that he was acknowledging I am the Messiah.

I am the promised one of the Old Testament. I am the son of the living God. And I will build my church and nothing shall stand against it.

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. Not that they should never tell, they just don’t tell quite yet. It’s not quite time for everybody to be privy to this yet. And as far as verse 19, I don’t have time this morning to go into a full explanation of what all of that means and what authority really was being given to Peter and what authority really was being given to the church.

But suffice it to say, Jesus here is saying, all the authority, authority from heaven, I have and I’m giving it to you. So Jesus is making some very tall claims in this passage. He’s accepting the premise of Peter that he is the promised Messiah of the Old Testament.

He’s accepting the premise of Peter that he is the son of the living God. He’s claiming that it was revealed to Peter not by man but by God himself. That he will build a church and a following that is so powerful and so indwelt by his spirit that nobody can stop it.

And he’s promising the authority, he’s promising the power of heaven being behind his people. These are some pretty tall claims for somebody who supposedly never claimed to be God. The fact is, he did claim to be God.

He claimed to be the son of the living God. You see, you’ve got all the experts of today. You’ve got all the secular experts who say, oh, he never really existed, which we talked about in the series of messages on the resurrection.

There’s plenty of evidence that he existed. You’ve got the experts of today that say, oh, he never existed, or if he did, he never claimed to be God. You’ve got all the religions of the world that say, oh, he was a good teacher.

He was a prophet. Oh, he was a false teacher. Oh, he was a crazy man.

oh, he’s not really important, but either way, they all agree he wasn’t the Son of God who died for the sins of the world. They all agree on that. Hey, if they believe that he was the Son of God who died for the sins of the world, then they wouldn’t be those other religions.

They’d be Christians. They all agree he wasn’t the Son of God who died for the sins of the world. Whatever else they believe about him, they believe that.

And yet Jesus here, who does he claim to be? he claims to be the exact opposite of what they claim him to be he says I am the son of God he says I am the promised Messiah he says I am the one who will build my church and nothing shall prevail against it hell itself will not prevail against it and why is that possible because he shed his blood for his church he died for his church he died so that his people could have a relationship with God, could have the forgiveness of sins and hope of eternal life in heaven with him as a part of his kingdom. So for him to be making all these claims about the future of his people, for him to be making these claims about himself, he’s saying something that is the exact opposite of what every religion and every philosophy in the world claims him to be.

and they can’t both be right. They can’t both be right. I took a lot of philosophy classes in college and it messed up my thinking for quite a while.

No, I just, it didn’t turn me against God. It’s just all very confusing. But the most basic thing that they taught us the first day, If there’s a premise, if there’s an idea that says one thing, and there’s an idea that says that that first one is wrong, they can’t both be right.

So if I say those chairs are red, what are they kind of a maroon color? If I say they’re maroon, and somebody else says they’re not maroon, they can’t both be right. I mean, y’all get that.

That’s just common sense. I don’t know why I had to go to college and pay to learn that. That’s just common sense.

Maroon, not maroon, they can’t both be right. Messiah and Son of God, not Messiah and not Son of God, they can’t both be right. So we’ve got the opinion of Jesus stacked up against the opinion of all of these other religions and philosophies.

And we have to decide for ourselves who’s telling the truth. And I leave that for you to decide for yourself, is he who he claimed to be or not? Is he the Son of God?

Is he the Christ? Is he the promised Messiah or not? But he can’t be both.

If Jesus is right, then every other religion and every secular philosophy of the world is wrong. And that’s not just me being a harsh, backwoods Baptist. That’s logic. That’s philosophy.

If they’re saying opposite things, if Jesus is right, then all the other religions and philosophies of the world are wrong. But if these are right, then Jesus is wrong. And to paraphrase what Joshua said to the people of Israel, we have a choice to make.

We have to choose this day which we believe. Now my guess is most of you in this room today already believe that he’s the Christ, the Son of the living God. You probably believe that or you might not be here.

And I also recognize that sometimes we come to sometimes people come to church as skeptics they want to learn more or they’re dragged here by somebody else. And so if you’re sitting here this morning and you’re skeptical or you walked in and thought, well I don’t believe Jesus is God but he’s a good teacher. No, no, you have to pick.

He’s either God or he’s not God. And if he’s not God, forget all that good teacher nonsense. That’s not going to get you anywhere with God.

Either Jesus Christ is who he claimed he was or he’s not. Either he’s right or all the religions of the world are right. We have to choose.

I said earlier your opinion doesn’t matter and neither does mine. Well, it doesn’t matter in the sense that it doesn’t change the truth. But your opinion does matter in the sense that you have to choose.

You have to decide in your mind and in your heart which you believe to be the case. It’s not a choice I can make for you. It’s not a choice this church can make for you.

It wasn’t enough when Jesus asked them, who do men say that I am? And they were very quick to say, well, everybody else says you’re this. Then Jesus’ question was, who do you say that I am?

It’s not enough to say, who does the group think I am? Jesus requires an answer from each of us. And so this morning, I just very simply ask you, would you trust more?

All these religions and religious leaders who weren’t there, or do you trust Jesus Christ who claimed to be God? Then history tells us he died on the cross just as he said he would. And then the overwhelming evidence tells us that he rose again from the dead proving that he was everything he claimed to be.

And the evidence is out there. I’ve gone over it here in Sunday morning services. The books are out there.

There’s some great books on the resurrection. And the irrefutable evidence, to my mind, the irrefutable evidence that Jesus rose again from the dead. But either he is who he claimed to be or not.

I’m just asking you, who do you believe? All of these people who weren’t there, or Jesus who was there and knows exactly who he was and died and rose again. And if you believe that he is who he claimed to be, then we need to understand what that death and that resurrection was for.

He came and he stated his mission was to seek and save that which was lost. He didn’t just come and die on the cross so we could talk about how amazing it was that he rose again from the dead. What an amazing trick he performed. No, folks, he came and died on the cross because we had a sin problem.

We had disobeyed God. We have ignored God. We disobey God every day.

And our sin separates us from God. God is so holy that he can’t just ignore our sin and let it go. Our sin has to be punished just like any good judge would punish a lawbreaker.

So God has to punish our sin. And the punishment for sin against an infinitely holy God is the infinite punishment of death followed by separation from Him for eternity in hell. And yet God looks at us and for some reason I still don’t understand, loves us enough that He didn’t want us to suffer that in hell.

So He sent Jesus Christ to take responsibility for our sins, to go to the cross to shed His blood and to die in our place, taking our responsibility, paying for our sin, so that our sin was punished in Him, So that God’s judgment on our sin was poured out on Him. Then He rose again proving that He had the power to forgive the sins just like He claimed. And now God makes an offer of salvation as a free gift.

Salvation is one of those church words that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless you’re raised up in it. Salvation means three things. Those sins are forgiven.

That God looks at us and says, you know what? That’s already been paid for. Debts paid.

You’re free. Second of all, it means we have a relationship with God. Because our sin puts us at odds with God.

The relationship is not right. And yet because of Jesus Christ, He’s willing to accept us and forgive us, not just as subjects or servants, but as sons and daughters. And then third of all, we have the hope of eternal life.

We have the promise of Jesus that I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, there you may be also, And if it were not so, I would have told you. In my Father’s house, there are many mansions. I got that out of order a little bit, but it’s all in there.

His promise that He goes to prepare us a home in heaven, that we can be with Him and with the Father also. God offers that as a free gift. There’s nothing you can do to earn it or deserve it.

You can’t be a good enough person for God’s forgiveness. It’s a matter of understanding that you’ve sinned against God, and understanding that the Son of the living God, the Christ, the Son of the living God, came to die for your sins and that He’s the only one who could pay for them and He paid for them all and then asked God’s forgiveness because of what Jesus Christ did.