Life Group September 7, 2008: Getting to Know Christ the Man

We’re going to continue with our study on the evidence for the life of Christ and the New Testament, but I want to share a little bit about what this study has done for me and my personal faith. I’m a history buff. I read tons of biographies and history books. I’ve read about everybody from George Mueller, to Thomas Jefferson, to Thomas Edison, to Adolf Hitler, to Napoleon, to Socrates, to George Patton, and on and on. As I study these people and their lives, I eventually get to know them. I feel like if I saw them on the street I would recognize them. If we conversed I would have questions to ask them. If they were speaking I would have a frame of reference to determine their words and ideas by. In essence, they become as real as if I had sat in a room with them for hours on end and asked them questions.

Even though I had read the Gospels many times, I had never looked upon them in the same way I’d looked at other historical records. I looked upon the Gospels as nothing more than sacred documents to my faith, and they are, but they’re also more. As a result I don’t think I had a complete knowledge of Jesus Christ. I didn’t necessarily feel the same way about Him as I did about Thomas Edison. In a way, I didn’t know His entire character. When I thought about Jesus, I thought about Him in terms of Almighty God.

Now, He is almighty God, but thinking about Him only in those terms negates much of the richness of what being a Christian is all about. Christianity is about a relationship with Jesus Christ. One of the things I understood, but did not physically apply to my life is that there is no relationship without a man. In other words, I had a great understanding of Almighty God, and I knew the mechanics of how He saved me, but I didn’t fully understand the importance of Jesus Christ in terms of applying my faith to my everyday life.

As I studied the evidence for Jesus Christ, it struck me that He was every bit as much of a man as Napoleon, yet I knew the man Napoleon much better than I knew the man Jesus Christ. So I began to read the Gospels with an emphasis on getting to know Jesus Christ the man, not the founder of my faith, not the Son of God, not the miracle worker, but as a man. What’s more, when I began to really look at Christ as a man, my relationship with Him became much more palpable and real.

Why is this important? Why can’t you have a fulfilling faith just being in awe of the almighty God and recognizing His omnipotent power and grace? Why can’t you just worship God the creator, I AM, the Alpha and Omega?

First, let’s take a look at life worshipping the Almighty God, and life worshipping the Almighty God while having a relationship, a real relationship, with Jesus Christ.

(Ecclesiastes 4:1-3) Now, this was written by the wisest man in the world. He had it all. Wealth, pleasure, power, incredible knowledge and vast wisdom. But what did his experiences teach him? (Ecclesiastes 2:14) Solomon had looked at life and realized that there was no savior. There was no relationship with God. His life was entirely meaningless and everything he had accomplished was meaningless. Life was futile, yet this is a man who worshipped God, built the temple, and led God’s people to their pinnacle. Yet he came to the conclusion that life was futile.
Let’s read Romans 14:16-18. The tone of this verse and the experience of the author are completely different from Solomon’s in Ecclesiastes. Both had contact with God, but while Solomon had come to the determination that it was better to never be born than to live a full life, Paul’s relationship to God brought peace, joy, and the understanding that he was pleasing to God. What was the difference?

To understand why Solomon was unfulfilled in all of his glory, and Paul was filled with joy and peace, we must understand the character of God and why a complete understanding of Jesus Christ’s role in our relationship to God is essential for joy, fulfillment and peace.

Let’s talk about the character of God. Complete this sentence with the first word that comes to your mind. God is _______. Typically we think God is love, and this is truth, but we must also understand that while God is the embodiment of love, this is not a complete picture of his character. God is also the embodiment of justice, and the two are not mutually exclusive. (Ezekiel 18:4) The idea that God is love is revolutionary. Pagan gods were gods of things. The Greeks and Romans had gods of love, peace, weather, etc. The Canaanites worshipped Baal, the god of fertility. God is not the God of love, God is love. God is not the God of Peace, God is peace. God is not the God of Justice, He is Justice. If God were to completely remove Himself from earth, there would be no love, peace, or justice on earth.

Remember when Moses asked who was speaking to him from the burning bush, God answered I AM. He didn’t say He did things, or He felt things, or He had certain authority. God doesn’t do good things. God is good things. Without God there is no good. And when we reject God, we actually reject goodness, because He is everything perfect. This is why our rejection of God is so heinous to Him. It says that we reject all that is good for all that is evil. We reject love for murder. We reject peace for war. We reject justice for crime. This is what we are saying when we reject God, because He is love, peace, and justice.

So we must understand this, that because of our fallen state, we are an abomination to God. He is perfect good and cannot abide evil. In other words, because God is just, it is absolutely impossible for Him to have relationship with us. He cannot abide our sin, and He cannot allow it to go unpunished.

So the next question becomes, what punishment does our fallen state deserve? The answer is death and separation from God. In fact, punishment is not even the most accurate word for it. Cause and effect or consequence is more accurate. Imagine it like this. You are a pianist, but you become convinced that you will be become a better musician without your fingers. As a result of this belief, you remove your fingers. Now obviously, you are no longer a pianist. You cannot play. You cannot experience the joy of creating music with the piano. You can hear the piano from afar, but you can no longer have interaction with the piano because you chose to remove yourself from it.

In the same way we are removed from community with God. He still gets as close as he can, but we can only view Him from afar. This is a punishment, but it is also the natural consequence of our fallen state. Let’s look at what relationship was like with God after the fall. (Exodus 19:11-25)

This is as close as we can get to playing the piano without our fingers. The presence of God is literally fatal to us because He is the embodiment of justice and sin is part of our nature. He can no more have relationship with us than dry wood can withstand fire. The fire cannot occupy the same space as the dry wood without destroying it. The very natures of the two are mutually exclusive. The fire does not choose to burn the dry wood. The fire consumes the wood because of what it is. In the same way, God destroys sin because He is perfection, justice, and holiness. Sin and God are mutually exclusive; therefore because of the very natures of man and God, we cannot inhabit His presence.

This circumstance is not pleasing to God. God loves His creation. John 3:16 affirmatively tells us this and names it as the purpose for Christ.

Now, we do not have the power to eliminate the stain of sin from our being, so we are cut off from relationship with God. We do not have the power to change what we are. So God must provide another means for relationship. There is only one logical way to reestablish this relationship. Read Philippians 2:7-9.

This is how we get from Exodus to Christianity. In essence, you have the piano saying to the fingerless pianist, you can no longer make music with me as you once did, so I’m going to change my nature so that you can play me. I’m going to make my keys wider so you can press them. It’s not going to be the same as it was, but the more you play me, the more perfect the music will become, and eventually, by continuing to have relationship with me, the music will be perfect again.

This is the role of Jesus Christ in our life. It’s not perfect, but because He became a man, we can have relationship with Him again. As we continue in our relationship with Jesus Christ, our perfection increases and our sin nature is reduced. The relationship with Jesus Christ changes who we are. Through our relationship we become more perfect until the day when we are completely perfected in Him.

This is why understanding who Christ the man is, is so important to a complete faith. This is how we have relationship with God. Unless we view Christ as a man, and relate to Him as such, we have no connection to God and Christianity just becomes a religion.

As a practical matter how might this work? How about this, God does not feel rejection like we do. When we reject God, it is an affront to His holiness and causes Him to seek justice. Jesus Christ feels the emotion of rejection in a way that we can relate to. When we reject Him, He feels the same emotions as we feel when a loved one rejects us. I don’t know about for you, but these impacts the way I think about sin. I empathize with it. I understand it. And it changes how I think about sin. It’s not just me doing a bad thing, it’s me looking at a man, like me, who was tortured and died for me, and then watching me spit on that sacrifice and reject Him. For me, this gives me much more motivation to avoid sin than offending a perfect being of justice that I cannot comprehend. I can relate.

Without this real relationship, you’re missing out on the Christian faith. So as we continue looking at the evidence for Christ, perhaps you’ll look on the Gospels in a new way. Read them with a fresh perspective. Read them as if you’re in a room with Jesus Christ, and asking Him questions about who He is as a man. Get to know His character, His passions, His hobbies, and His ideas. Learn about the culture and history that surrounded His life. As you begin to develop this relationship with Jesus Christ, I believe He will become more real to you, and motivate you to a greater life of holiness and passion for the lost.

Prayer Walk

On Saturday, September 6 at 9:00 AM, Campus Church and the Campus Community Life Group will be participating in a prayer walk for our local schools. Our group will be praying for Northwest Classen High School. Meet us there and join us as we intercede for the young men and women of OKC. The school is located at 2801 NW 27th Street in Oklahoma City.

Here is what we will be praying for our schools.

"Thank you precious God for loving each one of us enough to send Jesus the Christ, your virgin born Son, to die and show your love for us. And after His resurrection and ascension, you sent Your Holy Spirit to be our guide, protector, comfort, and power.

"e ask you to place your wall of protection around this school, the Staff, and the students. Please grant each Staff member the heavenly wisdom to mix with their knowledge so they may guide each student to become all that You have designed and prepared each student to be and do." Ephesians 2:8-10

We can't wait to see you there.

August 31 Life Group: Messianic Prophecy

Last week we did some historical background on the gospels. We established that we know who wrote the Gospels, approximately when they were written, that they were eyewitness accounts of Christ’s life, and that they are historically sound and reliable. In other words, we have more evidence for the reliability of the Gospels than we have for any other ancient text in history.

Again, we don’t want to lose sight of why we’re studying the evidence of Christ’s life. This isn’t so we can win debate competitions or prove intellectual superiority. In fact, most people who ask the kinds of critical questions do so in an effort to justify their lifestyle. (Proverbs 26:4)
We are looking at these things in an effort to build our own faith and to have an answer for those who are really search. We are preparing ourselves to defend our hearts from those who would make us doubt by looking at the evidence for Jesus Christ.

Today I want to look at Christ Himself. When you’re asking questions about Christ, what is possibly the key question that we need to answer about Christ in order to establish that our faith is in something real, tangible, and not just based on some stories about a good man who did some good things? (Luke 24:44)

Let’s start looking at the evidence for Christ being the Son of God.
1. Isaiah 35:4-6/Matthew 11:5
2. Isaiah 40:2-5/Mathew 3:1-3
3. Isaiah 49:6/Matthew 12:14-21
4. Isaiah 50:6/Matthew 26:67; 27:30; Mark 14:65
5. Isaiah 53:5/Matthew 27:26
6. Isaiah 53:7/Luke 23:8-10
7. Isaiah 53:9/Matthew 27:57-60
8. Zechariah 9:9/Luke 19:35-37
9. Zechariah 11:12/Matthew 26:14-15
10. Zechariah 12:10/John 19:33-37
11. Isaiah 7:14/Matthew 1:23-25
12. Micah 5:2/Matthew 2:1-6
13. Psalm 34:20-22/John 19:31-36

On its face, this seems like pretty convincing evidence that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, but let’s look at the arguments against these prophecies.

1. It was all a coincidence
There is a conservative estimate that there were 100 messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. Some say there are as many as 425. Jesus Christ fulfilled each and every one of them.

Matthew Stoner is a mathematician. He did a study on the likelihood that one man could fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament. The odds that one person would fulfill just 8 of the Old Testament prophecies is one chance in one hundred million billion. This is a number so great it is literally beyond human comprehension. If you took one hundred million billion dollars, and you covered the state of Texas with them, it would cover the entire state to a depth of two feet. If you then marked one of the silver dollars, blindfolded a person, and had them wander the entire state, what are the chances they would pick up the marked coin? The exact same as one man fulfilling 8 of the Old Testament messianic prophecies. Christ fulfilled at least 100 such prophecies. (Acts 3:18)

2. The Gospels were Altered
Were the gospels altered in order to conform to Old Testament prophecies and enhance the reputation of Christ?

One of the greatest evidences against this argument is actually the critics of Christianity. The Jewish Talmud was written around 170 years after the time of Christ. It attempts to discredit Christianity and is highly derogatory of Jesus, but nowhere does it question the authenticity of the Gospel stories. Nowhere does it say, “His bones really were broken, just like the other criminals.”

Nowhere does it say, “He was not betrayed for 30 pieces of silver.”

Another great evidence of the truth of the Gospel stories is the lives of those who wrote them. In other words, why would Matthew fabricate a bunch of fulfilled prophecies, knowing it would bring persecution, in order to bolster the reputation of a Messiah he knew to be false, and eventually dying the death of the martyr without ever renouncing those beliefs. There was no power to be gained from lying. Only persecution and death.

3. The intentional fulfillment argument
Some argue that Christ knew of the prophecies and intentionally fulfilled them. Ironically, since we believe that Christ was God, this is actually accurate, but the critics mean it in a different way. There are some prophecies where this argument could work. Sure, Christ could have ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey with the specific intent of fulfilling the prophecy.

Could he have controlled that Judas would sell Him to the Sanhedrin for 30 pieces of silver? Could he have controlled his lineage? Could he have controlled the place of his birth? Could he have controlled how he was executed? Could he arrange that his bones would not be broken on the cross? Could he arrange the exact date of his birth as predicted by Daniel in Daniel 9:24-26? These are all events out of the control of a normal human being.

This seems to be the most common of the criticisms of Christ’s fulfillment of the prophecies, so let’s look at it a little more closely.

a. A Plot from Birth
To say there was a plot would mean that from His birth, His parents would have had to engineer a series of events to give the Child the life experiences and credentials needed to fulfill the prophecy. It was also obvious that Mary carried the stain of an apparent out of wedlock pregnancy, so it seems incredible that these parents would have engineered this type of life for this kind of baby. The odds were against them. In addition, this child would have to grow up and meet the expectations of His parents and then proceed to fulfill the works attributed to the Messiah. In order to accomplish this, here is what Mary and Joseph would have had to do.
a. They would have had to ensure that both Mary and Joseph were of the lineage attributed to Christ in the prophecies.
b. They would have had to be sure that Christ lived in all three places prophesied as his home which were Bethlehem, Egypt and Nazareth.
c. They would have had to ensure that a king would try to kill Jesus by massacring all boy babies in Bethlehem.
d. They would have had to have him crucified on a cross
e. They would have had to make sure his bones were not broken.
f. They would have had to make sure his hands and feet were nailed
g. They would have had to make sure vinegar was given to him on the cross
h. They would have had to make sure Roman soldiers gambled for his belongings
i. They would have had to make sure that he was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver
j. They would have had to make sure he died on Passover
k. They would have had to be sure he lived 490 years after the Babylon captivity
l. They would have had to be sure he lived under Roman rule
m. They would have had to be sure he lived under Caesar Augustus
n. They would have had to be sure that a vile emperor would take over for Augustus (Tiberius)
o. They would have had to be sure that his ministry would reach the Gentiles

We’ve merely looked at a fraction of the prophecies this morning. The truth is that there are hundreds of prophecies, all written hundreds of years before the life of Christ. Some of them are extremely specific. Some of them are very broad.

Against incredible odds, Jesus Christ’s life fulfilled each and every one of them. No mere man could have fulfilled these prophecies, only the one true Messiah.